Obviously, this is most unBiblical. The Bible presents God as a personal God. That is, that God is not a force, not an idea, and not a mechanism. Rather, he is a being. He has personality, self consciousness, will, and all of the other attributes of personhood. In fact, it is really improper to try and define God in terms of our personhood. In reality, it is the other way around. We are persons because we are like he is, being created in his image. Verse three, along with a host of other passages in the Scripture, underscores the personal nature of God in an almost casual manner.

Paul says " Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us...". The "Who" refers, of course, to God the Father. It is he who has blessed us. And impersonal force cannot actively bless us, it can at best only be a blessing. From the very beginning, Genesis 1: 1, the Bible assumes both the existence and the personality of God. He is a being who lives, and who is active in his creation. As such, he should be treated as a person, and not just a person, but a personal God.

I think one of the things that Christians have such a difficult time with his an offshoot of this very idea. That God, though invisible, is a real person and is present with us in virtually every real sense (except physicality) is a difficult concept to grasp. I believe we tend to conceive of God in an almost "Stoic" fashion. The Stoics were a group of philosophers alive around the time of Christ. Actually, the philosophy of the Stoics was quite pervasive at that time, especially in the Roman Empire. They believed that the chief attribute of a gods was an apathy toward creation. They understood the gods to be aloof from the material world and to treasure that aloofness more than any other thing.

Now, while I’m certain that the vast majority of Christians think very differently than the Stoics, I do think we can see some similarities in their conception of that which they cannot see. In short, I believe that we easily lose our sense of the presence of God as a person in our daily lives. The Bible teaches, and Paul teaches here in Ephesians, that God is a person. This personal God is involved with his creation.

Further, this personal God is not involved only in the "major" aspects of creation. He is not simply overseeing the flow of history, controlling the weather or, causing or preventing disasters, or other such "major" things.

Paul tells us that this blessed God is involved in blessing his creatures. From the rest of the Scriptures we know that this blessing takes place on two levels. First, there is a very real sense in which God extends grace and blessing to all of mankind regardless of their spiritual condition. This is sometimes called "common grace". You and I, as redeemed people, have shared in this extension of blessing or common grace.

A second way that God has blessed us is with regard to our standing in Christ. This, in turn, can be divided into two kinds of blessing. First, of course, would be the tremendous blessing of salvation itself. That God extended his grace to us, "while we were yet sinners" and welcomed us into his family is perhaps the greatest blessing of all! However, God did not stop even at such a great blessing. The blessing of God extends to the provision he has made for our Christian lives. We will consider in a moment just what that general provision of God entails.