called upon to trust, and to whom we are to look as the source of all good, is not the absolute Jehovah, nor the God who stood in a special relation to the Israel- ites; but the God of redemption ; the God whom the Lord Jesus revealed, whose will he came to accom- plish, and who was his Father. It is this relationship which is the ground of our confidence. It is because God has sent the Lord Jesus into the world, because He spared not his own Son, that he is our God and Father, or that we have access to him as such.
It is this reconciled God, the God of the covenant of grace, ὁ εὐλογήσας ἡμᾶς ἐν πάσῃ εὐλογίᾳ πνευματικῇ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings. 'The past tense, hath blessed, is used because the apostle contemplates his readers as actually redeemed, and in present possession of the unspeakable blessings which Christ has procured. These blessings are spiritual not merely because they pertain to the soul, but because derived from the Holy Spirit, whose presence and in- fluence are the great blessing purchased by Christ.
“Tn heavenly places.” The words ἐν τοῖς ἐπου- ρανίοις may be rendered either 7m or with heavenly things, or in heavenly places, i.e. in heaven. If the former method be adopted the sense is, ‘ Hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings, i. e. with heavenly things.’ The words however occur five times in this epistle and always elsewhere in a local sense. See γ. 20. 2, 6. 8,10. 6,12, which therefore should be preferred here. They are to be connected with the immediately preceding word, ‘ Blessings in heaven.’
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