Ephesians 1:3–14, Part 2
After a greeting, Paul begins his letter titled “Ephesians” with a grand eulogy of God. As I noted in the previous post, while we give eulogies praising people who have passed away, Paul’s eulogy praises God who is very much alive. After saying, “Praise God,” Paul lists numerous reasons why he is praising God, the first in the middle of verse 3,
“who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.”
Notice the spiritual language. Paul is not talking about earthly realms, and he is not talking about physical blessing. Paul mentions heavenly realms and spiritual blessings.
When he refers to “heavenly realms,” I suspect many assume Paul means “heaven,” singular, the abode of God. But Paul doesn’t describe it that way. He says heavenly realms, plural. I double-checked the original Greek, and this word is plural.
What are the heavenly realms? The sky? The atmosphere? Outer space? Interestingly, in the original language, the word “realms” doesn’t appear. Instead Paul is using an adjective, “heavenly,” as a plural noun, the “heavenlies”. Because the word “heavenlies” is uncommon in English, many translations just add a word like “realm” or “places.” This difference is important. Why? We know is that Paul is not using the noun form of the word “heaven.”
If this sounds a bit technical, stay with me.
Paul uses the same word, “the heavenlies,” a few times in Ephesians, and one of the most interesting instances can help us understand what Paul is referring to. Look at Ephesians 6, verse 12. There, to introduce the Armor of God, Paul writes a famous verse about spiritual warfare, about battle with evil spiritual beings,
“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in…_________”. Where? Hell?”
No. The battle against spiritual forces of evil does not take place in hell. The spiritual forces of evil are from hell, and they come do battle on earth. Right? Spiritual warfare takes place here on earth, right?
Does Paul write that “Our struggle is against…the spiritual forces of evil here on earth?”
No! Shockingly, he says that our struggle is “against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
That’s the same word we just read in chapter 1 verse 3. Are you wondering, “Wait a minute, what are demons doing fighting battle against us in the heavenly realms? We are not in the heavenly realms. We’re here on earth. And how can demons be in heaven? Only God, Jesus, angels, and the people in the book of life are supposed to be there!”
What I’m getting at is that when Paul uses the word, “the heavenlies,” he isn’t referring to the celestial city of God. The heavenlies are anywhere God is. The heavenlies are the many dwelling places of God, including earth.
Paul’s point is not to transport us away from earth and suggest that we only experience blessing in some otherworldly abode of God. Instead Paul’s point is to say that we can experience every spiritual blessing in Christ wherever God is, and that includes now. We do not have to die to experience the rich blessings of God. We surely will experience them when we die, but Paul is saying that we also experience them now.
But what spiritual blessings do we experience now? We’ll learn about those spiritual blessings in the next post.
Photo by Mert Atakan on Unsplash
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