Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:
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Ambrosiaster
AD 400
He means not with an earthly but a heavenly blessing, not corruptible but eternal, because Christ’s glory is not in earth but in heaven and in Christ. For every gift of God’s grace is in Christ. If someone who despises Christ imagines that he is blessed by God, he is wrong. Yet God is blessed in one way, humans in another. There is indeed one term blessing, but it should be understood as is proper to the recipient…. God is blessed when he is extolled with due praises, but the way in which God blesses human beings is to impart to them the gift of his grace, not according to their merits but according to his mercy. –.
With all spiritual blessings in heavenly places: literally, in heavenlies, or celestials, which some expound and translate, in heavenly things; but this being expressed just before by spiritual blessings, it rather seems to be understood of the glory prepared for us in heaven, or in the heavenly mansions; in which sense it seems to me, according to the interpretation both of St. Jerome and of St. Chrysostom in their commentaries on these words. Estius takes notice that the same expression, in the celestials, is used five times in this epistle, and in all of them signifies places above us. (Witham)
Blessed be the God, who, through his Son Jesus Christ, made man, hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings and gifts; and by his grace, infused into our souls, has given us a title to a happy eternity in heaven. (Witham)
In heavenly things; (in coelestibus) i.e. all spiritual blessings for heaven, or for eternity. This is the object of all the blessings we receive from God; and we ought, according to the first intention of them, to refer them all to eternal or heavenly beatitude. St. Paul distinguishes the blessings which we receive in Jesus Christ from those bestowed upon the Jews, which were temporal and limited to this earth. (Calmet; Challoner)
Since God reveals himself to be blessed in spiritual and heavenly things, it is not amid these earthly and corporeal things that one should look for that perfect blessedness of the saints. Treatise on Psalm , chapter
Now God has blessed us not with this or that blessing but with every blessing. It is not as though we all obtain them all at once, but singly we obtain particular ones in due time or some of the whole number. Thereby we possess their fullness through these singular blessings. He speaks not only of earthly blessings but of spiritual— there are indeed earthly blessings, as when someone has children, affluence in riches, the pleasure of honor and health…. But spiritual blessings are in the heavens because the earth is too small to circumscribe a spiritual blessing. .
Now the phrase “blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” is to be read in a double sense. It first means that God is blessed as the maker of all things, this being the main clause. To this is then added “who is also the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” It means that both God and Father are to be referred in common to our Lord. Blessed is the God of the man who has been assumed and the father of him who was the Word of God with God in the beginning! Not that the assumed one is other than the Word who assumed him, but that he who is one and the same is spoken of now by sublime and now by humble titles, according to what circumstances demand. .
* Blessed be the God, he says, and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Observe; The God of Him that was Incarnate. And though you will not, The Father of God the Word.
* Who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
He is here alluding to the blessings of the Jews ; for that was blessing also, but it was not spiritual blessing. For how did it run? The Lord bless you, He will bless the fruit of your body; Deuteronomy 7:13 and He will bless your going out and your coming in. Deuteronomy 28:4 But here it is not thus, but how? With every spiritual blessing. And what do you lack yet? You are made immortal, you are made free, you are made a son, you are made righteous, you are made a brother, you are made a fellow-heir, you reign with Christ, you are glorified with Christ; all things are freely given you. How, says he, shall He not also with Him freely give us all things? Romans 8:32 Your First-fruits is adored by Angels, by the Cherubim, by the Ser...
He has thus, it is declared, blessed us; it is a gift from God, it is our holy and spiritual redemption. And this redemption is not of this earth; nor is it of the flesh, but eternal from the heavenly place of our Lord. "...
