Shall Christians bless others - or not?

In the Old Testament people blessed other people, or God blessed other people, or people even blessed God in Gen. 24/27 for example.
Many scriptures of the Old Testament say that Abraham and all his off-springs will be blessed (e.g. in Gen. 12/3), it is both a fact and a promise, because what
we finally received by Jesus' death and resurrection is our salvation, is our
blessing out of grace Gal 3/14 and Gal 3/9.,

As far as I know there are only 2 scriptures in the New Testament that tell about blessing others:
1) Adults blessing adults in Matt. 5/44 where we shall bless those who curse us (probably as they are yet not blessed..)
2) adults blessing children in Marc 10/16 where Jesus blessed little children (and did not baptize them, as still some might think)
The story of Melchisedec blessing Abraham mentioned in the New Testament is only a reflection on what was told in the Old Testament.

Besides that, there are lots of well-wishes from apostle to apostle, from holy to holy one, but no blessings.

We all mostly end our e-mails, mail, encounters with a "God bless you", in all countries and languages - but is it biblical?

Eph 1/3
Blessed be the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in
heavenly places in Christ:

Tags: Abraham, Christian, God, Jesus, New, Old, Testament, biblical, bless, blessed, More…blessing

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Permalink Reply by Astrid on September 30, 2010 at 11:03am

Thank you, Tammy, for all your work, especially while being under headaches..
And I must admit - no, it did not help really, sorry...

Your scriptures mentioned are from the OT, where everybody still hasnt been blessed by Jesus.
Maybe I can give another example to make it more precise:

Are we, who are new-born and redeemed, not 100% blessed? - Yes, we are, according to the above mentioned scritpures and many more.
Why do we still bless others? - Because we want to do somebody something good, want to add more to what that person is/has etc..
But how can what we received from God/Jesus be insufficient, so that we little humans think that we should better add something to it?
or : If you would meet a king, would you go and bless him to become a king?
(.. but I still think that we can speak blessings on our kids, our foods, our "enemies" etc..)

So, why do we have this habit of blessing others?
There must be a difference between blessings and well-wishes, as wishes are from our own flesh, but blessings are from God, sometimes spoken through us. But if He already did everything, so why?

We love to do good positive things to others, and are called to do so, so why we just dont say positive things, like reminding us of the blessings we already do have?

I must admit, too, that I also do/did bless and liked to receive blessings... because it feels so good.. but we shall not go according to our feelings, right?

It certainly does not harm anybody, but dont we just like to stay helpless babys, spiritual children somehow, instead of starting to grow, or to show what we can walk on our own, or what we have or who we are in Christ?

Just my thoughts...