exchanged living.

Are You Living A Blessed Life?

Blessing. This term has huge currency in our world, in the church, in Scripture, even in my own vocabulary. In a generic sense, someone who is blessed is usually seen as someone who has (as opposed to someone who doesn’t have). I saw an interview yesterday with Jamie Foxx where he talks about how blessed he is to work with Quentin Tarrantino and Leo DaCaprio.

Blessed=to have, in his case, an amazing opportunity to make a movie.

Most of the time Christians see blessings as gifts from God. We acknowledge with Scripture that God is the giver of all good things (James 1:17), and in calling someone blessed, we credit God as the gracious provider of what we see as good in their (or our) life.

Blessed=to have. 

The root word in the OT is barak (yes, like our president), and it has interesting overtones in its meaning. In some contexts, the word can mean to make fertile. God blessed both the creatures of the world and the man and woman in the garden when he commands them to be fruitful and multiply (Gen 1:22, 28). In other contexts, blessing is synonymous with empowering someone for a specific purpose, like God’s blessing of Abraham to make his name great that he may be a blessing (Gen 12:2). Every covenant made between God and man has blessing as an accompanying promise- when God enters relationship with man, blessing results. Blessing is part of the divine grace and love of God; it is life-giving and empowering, and more than material things, it is the direct result of God’s covenant loyalty and mercy towards his people.

Blessed=in relationship with a gracious God.

This is why I was floored reading Peter’s sermon in Acts 3 this morning. He concludes with this:

“God, having raised up his servant (Jesus), sent him to you first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness.” Acts 3:26 (ESV)

Blessed by Jesus=turned away from our own wickedness by Him. 

As Peter preached to his Jewish brothers and sisters, he reframed God’s intentions in sending Christ. Christ was sent to bless his people, but not simply by making them people who had good things, or even as people who has a relationship with a gracious God. Christ wanted to bless them (to empower them, or to make them life-givingly able) to leave their wickedness behind.

When Christ turns us away from our wickedness, we are blessed. The aim of the sending of Christ by God was to enable us to live a blessed life, and such a life is impossible when we are fully engaged in our own wickedness. But do we want this kind of blessing?

Do we want a blessed life as Jesus defines it, one where we welcome his grace to turn us away from our destructive sinfulness? Or would we rather just be people that “have”? 

That’s what I’m wrestling with today.