What we do need is a covenant with someone who is at a higher state than us, if we want to move to a higher level of living. It takes a covenant with Almighty God to reach our wealthy place in life, to be free of sin and its effects, to be born again and have the very Anointing of God abiding within us.
So, here, in Ephesians 1, we find that to bless, or to empower to prosper, is a covenant term. It is “to excel in something desirable,” or “go to the highest place.”
Actually, the Hebrew word for prosperity means “peace, wholeness, nothing missing, nothing broken”—prosperity is far more than just having a lot of money. When God prospers or blesses us, He empowers us to excel to the highest place in everything desirable, which is what He did by choosing us in the Anointed One, Jesus, before the foundation of the world.
See Yourself as God Does
When God decided to have a family, He counted the cost, came up with a plan and then made a promise. The Apostle Paul gives us some insight into that promise.
“Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God’s elect, and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness; in hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began” (Titus 1:1-2).
Before the world began, God—who cannot lie—promised us eternal life. He promised it before Adam was ever created. He promised it before sin ever existed. Consequently, God’s promise of eternal life was not a reaction to our sin.
When we cried out to Jesus to be our LORD and Savior, God was not looking down from heaven and seeing a messed up, bummed out, no-good piece of trash. That may be how we saw ourselves, but that’s not what God was seeing. To begin with, that’s not the first time He saw us.
In Ephesians 2:10 we read that we are God’s own handiwork, re-created in the Anointed Jesus by His Anointing. God actually saw us the first time before the foundation of the world—not the day we were born into this earth. Before sin occurred, before a human was ever known, God saw us as wonderful, perfect, whole, sound, complete…in the Anointed Jesus. Think about that for a while and it will get rid of all the condemnation in your life.
So, we have a “hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began,” and nothing can possibly stop it. Not satan. Not any force of darkness.
Describing this promise and its workings even further, Hebrews 4:1-3 says:
"Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world."
We were chosen in the Anointed Jesus, promised eternal life, and all the “works” were finished before the foundation of the world. These “works” included all that God did to secure our wealthy place in Him.
First, God had to ordain Jesus. “But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you” (1 Peter 1:19-20).
To ordain means to “separate,” or “set apart.” Before the foundation of the world, God set Jesus apart to become a man. Then He gave Jesus a predestined path to take and a predestined work to do.
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26 : BVOV
