-Yes, God, our God, blesses us (Psalms 67.6-7). This is what He does. He cannot help Himself in fact. From the very beginning, He began blessing His creation - Genesis 1.22, 1.28, 2.3, 5.2, 9.1, 12.2-3. And so we glimpse the dance of creation. God, the God Who blesses, blesses His people, who bless Him in return and bless others. He asks us to the dance, dresses us up, takes the lead, and when we get in step with Him two things happen. We get caught up and lose ourselves in the rapturous joy of the dance, returning joyous worship to Him. And then all eyes are on Him, the blessing, blessed God.
-There are two words in the Greek (as well as Hebrew) which are translated by the same English word, bless. eulogétos, which corresponds to the Hebrew word, barakh, and then makarios, which is equivalent to the Hebrew asher. The latter means happy, a state of “blessedness” for having received or done or not done something - but it is not in play here. The former, when directed towards man, means to endue with (or invoke) power for abundant and effective living, for success, prosperity, fruitfulness, longevity, etc (cf Genesis 24.60, 27.27-29, 31.55 49.28), with God being the ultimate source of any and all blessing. It is commonly paired with the antithetical curse (Genesis 12.3, 27.12; Numbers 22.6, 24.9; Deuteronomy 11.26, 30.1, 30.19; Psalms 37.22, 62.4, 109.28 Proverbs 3.33; Jeremiah 20.14; Zechariah 8.13; Malachi 2.2; Luke 6.28; Romans 12.14; James 3.9 - a person or land or nation thus cursed would be deprived of the power or resources needed for success). But when people direct blessing towards the Lord, clearly we are not adding to His power. The word becomes a formalized means of expressing thanks and praise to the One Who has blessed and given out of His abundance. The actual concrete meaning of the word in Hebrew is to kneel (Genesis 24.11), which would be the common posture of someone who is either receiving a blessing from God (or a superior), or perhaps returning a blessing to Him.
-And so we arrive at a better understanding of this two directional blessing Paul gives us here. We are blessing God, returning thanks and praise to Him, this One Who has given us out of His abundance everything we might ever need for spiritual success, all the spiritual resources and power necessary in order to be fruitful and multiply our faith, in order to love Him with all our heart and soul and to love our neighbors as ourselves. And because this transaction takes place in the heavenlies, we are talking about resources which generally we cannot physically touch or feel and which may in fact not be confined to this time or space. It encompasses something like prayer, in which we can participate in seeing God’s power unleashed in both the present and the future and in places where we are unable to travel - whether the other side of the world or the other side of the street and into people’s hearts. But much more than that - we cannot name one single blessing, one single necessary spiritual resource that God has withheld from any one of His people. He has given us every single one of them. That right there is enough to put us on shouting ground. But really, how is it possible to even begin to wrap our arms around that? Thus we get our first glimpse of the mind-blowing nature of our relationship with God that Paul unpacks in this letter. Get ready...
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