Blessed to Be a Blessing: Blessed
April 24, 2016
Today we are taking a detour from the story of God for a few weeks so we might get a better handle on what it means to be blessed, and what it looks like for us to be a blessing. And to begin with we are going to look at what it means to be blessed by God. For being blessed by God is core to understanding who we are as God’s people. It’s core to understanding our new nature, our identity. For if we are to be a blessing to others, we must first grasp what it means to be blessed. In other words, our being must come before our doing.
So what does it mean to be blessed of God? Our Being Blessed begins with God. Blessing means to benefit, to prosper or to give contentment. Blessing someone means doing good to them. In Old English, the word bless came from a term meaning, “to add strength to another’s arm.” So you could say that when God blessed us He gave us a new kind of strength: Spiritual strength. He gave us the best possible strength possible. How? By uniting us with the resurrected and living Savior, Jesus Christ.
And that’s our first blessing: 1. We’ve been blessed with His life! Our first blessing is that God gave us new life. God made us alive in Christ. We who were spiritually dead; we who had no capacity to know God, love God or obey God… we who had no desire to seek God or to rescue ourselves from spiritual death, we became the objects of God’s mercy. Rather than condemn us and leave us in our sins; God gave us new life – the resurrected life of Jesus Christ by uniting us with Him when we believed.
In this sense, God re-created our lives. Ephesians 2:10 says, For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. We were created in Christ, made new in Christ, to do the good things God had planned for us to do. Do you see the good news of the gospel here? This is another way of saying: we’ve been blessed to be a blessing. This has always been God’s plan for His people. He says it a little differently in his letter to the Corinthians: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is gone and the new has come.” 2 Corinthians 5:17
Let that sink in. If you have been united in Christ by faith, His life is ALIVE in you. You are no longer a slave to sin. Death has no hold on you. You have eternal life now, not in some time off in the future, because the eternal risen Christ is alive in you. And the more this truth takes hold of you, the more you will begin to see… your potential to be a blessing. WITH HIS LIFE IN YOU, you will be able to live and love like Jesus. This is what it means to be blessed! And once you have His life, this is just the beginning. God has given us so much in Jesus. Which leads us to the second blessing:
2. We’ve Been Blessed with His Identity In Ephesians 1:5 God declares we are His children: In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ. God didn’t just want you to have Christ’s life. He wanted to bring you into an intimate relationship with Him. So He devised a plan before time began to insure you would make it to your destination. What’s your destination? A relationship with the very God who created you!
That’s what this word “predestined” means. It means to plan beforehand to insure you get to our destination. His plan was devised in love. And His plan insured that we would be with Him forever. Long ago God, the Father, decided He was going to adopt us – to make us His very own! That’s our destination. God planned not only give us the life of Jesus but planned to give us His identity as well, by adopting us.
This is what it means to be blessed: The moment you put your faith in Jesus Christ, you’re adoption as His child is final. You now belong to God. And you have every right and privilege as a Son or Daughter of God. This is your new identity. This is who you really are. You are God’s very own child through your faith in Christ. You are fully and COMPLETELY ACCEPTED just as you are by the Almighty God of the Universe. You are now the beloved in Christ.
Now, let that truth sink in. You are fully accepted in Christ. And when you begin to realize that God planned this for you, it does something to you: It makes you feel safe and secure. When you are accepted in this way it builds your confidence. It frees you to be yourself. You don’t have to jump through hoops for God to love you. You’re already fully loved with no-strings attached. You are now the beloved in Christ.
God doesn’t care if you were a janitor or a CEO. He doesn’t love you for your achievements. He loves you because you are His Child… That’s what it means to be blessed. No longer is your identity based on what you possess or who you know. God doesn’t see you the way the world sees you. God doesn’t keep a score sheet on how good a parent you are or how great a spouse you might be. He’s simply crazy about you because He’s always been crazy about you. Your old identity isn’t the real you. The real you in God’s eyes is that you are His beloved. That’s what it means to be blessed! And this blessing reminds us of a third blessing:
3. We’ve Been Blessed with His Forgiveness Look now at verses 7 and 8 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. To be forgiven of our sins is an incredible blessing. The bad news is that there is literally nothing you or I can do to remove our sins. You can try to be a good person, but YOU CAN NEVER BE GOOD ENOUGH to undue the hurtful, selfish, wrong things you’ve done. Have you ever uttered a harsh or unloving word to your spouse? Once it’s out there, you can’t reel it back in. The damage is done. But here’s the good news. When God redeemed you with the blood of Jesus, GOD WIPED AWAY EVERY SIN. He literally set us free from the penalty and punishment that our sins deserve.
This is what it means to be blessed: In Christ, you stand forgiven. There is now no record of your sin. The blood of Jesus cleared your account, once for all and forever. God no longer holds anything against you. Your record of sin has been removed and released. Every sin, even your worst sin has been paid for by the shed blood of Jesus. This is God’s extravagant grace that HE lavished upon us in Jesus!
And now, because you are forgiven you no longer have to live in guilt. Your heart is clean. Christ has taken away every sin, every stain, every hurtful and shameful thing you have ever done. He has set you free from guilt & shame.
Because you are forgiven you no longer have to live in fear. You no longer have to fear judgment. Christ’s forgiveness tells you that God is for you, not against you. You are no longer under law, but under grace.
Because you are forgiven you no longer have to be defined by your past. Your sin does not define you. Your past is a thing of the past. God’s forgiveness gives you a do over! You are now free to run in God’s future for you. That’s what it means to be blessed! And this blessing leads to our final blessing:
4. We’ve Been Blessed with His Family Look with me now at Ephesians 2:19-20… Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. Here we see the beauty of being blessed to be a blessing: Here is where the “we”comes in. We’ve been blessed by God because WE are no longer alone. We are now part of God’s household. We belong to His family.
The truth is, that once you put your faith in Jesus, Jesus Christ himself connects you with every other believer in His Church. The Church is the ultimate family unit – family as it ought to be: A household of faith where family members know each other, care for each other, are committed to each other and sustain each other. The implications for us are many. Here are a couple:
First, In God’s Household, every person belongs and every person is significant. There are no second-class citizens and no lone rangers. EVERYONE IS WANTED AND NEEDED. Everyone has a role to play and everyone has a gift to share. As the Divine Craftsman, Jesus fits us into His household: Every one of us is precisely cut to fit snugly, strongly, and beautifully with every other part. Nothing is out of place, defective, misshapen or inappropriate. Because it is Christ’s building, the church is perfect, spotless, without defect of blemish. And what this means is incredible: There are no misfits in His family! Every misfit actually does fit in with Jesus! That’s what it means to be blessed.
The second implication is this: In God’s Household, we are meant to do life together: Jesus fit us together, to belong to one another, so we could love and serve one another. For far too long, too many Christ followers have looked at the Christian life as an individual relationship with God, a private religion that’s based on praying a prayer of faith. Once you’ve prayed that prayer… you’re in; you’ve punched your ticket to heaven. But that’s not the way God designed your new life in Christ to be. No, God sent Jesus to die for you so you’d have a new life in Him with others in His body, the Church. The Church is the new community of God’s people who don’t just belong to him, but belong to one another. Listen to how Paul describes this new community in Romans 12:4 & 5: For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.
There are no lone rangers in God’s family. We need each other, just like a body needs ligaments, muscles, joints, knees and noses. Look at the person in front of you, beside you, behind you. You need them and they need you. This is what it means to be blessed.
God has given you brothers and sisters, so you can share their burdens, and they can share yours. God has given you brothers and sisters so you can pray for their needs, and they can pray for yours. God has given you brothers and sisters so you can encourage and support them, and they can encourage and support you. This is how God has designed us to be blessed. As Paul writes in Ephesians 4:16. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. This is how God has designed us to be blessed.
So here’s where we stand: God has blessed us to be a blessing. But before we can truly be a blessing, we must experience what it means to be blessed by Him. That is what the gospel is all about. It’s about God pouring out the abundance of riches found in Christ… TO US. It’s about God giving us so much more than we deserve. It’s about God giving you a new life in Christ. The risen Christ to live in you. It’s about God giving you a new identity in Christ. Adopting you to be His Beloved! It’s about God giving you a new standing in Christ. Making you forgiven and free! And… It’s about God giving you a new family in Christ. Giving us a new community that you can be part of and do your part to be a blessing.
So let me ask you… Have you been blessed by God? Have you received God’s gift of new life? Romans 6:23 says, For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Do you see yourself as God’s sees you… as His beloved? Have your received the forgiveness Jesus gives?Are you ready to connect with others and learn to be His family?