Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ,
(Romans 1:1-7)
To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Each of us joyfully anticipates certain things in life. For me, one of them is when I start to read one of the thirteen letters the Apostle Paul penned that are included in Holy Scripture. Every one of them begins with a greeting that is so grandiose that it alone can lift my spirit up out of darkness! So much so that I have found myself feeling a bit jealous at times that no one has ever addressed me so lovingly. But enough about me and my insecurities…
In each of the epistles, Paul concluded his greetings with some derivative of ‘grace and peace to you from the Lord Jesus Christ’ and so it can be surmised that he thought grace and peace were important blessings to bestow upon those he addressed. Also, one cannot read Paul’s letters without clearly seeing how much he loved and cared for his readers. He wanted to guide his audience to the loving arms of his Savior, Jesus Christ and the peace that only comes with an intimate relationship with Him.
Some background data for your information: of the approximate 150 occurrences of the Greek word “charis” (ie “grace”) in the NT, the great majority appear, unsurprisingly, in the Pauline letters. There are a wide range of uses, of course, with the most theologically significant use referring to the “grace of God”, appearing 25 times in Paul’s epistles. And of those, 13 are in those opening dialogues.
True grace cannot be enjoyed without the presence of God because true grace can only come from God. And few people back then knew that as well as Paul. Whether writing from a quiet place as a free man or while in chains as a prisoner, Paul never stopped preaching the Gospel and teaching people about our Lord. Paul knew from where grace (and peace) came from and he did not stop telling people about it until the day he was silenced.
For Paul, the grace of God is not so much a timeless attribute as a venture of God. It is this redeeming activity of God that manifests itself in the redemptive work of Christ by which sinners are forgiven and accepted by God. According to Paul, the grace of God is necessary because of man’s total inability to do anything to save himself and because of man’s unworthiness to be saved. His use of grace to refer to the undeserved nature of God’s salvation was best illustrated by his own life. His former life as a persecutor of Christians caused him to have a profound sense of his own unworthiness. It was only because of the grace of God that Christ appeared to him, changed him, and appointed him to be an apostle (1 Cor. 15:9-10; 1 Tim. 1:12-14).
Paul saw grace and peace as interlinked. We cannot have real grace without real peace any more than we can have real peace without real grace. By God’s grace alone we are saved through faith, and that faith breeds peace in the form of both physical and spiritual rest. We find an example of this in Colossians 3:12-17: “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” Here we see the link between grace (compassion, forgiveness, humility, etc.) and the “peace of Christ”.
In today’s hustle and bustle world, we often hear of people pursuing their own definitions of peace but they rarely find it. Most don’t understand what real peace looks like and they aren’t looking where it can actually be found. As Christians, we should know what true peace is and where it can be found but, even so, we often forget when life starts turning sideways. God has made it very clear for us: turn to Him, pray, read His own words to us (the Bible) and consult mature Christian friends and mentors for the guidance to the peace He promises all of us. ☧
שָׁלוֹם שָׁלוֹם
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