Blessed Be the God and Father
Ephesians 1:3—14
Blessed Be the God and Father
The Blessing That Names Its God
One God blessing His people through His Messiah, sealed by His Spirit
--- The Standing Stone ---
Behind “LORD” in your Bible lies a hidden name --- in the Hebrew it is Yahuah Psalm 83:18**; Yahuah is the Father** Isaiah 63:16**; Yahuah is the only God, beside Him there is no other** Isaiah 45:5**; therefore Yahuah the Father is the only true God, leaving no room for a second or third person** 1 Corinthians 8:6**.**
1 --- The Argument Laid Out
Ephesians opens with a flood of praise. In the King James it runs as one long, unbroken sentence from verse 3 to verse 14 --- a single breath of blessing. Many readers are taught to break that breath into three pieces. The Father chooses and adopts (verses 3—6). The Son redeems by His blood (verses 7—12). The Spirit seals and guarantees (verses 13—14). Each piece, they point out, ends with the same words: “to the praise of his glory.” Three works, three persons, each one praised. The passage is offered as a snapshot of a three-person Godhead, set right at the front door of the letter.
It is a tidy reading. It is also a reading the sentence itself takes apart --- and it does so in its very first line.
2 --- The First Line Sets the Rank
Before any of the three “panels” begins, Paul names the One he is blessing --- and he does it with an act every Hebrew would recognize.
Ephesians 1:3
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:
Start with the first two words: “Blessed be.” Paul was a Hebrew, raised on the Scriptures, and this is the old Hebrew blessing --- the berakah that opens “Blessed be Yahuah.” The word underneath “bless” is barak.
בָרַךְ
barak
to kneel, to bless --- to bow the knee in homage
At its root, barak means to kneel. To bless Yahuah is to bend the knee to Him --- the posture of a servant bowing before his God. And in all of Scripture that knee bends one direction. We are told to kneel before Yahuah our Maker Psalm 95:6; the blessing is always sent upward to the Father, never sideways to an equal.
So watch where Paul bends the knee. He bows in blessing to “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The very act of homage names its object. Paul calls Yahuah the God of Yahushua. Not only His Father --- His God. The Messiah has a God, and that God is the Father, the One before whom the knee is bent.
This one phrase decides the whole question before the argument can even begin. Two beings who are equally and identically God cannot stand in this relationship. The Father is never said to have a God above Him. Yahushua is. If the two were one co-equal Being, the words “the God of our Lord” would be empty. They are not empty --- Paul means them, and he says them again a few verses on, calling Yahuah “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ” Ephesians 1:17. The Father is the God of the Messiah. That is where the chapter starts, and nothing that follows walks it back.
3 --- “In Him”: the Messiah Is the Place, Not the Source
Now follow the single word that holds the whole sentence together. Over and over, Paul says the blessing comes “in Christ,” “in him,” “in the beloved.”
ἐν Χριστῷ
en Christō
in Christ --- the sphere in which a thing is done
Count the moves. We are blessed “in Christ” (verse 3). We were chosen “in him” (verse 4). We are accepted “in the beloved” (verse 6). We have redemption “in whom” (verse 7). All things are gathered together “in him” (verse 10). We obtained an inheritance “in whom” (verse 11). We were sealed “in whom” (verse 13).
Every saving act happens in the Messiah. But notice who performs the act. It is always the Father. He blessed us. He chose us. He predestinated us. He made us accepted. He made known the mystery of His will. The Father is the One doing; the Messiah is the One in whom it is done.
There is a world of difference between the worker and the workshop. To say a thing was done “in Christ” is to name the Messiah as the place, the means, the appointed center of Yahuah’s plan --- not as a second worker standing beside the Father. Paul even spells out the direction: the Father predestinated us “by Jesus Christ to himself” (verse 5). By the Son, to the Father. The arrow runs one way.
This also answers a smaller claim --- that being “chosen in him before the foundation of the world” (verse 4) proves the Messiah was a co-equal partner from eternity. Read it again. The Father chose; He chose us in His Messiah. Yahushua is the One at the heart of the plan Yahuah laid before the world began. That makes him the center of the Father’s purpose. It does not make him a second God doing the choosing.
4 --- The Spirit Is a Seal and a Down-Payment
The third “panel” is supposed to introduce a third person. Read what it actually introduces.
Ephesians 1:13—14
…ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.
The Spirit here is described by what it does: it seals, and it is the “earnest.” That old English word translates a plain Greek term straight out of the marketplace.
ἀρραβών
arrabōn
a pledge, a deposit --- the down-payment that guarantees the rest
Here is what an earnest is, in everyday terms. Picture buying a house. You do not hand over the whole price the day you agree on it. You put money down --- a real, binding deposit that proves you are serious and guarantees the rest is coming. Then, later, comes the closing day, when the full price is paid and the keys finally change hands. The deposit is the promise; the closing is the payment in full.
That is exactly the picture Paul draws, and the verse tells you the timing on both ends. The deposit is given now: “after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise.” The moment a person trusts the Messiah, Yahuah lays down His deposit --- His own Spirit. That is the down-payment, and the believer holds it from the day he believes.
And it is given “until the redemption of the purchased possession” --- that is the closing day, still to come. Paul names it plainly later in the same letter: the believer is sealed “unto the day of redemption” Ephesians 4:30. That day is the resurrection, when the promise is paid in full and the inheritance is handed over at last --- what Paul elsewhere calls the redemption of our body Romans 8:23. So the Spirit you carry now is the pledge that the rest is surely coming.
Lay the contract out and it is simple. Yahuah promises an inheritance. The deposit is His Spirit, given the moment you believe. The full payment is the inheritance itself, received on the day of redemption. The deposit you hold today is His guarantee that He will finish what He started.
And that settles the question before us. In this picture the Spirit is the deposit Yahuah lays down --- and a deposit is something the buyer hands over, not a third party to the deal. It is the guarantee the one God puts forward to secure what He has promised. The third panel does not add a co-equal person to be praised. A down-payment is a thing handed over, not a person standing beside the giver.
5 --- “To the Praise of His Glory” --- Whose Glory?
That leaves the refrain the three-person reading leans on: “to the praise of his glory,” repeated three times (verses 6, 12, 14). The claim is that each “his” points to a different person.
But trace the “his.” Through the entire sentence there is one actor whose will, purpose, and good pleasure drive every line. He blessed, He chose, He predestinated “according to the good pleasure of his will” (verse 5), He made known “the mystery of his will” (verse 9), He works all things “after the counsel of his own will” (verse 11). The glory being praised is the glory of the One whose plan this is --- the Father. The blessing is His. The Messiah is the One through whom it comes. The Spirit is the seal He gives. And the praise returns to Him.
One subject runs from the first word to the last. The sentence never breaks into three. We are the ones who broke it.
Conclusion
The Verdict
Paul could have opened his letter any way he wished. He opened it by bending the knee --- the old Hebrew barak --- and he bent it to Yahuah, whom he calls in the same breath the God of his own Master. A man does not kneel to a committee. He blesses the one God, names the Messiah as the One through whom every gift arrives, and names the Spirit as the deposit that guarantees it.
The grandest sentence in the letter is not a portrait of three persons. It is the praise of one God, the Father, by a people He has blessed in His Son.
The Father is the God of Yahushua --- so the blessing of Ephesians is the work of one God, poured out through His Messiah and sealed by His Spirit.