Blessed God

“Blessed the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.” (Ephesians 1:3)

Paul opens his letter with blessing — and he stacks the word three times in a single verse. Bless (eulogētos) the God who has blessed (eulogēsas) us with every spiritual blessing (eulogia). Does blessing God, seem a strange thing? The Blessed One blessed us with blessing. You cannot miss what he is doing: everything starts with God, and everything returns to God.

That is the first thing to see. God blessed us — then, seeing what He has done, we bless Him back. It is reciprocal. Like, we love Him because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). We bless Him because He first blessed us. The praise that comes out of us is the echo of the good and perfect gift that came down to us.

More Than Gratefulness

People hear this and call it gratefulness, or thankfulness. And they are not entirely wrong — in 1 Corinthians 14:16 Paul sets blessing and giving of thanks side by side, like kin. But blessing is wider than thankfulness. Thankfulness says, “Thank You for what I received.” Blessing says, “You are worthy” — it speaks God’s worth, His goodness, His glory, back to Him.

And this is not positive thinking or good manners. It is a spiritual thing. When the blessing of God becomes revelation to you — when you actually see what He has done, that while you were dead in your trespasses He made you alive and blessed you with every spiritual blessing in Christ (Ephesians 2:5) — something rises in your spirit, and it comes out as praise. Your spirit blesses Him back for blessing you. That is the mutual communion: He gives, you receive, and the receiving itself turns into blessing Him.

Until He Blesses Me?

Now, some people run this in reverse: I will praise God until He blesses me. I will worship until He acts. Honestly, I do not know if that is true — so let Scripture answer.

Ephesians 1 will not support the reversal. Paul’s order is fixed: He blessed (already done, accomplished in Christ) — therefore we bless Him back. Praise is the response to grace, not the trigger for it. Every good gift is already coming down from the Father (James 1:17). He is not doing us wrong; He is doing us good. Our praise is the echo.

But there is another side, and we have to be honest about it. Praising God in faith before the breakthrough is biblical. Jehoshaphat put the singers in front of the army, “and when they began singing and praising, the LORD set ambushes” (2 Chronicles 20:21-22). Paul and Silas sang hymns in prison at midnight, and the earthquake came (Acts 16:25-26). “I will bless the LORD at all times” (Psalm 34:1) — at all times, not only after the blessing arrives.

So what is the difference? Is praise faith’s response to who He is, or a lever to get what I want. One is worship. The other is bargaining. God responds to faith (Hebrews 11:6) — He always has. He does not respond to formulas. At the same time he promises to provide for our earthly needs, in a way that is not transactional, not sowing and reaping.

What the Word Means — the Whole of It

The Greek word for blessings is eulogeō — to speak good, to speak well of. It is the Septuagint’s word for the Hebrew bārak, and if you follow it through the whole of Scripture, it moves in three directions. Confuse the directions and you will confuse the doctrine.

First, God blessing man: He confers good. “God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply’” (Genesis 1:28) — the blessing is the empowerment; the word carries the thing. “I will bless you… and you shall be a blessing” (Genesis 12:2-3). “The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make His face shine upon you” (Numbers 6:24-26). When God blesses, the word accomplishes — His face, His favor, His peace, put into His people.

Second, man blessing God: praise. “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits” (Psalm 103:1). Speaking His worth back to Him because of what He has done. This is Ephesians 1:3 — and Ephesians 1:6, 12, and 14, where it all lands “to the praise of His glory.” Which is reciprocal of or what God will do.

Third, man blessing man: invoking good toward another. Isaac over Jacob (Genesis 27:28-29), the patriarchs over the tribes (Genesis 49) — a father speaking his son’s future with authority. And then Jesus takes this third direction somewhere we do not like to go: “bless those who curse you” (Luke 6:28).

Bless Those Who Curse You

This is where it gets real. I have been done wrong enough times to know how bitterness grows. My first instinct, when someone treats me badly, is to get defensive — to hit back, to make sure everybody knows what they did.

So when Jesus says “bless those who curse you” — and Paul echoes it, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse” (Romans 12:14) — what is He actually asking? Am I supposed to say good things about the person who falsely accused me? To pretend the wrong was right?

No. Blessing your enemy is not approving his evil — Scripture forbids calling evil good (Isaiah 5:20). Look at how it is framed: “bless and do not curse.” Blessing is set as the opposite of cursing. To curse is to speak evil toward someone, to invoke harm on them. To bless is the reverse: to speak good toward them — to desire their good, to pray for them, to do them good. The context defines it: “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you” (Luke 6:27-28). It is active goodwill, not flattery and not blindness.

And Peter gives us the ground of it — and it leads straight back to the blessing of Ephesians 1: “not returning evil for evil or insult for insult, but giving a blessing instead; for you were called for the very purpose that you might inherit a blessing” (1 Peter 3:9). We bless because we are the blessed. The favored in the Beloved bless out of the blessing they have received, it is their identity.

And there is something else in it. When I bless those who persecute me, the blessing itself is an acknowledgement — that God is working, even here, even through them. Joseph is the picture: “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20). He fed the brothers who sold him, and that provision was his testimony: I see what you did, and I see what God did with it.

One distinction matters: they were instruments God overruled, not co-authors of the good. Jesus was delivered up “by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God,” and still “you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men” (Acts 2:23). They are still accountable for unbelief and wrong, in whom God will judge. In fact Jesus said the judgment on that generation who rejected him would be worse than any other. God weaves it; they answer for it. So I do not bless them for the evil. I bless them through it — because I see God in it. Coals of Fire

I know this teaching is not theory. I was once falsely accused and thrown in jail — I was never charged. But I sat in that cell, and I will tell you plainly: in there, you are not fighting from “innocent until proven guilty.” You are fighting from guilt, trying to prove you are innocent. It seemed like a setup to keep you there; the phones did not work, when someone came to bail me out, they told him I was not there. It was hopeless. All I could do was pray out to God, because He was all I had to turn to.

I made a decision in that cell: I would show the person grace. I would not revile back. I could have sued — part of me wanted to. But I did not. When I finally stood before the judge — a judge known for hard stances toward criminals — I watched God work. The judge spoke to me gently, like a little child. God had told me He was going to bless me and work it out, and He did.

I am not going to tell you it did not hurt. A false accusation cuts deep. And it still comes up — it is on my record, and I still have to explain it, and people can still use it against me. Grace did not erase the consequences. But it kept me free on the inside.

Paul writes, “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head” (Romans 12:20), quoting Proverbs 25:21-22. What does that mean? It does not mean God burns them for you. It means your undeserved kindness becomes a burning conviction — the kind that leads to repentance. “The kindness of God leads you to repentance” (Romans 2:4). When you refuse to repay evil for evil, your good disarms and convicts, and God goes to work in the other person. I watched Him do it. “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21).

Speaking Truth and Blessing at the Same Time

But here is the honest question: does blessing someone mean I stay silent about the wrong? If the food was bad at the restaurant, do I say nothing? If the dealership cheated me, do I just smile?

No — blessing is not silence, and it is not dishonesty. “Speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15) is still the rule. Paul himself wrote, “Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm… be on guard against him yourself” (2 Timothy 4:14-15) — he warned the church, in Scripture. Telling the truth about wrongdoing — warning others so they are not cheated next — is not cursing. It is love of neighbor. Exposing things to the light is a principle of Light, as God exists light.

The line is not between speaking and silence. It is in the heart. Am I warning to protect, or wounding to repay? “Never pay back evil for evil… never take your own revenge, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Romans 12:17, 19). A truthful word that protects your neighbor is love. A bad review written as payback for wounded pride is vengeance wearing honesty as a mask. God sees which one it is, even when we cannot.

I once took my truck to a mechanic who kept changing parts, never fixed the problem, handed me the bill — and then told me to “have a blessed day.” That is the hypocrisy: doing someone wrong and dressing it in a blessing-language. But the answer is not to stop blessing. The answer is to mean it by doing good to all people, especially God’s household.

The Blessing in Affliction

And here is the deepest wisdom in it — the blessing itself is to see affliction this way: that my suffering is fellowship with His suffering, and that fellowship brings about more of the glory of God in my body. More of His life.

This is what Paul lived. “Always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in the body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death works in us, but life in you” (2 Corinthians 4:10-12). He was put to death all day long, for God’s sake (Romans 8:36) — so that others would experience life.

Look at his life: beatings, shipwrecks, imprisonments, hunger — hardship upon hardship, and he does not hide any of it (2 Corinthians 11:23-28). In Asia he despaired even of life itself, “so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9). And what did all of it produce? Not bitterness. Fellowship. “That I may know Him… and the fellowship of His sufferings” (Philippians 3:10).

And out of that fellowship came more of the blessing of God’s life while still in this mortal body — “though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16) — and more revelation of God in Jesus Christ: God “has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

When affliction hits, the first cry is honest: why is this happening to me, God? I thought you were supposed to be blessing me. Scripture never rebukes that cry when it is asked in trust — Job, the psalms, Habakkuk asked it. And God’s answer is the one this whole essay has been building: the blessing in the new covenant in Christ and seen in Ephesians 1, is spiritual. The renewed mind that sees it that way is itself part of the blessing; wisdom received.

That is why Scripture commands what feels impossible: “Count it all joy when you fall into various trials” (James 1:2). Joy — because the trial has a purpose. “All things work together for good,” and the good is defined: “conformed to the image of His Son” (Romans 8:28-29). That is what He purposed. And “whom the Lord loves He disciplines… He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness” (Hebrews 12:6, 10). The view of affliction is the whole battle: the discipline of love of a heavenly Father conforming us to his son.

And the wisdom for it is there for the asking — right inside the trial passages, not somewhere else. “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God… but he must ask in faith” (James 1:5-6). The wisdom is what is missing, maybe a lack of love, and how to see the affliction. Ask in faith, and God gives the seeing. And the proving that follows transforms and renews the mind (James 1:3-4; Romans 12:2).

Paul learned this the way we all learn it — by going through it. The sentence of death in Asia taught him not to trust himself but “God who raises the dead, who delivered us… and will deliver us” (2 Corinthians 1:9-10). Past deliverance became future confidence. So when prison came again and again, he already knew the pattern: affliction in, fellowship in suffering, life out. And he knew his business in the cell: the singing, not the earthquake. God handled the earthquake and the jailer’s household (Acts 16:25-34); Paul’s treasure was what the affliction was forming in him — “more precious than gold” (1 Peter 1:7).

So when I bless God in affliction — when I do not feel blessed, when nothing around looks like blessing — I am not pretending. I am standing in the culmination of every blessing I have ever received from Him, and in the hope of the glory that is coming, and the Spirit who is pouring God’s love into my heart right now (Romans 5:5). The affliction itself becomes fellowship — His sufferings, mine — and that fellowship works more of His life into this mortal body and more of His revelation into my soul.

That is the blessing. To experience the glory. To find Him there as a loving Father. And To bless Him in it.

The Communion

So it comes full circle. God blesses me — spiritual blessings, in the heavenly places, in Christ, because it pleased Him, to the praise of the glory of His grace. I receive it — not as information but as revelation, my spirit apprehending what my natural mind could never comprehend. And the receiving turns into praise: my spirit blesses Him back for blessing me.

And then it overflows. The one who has been blessed becomes a blesser — of God, in worship; of his brethren, in love; and even of his enemies, in the strange, defiant goodness of Christ. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” — because He first blessed us.