"Every Spiritual Blessing"
Ephesians 1:3 — God "hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places In Christ."
This passage is often used to teach that all spiritual blessings are in Christ, meaning that no one outside of Christ can receive any spiritual blessing of any kind. It is the thesis of this essay that Eph. 1:3 teaches that if a person wants access to spiritual blessings of every kind he must be in Christ, but that Eph. 1:3 does not teach that spiritual blessings of some kinds cannot be found outside of Christ.
Specifically, Paul says in this verse that all Ephesian Christians and he are people who have received all spiritual blessings. And since God deals with all Christians in the same way in every age, Paul says that all Christians are people who receive all spiritual blessings.
Let's get some definitions. "Every," or "all," is "pas" in the Greek. J. H. Thayer refers to Eph. 1:3 and renders "pas" as "of every kind." Thus Paul is saying that all Christians are people who receive spiritual blessings of every kind.
Parallel examples of this usage of the expression "of every kind" are: (1) In this dime store one can buy trinkets of every kind; (2) In this school one can study engineering courses of every kind.
But, simply on the basis of what these statements say, we cannot say (1) Because you can buy trinkets of every kind in this dime store, you cannot buy trinkets elsewhere, nor (2) Because in this school one can study all kinds of engineering courses, you can't study them elsewhere.
And neither can the statement, "All Christians are people who receive spiritual blessings of every kind," be turned around to say, "All people who receive spiritual blessings of every kind are Christians." At least it cannot be if we try to do it on the back of Eph. 1:3 alone.
The statement, "All Christians are people who receive spiritual blessings of every kind," is a basic sentence type of the pattern "All X are Y." This pattern cannot be reversed, unless other evidence is given showing the truth of the reversed statement.
Here are some sentences in which "X" and "Y" are replaced by various terms. (1) All dogs are animals. (2) All students at Florida Christian College are people who study the Bible daily. Now try reversing the terms in each sentence. They cannot be reversed. Neither can the statement, "All Christians are people who receive spiritual blessings of every kind," be reversed to say, "All people who receive spiritual blessings of every kind are Christians." That is, it cannot be reversed without further evidence.
Sometimes Eph. 1:23 is given as a passage that furnishes the evidence that Eph. 1:3 can be reversed. If this be true, fine. But if this be true, let us remember to always use verse 23 and verse three together, never verse three alone.
Let us look at verse 23: Christ is the head of the church, "which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all." (Quite often this verse is mis-read to say that Christ is the fulness of the church. But the verse says that the church is the fulness of Christ.) What does this mean?
"Fulness" is "pleroma" in the Greek. In his comments under "pleroma," Thayer refers to Eph, 1:23 and says the church is "that which is filled with the presence, power, agency, riches of God and of Christ."
Someone might say that if the church is filled with the presence, etc., of Christ, there would be no part of Christ anywhere but in the church. However, if we say that a certain reservoir is filled with water from the western Rocky Mountain watershed, can we conclude that there is no water from that same watershed anywhere else?
Thayer also gives, as a definition of "pleroma," "that which fills" or that "with which a thing is filled." If we accept this definition, Eph. 1:23 says that the church is that which fills Christ. What does this mean? Perhaps it means that without the church, Christ and his mission would be incomplete, for it was God's eternal plan that his scheme of redemption be realized and culminated in Christ and the church. (Eph. 3:10) At any rate, the statement that the church is that which fills Christ says nothing about what Christ does for those who are outside the church.
The only way that Eph. 1:23 can be made to furnish the evidence we need to be able to reverse three is for "fulness" to be interpreted as meaning that the church is all there is to Christ, that aside from the church Christ is nothing. But, first, this interpretation probably arises from a pre-disposition to believe that the verse should be so interpreted. Second, the scholars do not so interpret "fulness." And, third, if the church is all there is to Christ, what was the situation before the church was established?
But there is another phrase in Eph. 1:23 — Christ "filleth all in all." What does this mean? Does it mean the same as verse three, that Christ sheds a full measure of blessings upon his church? If so, we are right back where we started from and have the problem of trying to prove that Christ sheds his blessings only upon the church.
The conclusion is, then, that Eph. 1:23 does not furnish evidence that would allow us to reverse the statement in verse three.
For the sake of argument, let's grant that Eph. 1:3 can be reversed to say that all people who receive spiritual blessings of every kind are Christians. Actually, this can be proved simply by pointing out that there are some blessings one cannot partake of outside of Christ; the right to pray (1 Pet. 3:12), the right to partake of the Lord's Supper (Matt. 26:29), the continual cleansing by Christ's blood. (1 John 1:7) However, proving that if one is to receive spiritual blessings of every kind he must be in Christ is not disproving that some kinds of spiritual blessings can be received outside of Christ. The only way to disprove this is by the silence of the Scriptures.
This essay has not been an attempt to show that spiritual blessings can be found outside of Christ. Rather, it has been an attempt to show that Eph. 1:3 does not teach that one must be in Christ to receive spiritual blessings of every kind. It so happens that it is true that if one wants every kind of spiritual blessing he must be in Christ, but Eph. 1:3 does not teach it. It can be taught simply by pointing out those blessings to which only Christians have access. But even this does not prove that some kinds of spiritual blessings cannot be found outside of Christ. For this we must rely on the silence of the Scriptures.
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