"Peace to the brothers and love with faith from God [the] Father and [the] Lord Jesus Christ. The grace [be] with all the [ones] loving our Lord Jesus Christ in incorruptibility."
Peace. Love. With faith. Grace. To end this letter, we have another pauline, greatly expanded-yet-traditional Middle Eastern leave-taking. Ours is a bye or a see ya. Hasta la vista, baby. Theirs was (and still is!) a wish for peace, that all-encompassing shalom, overall well-being. And yet in Christ, when the infinite almighty God of the universe comes in, full of grace and love, when one is brought into His forever family, there is an awareness of so much more, so much more to life than mere temporal well-being, which admittedly can actually be rather self-serving. Think about it - it sounds good on the surface. But shalom, peace to you essentially is saying, may all that concerns you be coming up daisies and relatively trouble-free. Lots of what you want, and not much that you don’t. And that really is quite a nice thing to wish upon your fellow man. But it’s quite possible to have all that and a bag of chips and still miss out on the eternal. Peace is desireable, don’t get me wrong. God’s peace indeed surpasses all comprehension. It is practically indescribable. But these others - grace. Love. Faith. Paul has come to recognize that these are just as desireable, if not moreso. What good is peace if you are not enjoying God’s undeserved favor? If you are not experiencing His giving, sacrificial love both in an incorruptible relationship with Him and with a family of believers? What good is a sense of peace if you have no faith, if you are in fact separated from the life of God, if you are enslaved to sin and estranged from Him? Peace is good, but there is something better.
-Important to note the source of all these. Paul usually does remind his readers that whatever peace or grace or love we may enjoy, it is divinely sourced. It comes from God.
-Interesting to note that Paul’s leave-taking here is 3rd person, as opposed to 2nd. Usually, he is wishing grace and peace to ‘you’, ‘you all’ if it is a letter to an assembly such as in this case. But here it is peace to the brethren, grace to those who love our Lord Jesus. Neither has he has left any personal greetings here at the end. There are no personal greetings from other believers. It perhaps revisits the question as to who all is getting this letter, and if perhaps this could be a circular letter intended for a number of congregations?
-No matter, in the end, Paul leaves us with that which is most important. Love. The greatest of these is love. Love never fails. The deep, deep everlasting love of God, poured out, returned to Him in an eternal, indestructible relationship which overflows to my fellow man. It doesn’t get any better. We were made for this.
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