A Christian Worldview from Silicon Valley

In my message yesterday morning I read Ephesians 1.1-14. That is a powerful section of scripture, filled with wonderful statements of blessing and praise, and so it would be easy to overlook verse 2. This verse, which is part of the salutation of Paul to his readers, says simply, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” (By the way, he uses exactly the same greeting in Philippians, a letter he wrote at essentially the same time as Ephesians!)

“Grace and peace” is a Christian greeting that follows the two forms of salutation used by Greeks and Hebrews in their letters, but it raises them to a new level even as it combines them. A traditional Greek greeting would be “rejoice” but here it is replaced by the Christian term “grace,” which of course means unearned or unmerited favor, especially the unmerited favor of God.

“Peace” is a Hebrew greeting which we still hear and use today — shalom — and in this context it speaks of tranquility of soul and friendship with God rather than the absence of conflict.

And so Paul has taken conventional phrases of courteous greeting from both the Jews and Gentiles and transformed them into a marvelous Christian greeting. Not unlike, perhaps, God took people from both the Jews and Gentiles, people like us, and transformed them into his own. Grace and peace to you this day.

Every blessing,

Lewis

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 12:08 pm and is filed under Reflections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.