Let us give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!: the opening words, “Blessed (be) the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” are exactly the same as in 2 Corinthians 1.3. The Greek passive adjective translated “blessed” is in the predicate position, and the meaning is either “God is blessed” or “God is to be blessed,” depending on whether the joining verb is thought to be the indicative or the imperative (or optative) of the verb “to be.” The Septuagint, a translation of the Old Testament into Greek, translates the Hebrew expression (for example, Psa 72.18) “God is to be praised, he is praiseworthy.” The “blessing” which people call upon God is in terms of praise and thanksgiving; the meaning, then, of the Greek “blessed be/is God” will be “Let us praise God” or “We praise God.”
In a number of languages the equivalent of “let us praise God” would be “we should praise God” or “it is only right that we praise God.” Since in some languages the equivalent of “praise” is really a form of direct address (praise always involves some type of communication of content), it may be necessary to translate “praise” as involving some appropriate content, for example, “let us say about God, He is wonderful.”
God is addressed as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; he is at the same time the Father of Jesus Christ (who is our Lord) and his God. The meaning is not the same as in Colossians 1.3, for example, which says “God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” in which the second element defines the first. In this passage there are two separate aspects, and this should be made clear in translation.
In some languages there is an acute problem involved in the coordinate phrase the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for this might be interpreted to refer to two different persons because of the conjunction “and.” Therefore it may be necessary to translate this expression as “to God, who is the God of our Lord Jesus and also his Father,” or “to God, who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and also the one he worships.”
The name Jesus Christ should be treated simply as a proper name in this context, but the term Lord should be translated in such a way as to indicate not only his authority but also something of his greatness. In some languages the closest equivalent is “our Chief.” In other languages “our Leader.” And in certain cases the closest equivalent is “the one who commands us” or “the one whom we all obey.”
In our union with Christ: this much-used phrase in the Pauline letters (literally “in Christ”) is generally taken to indicate the believer’s union with Christ (see Eph. 1.1). Here it states the condition existing for the blessing which God gives to the believer. This may be stated in many languages as a causal clause, for example, “because we are related to Christ” or “because we have become one with Christ.” It may be necessary to restructure so as to show clearly that God is the one who blesses, for example, “For as we are united with Christ, God has blessed us by giving us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly world.”
He has blessed us by giving us every spiritual blessing: the aorist participle of the Greek verb “to bless” is essentially timeless and need not be translated by the past tense of the verb; it can be taken to mean “who blesses” if it is understood that the present tense “blesses” is timeless and simply characterizes God as the one who blesses, without reference to any specific time.
God’s blessings are defined as “spiritual”; there may be an indirect reference here to the Holy Spirit, but most likely the adjective is used here to contrast with what would be called material or worldly benefits. Instead of every spiritual blessing the text can be taken to mean “every kind of spiritual blessing.” For discussion of spiritual blessing see the treatment of the section heading “Spiritual Blessings in Christ” (preceding verse 3).
In the heavenly world: the Greek phrase is found in Ephesians five times (1.3, 20; 2.6; 3.10; 6.12) and nowhere else in the New Testament. The adjective means “heavenly”; it can be used as a substantive, as in Philippians 2.10, “the heavenly beings,” and Hebrews 9.23, “the heavenly things.” In all occurrences of the word outside Ephesians (John 3.12; 1 Cor 15.40, 48-49; Phil 2.10; 2 Tim 4.18; Heb 3.1; 6.4; 8.5; 9.23; 11.17; 12.22) the meaning is clear, the reference being to heaven as God’s abode, as distinct from earth; but the matter is not so simple in Ephesians. In this letter the word “heaven” (literally “the heavens”) occurs four times: 1.10; 3.15 (in both passages it is contrasted with earth); 6.9 (“your Lord and theirs is in heaven”); and 4.10, where the phrase “above all the heavens” defines the phrase “in the height” in the quotation in 4.8 (see below). But the Greek phrase “in the heavenlies” cannot simply be equated with “heaven” as a place distinct from earth. It does have this meaning in 1.20 (where God and Christ dwell in power); in 2.6 the writer says that we have already been raised together with Christ and made to sit with him “in the heavenlies”; in 6.12 the “(evil) rulers and authorities” against which we now fight are “in the heavenlies” (as they are in 3.10). Briefly, the term is not an exact synonym for “heaven,” thought of as the place removed from the world, where God lives; it has a broader reference. It is the spiritual world, the timeless, supra-material realm where those spiritual events referred to take place. Westcott’s definition is: “the supra-mundane, supra-sensual, eternal order.” Barth speaks of it as “not defined by geographical limits but determined by the exertion of power … [which is] not limited to an intangible and invisible sphere but … exerts its influence upon life, history, and conduct on earth.” Good News Translation has the heavenly world; Moffatt “the heavenly sphere”; Goodspeed “the heavenly realm”; Translator’s New Testament “the supernatural world.” It seems advisable to use some word or phrase different from “heaven” or “the heavens.”
In some languages it may be possible to speak of “in the heavenlies” as being “in all that pertains to what is like heaven” or “to all which is like heaven here on earth” or “in everything which relates to heaven” or even “in everything which relates to God in heaven.”
There seems to be no difficulty in seeing how Good News Translation has rearranged the material in verse 3; Revised Standard Version seems equally clear except for its literal rendition “in Christ,” which can be taken in an instrumental sense, Christ being the means by which God has blessed us; this sense is possible (so German common language translation [Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch], Phillips), but it seems better to take it as Good News Translation has done (also Bible en français courant, Brazilian common language translation [Nova Tradução na Linguagem de Hoje], Barclay).
Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert C. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1982. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .