Ephesians 1:1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are at Ephesus and who are faithful in Christ Jesus: 2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love 5 He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace 8 which He lavished on us
In this passage we see the flow of all spiritual blessings and that comes from the ever blessed God which is seen in 1 Timothy 1:11 very clearly: “according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, with which I have been entrusted.” God is the eternally and infinitely blessed God and as such is the author and fountain of all spiritual blessings as well as all physical blessings. While Christ is the purchaser of all blessings as all spiritual blessings are found in Him, it is the Father who has blessed believers with all spiritual blessings. So we see the biblical pattern once again. All things are from the Father and through the Son.
When we see that biblical pattern (paragraph above) again, it should drive us to think of how the triune God is within Himself. Why is it that all of these blessings are from the Father and yet they are in Christ? How is it that all spiritual blessings are from the Father and are in Christ? We see a hint of this in John 17:1-3 which is beautiful in its simplicity and yet profound teaching.
John 17:1 Jesus spoke these things; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You, 2 even as You gave Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life. 3 “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
We see in John 17 that Jesus prays to the Father and asks Him to glorify the Son. But why does He want that? He wants to be glorified so that He (the Son) may glorify the Father. In this we see the pattern of all things coming from the Father and coming through the Son, though indeed all must go back to the Father as Romans 11:36 points to. This also, quite clearly, shows us something of the triune God and the same God with whom we have to do in Ephesians. In fact, it is when the Father glorified the Son that the Son glorified the Father and in doing this the Son purchased all the spiritual blessings at the cross for the elect of God. It is in this triune fellowship that eternal life flows and eternal life is in knowing God the Father and the Son. In other words, eternal life is to be in fellowship with God and it is to know God in an intimate way.
It was at the cross that Christ purchased a people for the Father, yet the Father had a people to be purchased by the Son. The Son died for all that the Father would give Him and those are the ones that are given eternal life. Those that the Father gave to the Son the Son died to satisfy the wrath of God and also to give them a perfect righteousness by imputing His righteousness to them. In this way, then, we can see the spiritual blessing of being able to stand before (in His presence) God holy and blameless. But we must look beyond the blessing to see the One that gives the blessing. The giving of the blessing and the purchasing of this blessing is totally by the grace of God and for no other reason. But why does God show grace and why does God save sinners? He does these things for His own purposes and for His own glory. If God saved sinners for reasons other than love for Himself and His own glory, He would not be a holy God. So this shows why God saves sinners and that is for His own purposes.
Why did Christ die for sinners? If He loved sinners because of who they are rather than love them out of love for the Father and for the sake of His love for the Father, then He would have violated the Great Commandment and would have been a sinner. If the Father loved sinners more than He loved His own Beloved and eternal Son, He would not be holy. This shows us that the Father giving some to the Son to die for and the Son’s actually dying in their place actually displays the glory of the love of God within the Trinity. If God did not love Himself, He would not have a motive to save sinners. But He does save sinners because of His love for Himself and His own glory and as such He saves sinners to the glory of His grace.
God Loves... Himself 
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