Everything Begins with God

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—contains five wonderful truths about true spiritual riches: the Source (“God and Father”), the Recipients (“us”), the Content (“spiritual”) the Location (“in the heavenlies”), and the Means (“in Christ”). This verse is, in fact, Paul’s primary concern in verses 3-14; everything else in the passage flows from that premise and supports it.

The first and most important thought this should impress upon us is that everything begins with God. Ephesians presents doctrine for doctrine’s sake; it expresses the basic doctrines of Christianity in language unequalled anywhere else. So where does Paul start? He starts with God.

We cannot emphasize this strongly enough, for it is the very opposite of what we see in the vast majority of the Church today, where everything begins and ends with man. We are totally man centered in our theology, worship, and evangelism. We want to talk about our experience and our needs instead of who God is and what He alone has done in Christ. But the only way we will ever discover, view, and understand truth is to begin with God. Why is truth relative in our day? Why can man not find answers to life’s questions? Because man does not begin with God. If you start with a subjective premise, you can only arrive at a subjective conclusion. We must start with the absolutes of God and His Word.

To say this in another way, while it’s quite true that Paul lists the riches and blessings that God gives us in Christ, that is only secondary to the fact that he first insists that we begin with God.

We can easily illustrate this by thinking about if we tried to barge into the oval office at the White House insisting that the President hear us and give us what we demand. “After all,” we would argue, “I’m an American; I pay my taxes; I have a right to talk to my president.” Well, assuming we made it past the Secret Service, such an approach would be utterly disrespectful and unconscionable. Yet, that is exactly what we do with God. We barge into His Throne Room and demand blessing. How blasphemous that is! Paul, therefore, insists that we first approach Him for Who He is.

This leads us to a second thought that should be impressed upon us, namely the importance of doctrine. As the late pastor and expositor Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes: “The most foolish of all Christians are those who dislike and decry the importance of Theology and teaching. Does not that explain why they fail in practice?”

Why are many Christians weak and shallow? Why do many fall to any new trend that comes along? Why do many fail to discern false teaching? Why do many fail to be consistent and faithful? Why do many fall to temptation? Why do many collapse when someone challenges their faith? Because they do not know doctrine—they are not being taught doctrine by their pastors; they are not being taught that God’s Word alone is Truth. People are being taught that truth is relative and can be found in many other places. And that is why they fail.

As we’ve mentioned before, the first half of this Epistle (as most of Paul’s Epistles) deals with doctrine and the second half deals with practice. Why?—because without right doctrine we will not have right practice. No matter what the issue, the question, or the problem, there is a doctrinal principle in God’s Word to answer it. This fact is at the very heart of the doctrine of the Authority and Sufficiency of Scripture. To deny it is to deny it is to deny Scripture Itself.

So Paul begins his doctrinal thesis by praising God. He starts with God.