1 Thessalonians 1:1
. . . Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. NKJV
WHEN PAUL WROTE, Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, his life testified to the availability of God’s grace and peace through trying times. I like to imagine him, a short dark haired energetic man absolutely filled with grace and peace. His heart turned to the Thessalonians with fatherly interest and a passionate concern to instruct and encourage them. His stay with them had been brief. Soon after preaching in their synagogue, envious Jewish legalists had denounced Paul publicly, stirred up a mob, and dragged some of the brand new believers in Christ’s before the city rulers. Paul and Silas fled by night. As soon as possible, Paul sent Timothy back to check on them. After Timothy’s return, Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians to encourage, teach and answer questions the new converts had asked Timothy. He began his letter with the phrase—Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Were they they the rote words of a letter writing convention or did they actually carry God’s grace and peace to the readers.
In the 21st century, we tend to think of words as empty vessels conveying only concepts. Most academics think it is primitive to believe that words themselves have power. Not everyone who utters, “God damn you” actually believes God will damn the person they curse. Fortunately, not all words do have power—or do they? Japanese scientist, Masaru Emoto’s experiments prove that pure water blessed with loving words freezes into lovely complex, symmetrical snowflake patterns. Water cursed with negative words and thoughts freezes into dull, asymmetrical broken crystals. [Messages from Water and the Universe, Masaru Emoto, Hay House, 2005]
Emoto’s respected and documented research suggests that words do have power, especially when the speaker is a man of God and breathes God’s faith, Life and Spirit into all He writes and says.
Human words have power too. Years ago when the director of a home for single pregnant women interviewed applicants she routinely asked, “How did it happen? The women all gave the same answer, “He told me he loved me.” Those three little words, “I love you” were powerful. Unfortunately, when the woman became pregnant, most of those men did not stand behind their words.
Fortunately, God stands behind every word He gives and Paul knew it. He wrote in full confidence that his readers would not read empty words. He trusted they would receive, through faith in God, the powerful living experience of grace and peace that was needed in their lives. .
Almost two thousand years have passed, but some things haven’t changed. God still has grace and peace to give and our human need for grace and peace is as great as ever. Syrian Christians facing genocide need grace and peace. Christians distraught about the coming election in the USA also need grace and peace. All who face loss, illness, and daily uncertainties need grace and peace. And God has an abundance to give. So how do we get it?
I”ll switch to first person here, talk to myself, remind myself of what I know, and let you listen in.
First I take inventory. Do I have faith? Am I believing? Really? If it’s weak, and doubt plagued, I know I can’t drum it up or pretend to have it. But I can ask God for more.
Father, increase my faith. I really want to believe You.
And I can add a few spiritual exercises or disciplines to build up my faith. Since
Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. —Romans 10:17
a good starting place is to open up my Bible. I might check out Hebrews 11, consider it well, verse by verse, and read the stories of Able, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah and the other men and women who believed. I might feel lazy and look up the verses on faith in a little book of Bible Promises. You can pick one up on amazon.com for 1.99 to 3.74.
I might feel like another approach and take time to reflect a bit more on Paul’s words.
. . . Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Those words are not in the same class as other opening formula’s like “Long ago and far away. . .” or “Once upon a time. . . “. We rapidly absorb those beginnings for their ambience and then quickly move on for meatier content. Paul’s opening words invite us to pause and receive a gift. Receiving is not always automatic.
When a lover writes to his beloved, “My dearest only love—” or texts, “Until tomorrow—” the beloved’s heart opens and fills with confident and warm anticipation. There is an exchange. A giving and a receiving. The words impart something from heart to heart.
If humans can give and receive love by words, and if we believe in God, then why do we doubt His capacity to love us and give His gifts to us through words. Yes, Paul’s words can be read as a conventional greeting, or as a simple prayer asking God to give readers His grace and peace, but they can also be received as a spiritual impartation. That excites me. The possibility of opening my heart and getting grace and peace from God by reading a letter in a book is tremendously energizing.
Sometimes it just happens, Zappo! Instant download. I think about grace and peace, still my soul, dial down, and suddenly find that grace and peace were there all the time, waiting for me. Sometimes it takes time and effort. I’ll illustrate by describing ways I might think about grace and peace.
My first stop, as an English Lit Major, is usually to open a Bible Dictionary. Directly quoting the New Testament Lexicon on biblestudytools.com grace, the Greek word charis is
1) grace:
that which affords joy, pleasure, delight, sweetness, charm, loveliness: grace of speech
2) good will, loving-kindness, favor:
of the merciful kindness by which God, exerting his holy influence upon souls, turns them to Christ, keeps, strengthens, increases them in Christian faith, knowledge, affection, and kindles them to the exercise of the Christian virtue
If you like to start with the dictionary too, then take a moment and check out the word peace as well.
After that, I’d most likely reflect on word peace itself. Off the-top-of-my-head, sitting here typing at the computer, I begin picturing God. I don’t picture him with my eyes, but within my spirit, I sense Him as a being so far from my own experience that my mind is incapable of grasping Him. I can only begin to skirt the outermost edges of His power and glory. I see Him as pure Spirit with more intellect than I can fathom and be-zillions times more energy than the big bang that began our cosmic system. If so, then His peace would be as profound as His power. His peace would be dynamic, not passive, total not partial. His peace and His power would move in perfect unison within an imperturbable purposeful love so dynamic that all the divine energies of cosmic creation, movement, growth and change are minuscule beside His fully intentional love and grace. I like that.
Now I can more easily imagine that He’s giving peace from His own inexhaustible store to you and me.
Or, I might picture Jesus, rudely awakened from deep sleep in the middle of a storm, a bit disappointed at his disciple’s lack of faith, yet able to reach into God’s peace within and tell the storm, “Peace. Be still.” And then I might think of Jesus entering the room and reaching out to touch me with all His storm-calming peace and grace.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. —John 1:14
Still another approach might be to consider Paul as a man full of grace and peace. I might start by thinking of all the peaceful people and peaceful moments I’ve ever known; I might recall every expression of human grace I can bring to mind. And then I might picture Paul as a man chockfull of such grace and peace from God. I can imagine him sitting down and writing a letter to my church; he is thinking about me and my friends and sending his peace to us all. Or I might visualize Paul, alive today, creating a little oasis filled with an atmosphere of peace and grace while we sit together, a small group of disciples bathed within the presence of God and receiving His love. I’d try to visualize so much peace and love that it wouldn’t matter where we were or what we were doing. We could be in a prison or on a bench in a busy shopping mall; we might be waiting in a crowded airport or facing interrogation in a hostile nation. Wherever we were, we would be filled with God’s grace and peace.
If such attempts fail, saving the simplest approach for last, I simply ask God once again to give me His grace and peace. If needed I simply ask for the faith to receive them. If I doubt. I ask Him to please help me believe His word. And keep asking, for days, weeks, months, as long as it takes —
When peace begins to feel palpable, I’ll ask for more. Over the years I’ve learned that the me of me is quite unruly, easily ruffled and hard to get rid of. If you’re at all like me, it’s wise to ask God to enlarge your heart for more of Him. For the Body of Christ to grow to maturity, we must even decrease the ‘us’ of ‘us’, and to do whatever needs doing within in our individual and corporate souls until He is, like the song, our all and all. There is always more to know and love in Him.
Father, help us, help me, help all who read this to receive and grow in grace and peace.
Now, this day, this moment, we honestly ask for Your grace and peace. Whenever we read Paul’s greetings, may we receive even more of the grace and peace he sends to us from You.
