Untold blessings are the birthright of Christian believers. But the exclusive source and conduit of them all is our Lord Jesus Christ. This explains why masters of the spiritual life have always urged us to look nowhere else for blessing, but only to Christ and to the privilege we have of being united to Him…We are called to live out the implications of the new epicenter of our lives, namely, the fact that we are “in Christ.”

As believers, we are citizens of two different worlds. But first and foremost, we are in Christ Jesus. If we go to any of these cities where we are complete strangers and meet Christian believers, we are conscious that we are their fellow countrymen. We belong to the same city. “Our citizenship,” Paul says, “is in heaven” (Phil. 3:20). We belong to the same nation. We are under the same King. More than that, all of us who believe in the Lord Jesus are “in Him.”

In the verses that follow, Paul elaborates to this effect: “God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus.” His point—to which we will return—is that all spiritual blessings are to be found in Christ. It is also important to put that point negatively: we are not to look for spiritual blessings outside of or apart from Christ. It is to Jesus Christ and our union with Him that we need to look in order to experience and appreciate the riches of salvation.

Paul explains how all this began—before the foundation of the world. God chose us in Him before He created the cosmos. Way back then (if we can speak from our own point of view), He chose us not apart from Christ but “in Christ.”

The Apostle goes on to speak about the blessings that have come to us through God’s grace.

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