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
God the Father has blessed His people by blessing them with every spiritual blessing in Christ. It should be noted that spiritual blessings are not the same thing as material blessings. This means that God can give His people every spiritual blessing while according to His sovereign choice and wisdom He can either give or withhold material blessings. Election is a spiritual blessing that so far exceeds material blessings that they are not even worthy to be compared. When God took sinners who were dead in sins and trespasses and by nature children of wrath and made them holy and blameless in Christ, this was and is also a spiritual blessing that makes material blessings pale into nothingness. When God took the children of the devil and adopted them as His own sons through Christ Jesus, this is a spiritual blessing of far greater value than if He gave them several worlds of material things.
But why did God do all of these things? Was it simply because He couldn’t bear to see human beings perish in their sins and so He provided a way out? No, but it was “according to the kind intention of His will.” However, that is not the best translation of the Greek at that point. The Greek language reads like this: “kata. th.n euvdoki,an tou/ qelh,matoj auvtou/.” Kata means “according to”, th.n means “the”, and euvdoki,an means good pleasure. qelh,matoj has the meaning of will, wish, or desire and auvtou/. is the pronoun meaning “his.” Putting that together, in a very literal sense, it means “according to the good pleasure of His will. God the Father has blessed His people with all spiritual blessings in Christ according to His own good pleasure. God the Father has elected a people, made them holy and blameless in Christ, and adopted them as His own children through Christ in accordance with the pleasure of HIS own will.
The focus of Ephesians 1, then, is quite clearly on God and what He has given. Logic will force two options upon us. The real focus in Ephesians 1 is either on God or on man. Since God is the One that gives all spiritual blessings in Christ, that is evidence that God is the real focus. Since those who receive the blessings are not only unworthy of them but actually only deserve wrath and damnation, the focus cannot be on them for their own sake. The only real option that we have if we are looking for the real focus of Ephesians 1 is God. The Scriptures are the Word of God and Ephesians 1 is the declaration of the glory of God. What we must see, then, is that God is setting forth the beauty and glory of the Gospel in a way that manifests and declares His own glory. It is not that God is declaring that man is so valuable and worthy that He saved man, but that God is so valuable and glorious that God displays and manifests God in saving man.
The doctrine of election demonstrates to us that God saves according to the good pleasure of His own will and man is not saved in accordance with some choice of his own. The doctrine of justification by grace alone (standing before Him holy and blameless in Christ) is not just something God provides so that man can make a choice and save himself, but is so that the glory and pleasure of God in the matter may be displayed. The adoption of man as sons of God is not in accordance to the will of man, but is in accordance to the pleasure of the will of God. In other words, what we see in Ephesians 1 (as well as the whole Bible) is that God saves because it pleased Him to do so. We see that God takes sinners and makes them holy and blameless in His sight because it pleased Him to do so. God saves sinners not because He saw their value, but because He saw the value of His own glory to do so and it pleased Him to display His glory in saving sinners. God saves sinners not because He saw any worth or value in them, but because He saw the worth and value of displaying and manifesting His own glory and it pleased Him to do so. Ephesians 1 declares just how God-centered God really is. How horribly wicked it is of men to think of self and focus on self when they read and study Ephesians 1. It is about God and His glory and pleasure. Let us bow in worship of Him rather than ourselves.
God Loves... Himself 
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