3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, 8 which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight 9 making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
11 In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, 12 so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.
The 'message' of the epistle begins in v 3 with a glorious doxology. The word 'blessed' here means 'Speak well of', and there is no doubt that Paul speaks well of God in these verses. We are to 'speak well' of Him because He has spoken well of us in Christ, and in the grace of the gospel, speaking peace to our needy hearts in the proclamation of forgiveness and newness of life. This doxology is not simply a rapturous expression of mere emotion, for it can hardly be unnoticed that these verses are full of deep theological and doctrinal truth; and it is surely what they contain that is the cause of the doxology. Nor should we miss the significance of this in relation to the situation in which those to whom Paul wrote were placed - the alien, pagan, spiritually bankrupt atmosphere of Ephesus, described so graphically in Acts 19, with its 'Diana' worship and its occultism. This in itself contains a message for us today. We are placed in a similar situation in our unchurched and indifferent world, fraught as it is with all sorts of problems and hazards - boredom, hopelessness, despair, futility - what one modern writer has called 'the implacable absurdity of the universe' and 'the idea of total uncertainty' - with all the fear and terror that this gives rise to in modern society and the consequent violence this engenders. This is the arena in which our witness and testimony must be made; and if there is anything that must surely be obvious, it is that in such a situation the church must have a faith worth passing on. But for this to be possible Christians need to be deeply taught in the Word, and it is this consciousness that lies behind Paul's solid doctrinal teaching in these verses.