Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Blessed
All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ.
—Ephesians 1:3
The word "blessed" is a wonderful word. Christians use the words "blessed" and "blessing" a lot, and most of the time we mean it. There are times when we use it as an expression to terminate a conversation that is going too long. We will say something to the effect of, "Well, that's great. Wow. Hey, praise the Lord and God bless you." This can be translated, "Please stop talking now." That, of course, is not the proper way to use it.
"Blessed" is a Christian word. It is a spiritual word. It is a biblical word. And it has been hijacked by our culture. People may talk about "blessings" in their lives, but the nonbeliever has no idea what a real blessing is, because only the child of God truly knows what it is to be blessed. It is also worth noting that Jesus both began and concluded His earthly ministry blessing people.
So what does it mean to be blessed? The word "blessed" Jesus used in the Sermon on the Mount is from the Greek word makarios, which means to be happy or blissful, but it also means a self-contained happiness. The Greeks called the Island of Cypress "the happy isle." They believed that because of its geographical location, perfect climate, and fertile soil that anyone who lived on Cypress had it made in the shade. And the term they associated with the island was makarios. They believed everything you needed to be happy was right there on Cypress.
We can't all move to Cypress, but the idea is that our happiness is independent of our circumstances. It is self-contained, meaning that regardless of what is happening to us externally, we can be truly happy internally. We can be genuinely blessed as followers of Jesus Christ.
Copyright © 2010 by Harvest Ministries. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
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