God’s Word for You
1 Corinthians 1:3 Grace and peace
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Wednesday, October 19, 2022
3 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
It’s a delightful thing to ponder these two gifts that come from God: Grace and peace. They come from the Father and from the Lord Jesus, who is himself a gift from the Father.
Grace is God’s favor, the love he has for us that we do not deserve. In the opening of a letter like this, Paul uses “grace” (charis, χάρις) because it is similar to the word “greetings” (chairein, χαίρειν), which was used in ordinary letters at that time among Gentiles, as we see in Acts: “Claudius Lysias, to his excellency, Governor Felix, Greetings” (Acts 23:26).
“Peace” was the greeting used by Jews, as we see in the letters copied by Ezra, where “greetings” (Ezra 4:17) and “cordial greetings” (Ezra 5:7) are translations of the Aramaic form of shalom, “peace.”
Consider what it means to greet someone with a prayer for grace to come to them. We could define grace in various ways, of course. It could be (1) God’s generous gift to those who do not deserve it, (2) the sum total of all God’s gifts together, or (3) specific, individual gifts given by God, such as some of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Here, the first two fit the context the best, since the first is also true of the others.
No matter how much we work, strive, try, and speculate about the world around us, we accomplish nothing apart from God. We only make ourselves, our souls, more and more restless, as Augustine says so perfectly: “You made us for yourself, but our heart is restless until it rests in you” (Confessions, Book I). The only rescue from our restlessness is in God, through the grace and mercy he gives to us in his Son Jesus Christ. These gifts come to us by faith in Jesus, who also says, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). And the Lord tells us this because he knows we can’t find these things on our own.
“Help me!” we cry, for we are persecuted by the wicked (Psalm 119:86).
“Help me!” we cry, for Satan and his demons want to accuse us of our own wickedness (Psalm 109:24-25).
“Help me!” we cry, for our souls cannot find comfort because of our sins (Psalm 77:1-2).
“Help me!” we cry, because we are so miserable, helpless, poor, and needy (Psalm 70:5).
“Help me!” we cry, because so many troubles surround us (Psalm 40:12-13).
“Help me!” we cry, because we are slandered even when we try to do good (Psalm 38:20-22).
And then down he comes, the Son of God, “leaping across the mountains, bounding over the hills,” rushing down from the right hand of God to our rescue. He does not say, “Do this” or “Do that;” but rather, “Behold, I have come for you, to carry your sins away from you and take them all up to the cross with me. I will die there along with the guilt of your sin. I will rise from that death, but your sinful guilt will not rise. It will stay dead and gone forever. This is my grace. This is how I will bring you peace.”
His peace is not just the absence of war, nor is it merely a state of spiritual well-being and contentment. There is peace on earth because Christ has put an end to the wrath of God by taking all of that wrath, every stroke of the punishment we deserve, into his own flesh and spirit. He suffered the terrible absence of God and of God’s love which is truly hell, suffering it while still living with his eyes wide open on the cross, looking up into sky, obscured by darkness (Matthew 27:45), and crying out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). He suffered the sneers of his enemies there (Matthew 27:42-43). He suffered the curse of God, the courtroom sentence that hung over the head of mankind since it was first spoken in the Garden: The curse in our bodies, the curse in our work, the curse of having enemies, and the curse of death and hell (Genesis 3). Christ took all of it into himself, died with it, and removed it from us forever. This is truly peace: to have the curse removed. Instead of a prison, Christ promises us a mansion, a house with many rooms, a parkland with a stream and the tree of life. “And the leaves of that tree are for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:2). There in paradise, all of our sorrows and griefs will be healed forever.
O, that this grace and peace would be yours forever, just as it belongs to everyone who has faith in Christ Jesus! These gifts were given to us with love, and freely, and fully. Cherish them, and share them with the people around you. They were won for us on the cross, unwrapped and opened for us in the resurrection, and revealed to us in the pages of the holy Scriptures. They are yours forever.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.