Ephesians 1:2. Acts 23:26 (cf. Acts 15:23; Mat. 26:49; 27:29; James 1:1) Claudius Lysias, to his Excellency the governor Felix, greetings.

Transcription

1 Ephesians 1:2 Introduction In Paul s day, the opening of a letter included three ingredients. A letter writer started out by identifying himself (giving his own name). Then he said who he was writing to. And finally, he would send his greetings. So how would we expect a letter like Ephesians to start out? Paul, to the Christians in Ephesus, Greetings! We ve already seen that Paul follows this basic pattern, but then he makes it his own by building on it, and enhancing it, and adding to it. Instead of just Paul, we read: Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God Paul, one who has seen the risen Jesus and been called and commissioned by Him to make known to you that which was previously unrevealed the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ. This was according to God s good pleasure and delight. Instead of, to the Christians in Ephesus, we read: To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus. To those in Ephesus who are holy to the Lord the ones filled with faith, who are in Christ Jesus. And now we come to the third and last ingredient in the opening of Paul s letter the greeting. The traditional greeting was the Greek word for rejoice. May you be full of joy! But really it had come to have just the generic meaning of Greetings! Acts 23:26 (cf. Acts 15:23; Mat. 26:49; 27:29; James 1:1) Claudius Lysias, to his Excellency the governor Felix, greetings. Now there were those who took the traditional Greetings! and replaced it with something that fit their basic philosophy of life. So apparently, the Greek philosophers Pythagoras and Epicurus replaced Greetings with Good health or Good cheer. In other words, May you have plenty of health and happiness. Plato is said to have replaced the traditional Greetings! with Do well. May be a virtuous and upstanding member of society. Paul isn t a philosopher, but a theologian. For Paul, the wisdom of the Gospel trumps all of the empty philosophies of the world (1 Cor. 1:18-2:16; Col. 2:8). And so in contrast with Pythagoras, and Epicurus, and Plato, Paul replaces the traditional Greetings! with these wonderful and beautiful words: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul opens all thirteen of his letters with some form of this greeting (Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:3 2 Cor. 1:2; Gal. 1:3; Eph. 1:2; Phil. 1:2; Col. 1:2; 1 Thess. 1:1; 2 Thess. 1:2; 1 Tim. 1:2; 2 Tim. 1:2; Titus 1:4; Philemon 3). Peter, John, and Jude also use versions of this very same greeting (1 Pet. 1:2; 2 Pet. 1:2; Jude 2; 2 John 3; Rev. 1:4-5). Somehow, this greeting sums up what every Christian should earnestly desire and wish for every other Christian. Somehow, this greeting sums up what all of us should be wanting and praying for each other, and for ourselves. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I. Grace to you and peace FROM GOD OUR FATHER AND THE LORD JESUS CHRIST. Paul s greeting sounds like the benediction that the Old Testament priests would pronounce over the people of Israel. 1

2 Numbers 6:22 27 The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them, The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them. There s grace and peace here just like there s grace and peace in Ephesians. God Himself sums up all of His saving blessings in these same two words Grace and Peace. So you could say that in Paul s greeting, he s just following the pattern already laid down in the Old Testament. But in the midst of the similarities, there s also something very different. In Numbers, the source of grace and peace is simply, Yahweh, the LORD. The LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. But in Ephesians, something has happened. Something has changed. The source of grace and peace is now God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. To call God, our Father, in the Old Testament was almost unheard of (Isa. 63:16; 64:8). And that the coming Messiah would be named right alongside of God our Father as an equal source of Yahweh s saving grace and peace had not entered anyone s wildest imaginations. Paul s greeting is the same as the Old Testament benediction, and yet far different. God hasn t changed (He never changes), but now He s revealed Himself more fully, and more definitively, and more wondrously than ever before. God s grace and peace haven t changed, but now they ve both come to us and been revealed to us more fully, and more definitively, and more wondrously than ever before. How can you possibly understand the full riches of God s grace and peace until you ve come to see that God is our Father who so loved the world that He gave His only Son? And so in a very real sense, the benediction that the priests pronounced over the people of Israel was not fulfilled until the coming of Christ. The priestly prayer for God s grace and peace to be poured out upon His people was never fully answered until God revealed Himself to us as our Father, who so loved the world that He gave His only Son. And so Paul can write to the Ephesians in a way that the Old Testament priests could never have done: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. But what is the meaning of Grace and Peace? How do they sum up what we should all be earnestly desiring and wishing for ourselves, and for each other? II. GRACE to you Grace is one of the most beautiful, and wonderful, and astonishing words in all of the Christian s vocabulary. Grace is God s undeserved, unconditional goodwill and favor that He has shown to us in Christ (cf. Bruce, Colossians). Paul says in verse six that the goal of all our salvation is the praise of [God s] glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. Of all the myriads and myriads of ways that God has shown us His goodwill and favor in Christ, grace is the sum of them all. So one commentator says that grace is the [whole] Gospel in one word (Hoehner). The Apostle John writes: And from [Christ s] fullness we have all received, grace upon grace (John 1:16). Grace is God s undeserved, unconditional goodwill and favor that He 2

3 has shown to us in Christ by choosing us (v. 4), by adopting us (v. 5), by redeeming us (v. 7), by forgiving us (v. 7), and by sealing us with the promised Holy Spirit (v. 13). All of this grace is already ours as those who are holy to the Lord as those who ve placed all our faith and hope in Jesus. And yet here Paul is expressing his wish and his prayer that this grace might be ours today as though we could somehow get more of it. It s something we already have, and yet it s also something for which we can always be asking and seeking. How can this be? How can we get more of something we already have in fullest measure? III. Grace to you and PEACE Now once again, this peace is something that as Christians we already have. In Ephesians, peace is not first of all a subjective feeling (I feel peaceful inside), but rather an objective fact. Ephesians 2:14 18 For [Christ] himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. We have peace with each other. The dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile has been broken down and we ve all been made one. That s an objective fact. We have peace not only with each other, but even more importantly, we have peace with God. Paul says that we ve been reconciled to God, and now we have access in one Spirit to the Father. That s an objective fact. We have peace with each other and we have peace with God because Christ Himself is our peace. That s an objective fact. This peace that we have with God and with each other is the result of God s grace in choosing, adopting, redeeming, and forgiving us through Jesus, and sealing us with the promised Holy Spirit. Now if this all begins to feel overwhelming and impossible to absorb, I say that s alright! Let the Gospel overwhelm you. That s just the way the Gospel is. It can t ever be fully explored, and its limits can never be fully searched out. Now just as God s grace is already ours in fullest measure, so also God s peace is already ours in fullest measure. We can t be any more reconciled to God than we are. We can t have any more access to God than we already have. And yet here Paul is expressing his wish and his prayer that this peace might be ours today as though we could somehow get more of it. It s something we already have, and yet it s also something for which we can always be asking and seeking. How can this be? How can we get more of something we already have in fullest measure? III. Grace TO YOU and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. It s here that we see one of the constant problems of the Christian life and yet at the same time one of the most amazingly wonderful things about the Christian life. We already have 3

4 everything in fullest measure. We just don t seem to know it. We don t seem to have the ever deepening, ever widening, ever growing experience of joy and well-being that should be always flowing from our full possession of God s grace and peace. Peter spells out exactly what Paul was saying in his own greeting: 2 Peter 1:2 (ESV; cf. NASB; HCSB; NKJV) May grace and peace be multiplied to you. The Greek word for multiplied means to increase greatly (Louw & Nida). Other versions translate: May grace and peace be lavished on you (NET). May grace and peace be yours in abundance (NRSV; NIV). May grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure (NASB; NET; 1 Peter 1:2). [May] grace and peace be yours more and more (NCV; 1 Peter 1:2). God has already opened the flood gates of His grace and peace when He sent His only Son Jesus Christ, and now He can t open them any wider. On the other hand, we can always be increasing in our experiential knowledge and understanding of this grace and peace. Paul and Peter speak of there being more and more grace and peace because that s what it looks like to us. Like if we were to stand one day at the pinnacle of a lofty mountain, and look out and see breathtaking sights. And then the next day we were given increased vision to see even further and more clearly than the day before. And so every single day brand new vistas were opened to us. They d always been there, but it feels to us as if it s all brand new. Peter confirms all this when he writes: 2 Peter 1:2 May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God [the Father] and of Jesus our Lord. This isn t just head knowledge. One commentator writes, this is a knowledge which enters into an object and takes affectionate cognizance thereof; which is not satisfied with a merely outward relation to it, but seeks to enter into and to lay hold of that object (Fronmuller). As we grow in the knowledge of God our Father and of the Lord Jesus Christ, grace and peace will be multiplied to us (cf. 2 Pet. 3:17-18). Our experience of true joy will always be increasing as we grasp more and more the extent of His good will and favor toward us. Grace to you. Our sense of a deep and genuine well-being (that all is well ) will always be increasing as we grasp more and more the magnitude of the fact that we are reconciled to God. Grace to you, and peace. If I could paraphrase one commentator: Grace As a wish expressed for the Ephesian church denotes the experience of ever increasing hope by saints in despondency, of ever deepening joy by those in sorrow, of ever-increasing patience by those who are suffering, of ever-growing confidence by those under assault The Apostle wishes to the members of the Ephesian Church the constant, felt enjoyment of the favor of God. (cf. Braune) Another commentator writes about the peace that Paul wishes for the Ephesian church: This peace is the smile of God as it reflects itself in the hearts of the redeemed, the assurance of reconciliation through the blood of the cross, true spiritual wholeness and prosperity (Hendriksen). 4

5 Are you prospering spiritually today? Are you always getting more and more of that which you already have in fullest measure? This is the beauty and wonder of the Christian life to have already been given all, and yet to always feel that we are receiving more. May grace and peace be lavished on you. May grace and peace be yours in abundance. May grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure. [May] grace and peace be yours more and more. Paul writes: Ephesians 1:16 19 I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might. And then again in chapter three: Ephesians 3:14 19 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Conclusion What is it that we wish most for ourselves? What is it that we wish most for each other? I think of all the polite things we say to each other: Have a good day. Have a restful afternoon. Hope you re healthy, and all is well with the family. There s nothing wrong with saying these things. But how wonderful it would be if we could sincerely and wholeheartedly, and without any awkwardness say to someone: May you prosper spiritually today. May you know God s grace and peace today in abundance. Someone has said that the Apostolic benediction contains all that is worth wishing for (Schenkel; quoted in Braune). And so from the bottom of my heart I wish this and pray this for you: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. As Paul begins his letter to the Ephesians, he first of all identifies himself as an Apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God one who has seen the risen Jesus and been called and commissioned by Him to make known to us that which was previously unrevealed the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ. When we read Paul s letter to the Ephesians, let us never forget that God Himself is unveiling to us mysteries that we could never have attained to ourselves. After identifying himself, Paul then identifies all of us as saints and believers who are in Christ. We ve been connected to Christ therefore, we are holy to the Lord, filled with faith and hope in Jesus. When we read Paul s letter to the Ephesians, let us never forget that the Gospel he s preaching is what gives us our true identity it s telling us always who we really are in Christ. 5

6 Finally, in his greeting, Paul wishes for us grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. His prayer for us is that our experience of true joy will always be increasing as we grasp more and more the extent of God s good will and favor toward us. His prayer for us is that our sense of a deep and genuine peace and well-being will always be increasing as we grasp more and more the magnitude of the fact that we are reconciled to God. His prayer for us is that we may always be getting more, and more, and more, and more of that which we ve already been given in fullest measure so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God. When we read Paul s letter to the Ephesians, let us never forget that there s always more that the riches of God s grace and peace to us can never, ever be exhausted. And that s why we can literally say to one another over and over again, and every day for the rest of our lives: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 6