[Power of the Word] Paul's Concluding Salutation
Daniel Brady
“Peace to the brethren, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. Amen.”
--Ephesians 6:23-24
After a little more than three years, we finally do come to the end of the book of Ephesians. I would note that Paul ends this letter in much the same way that he ends just about all his other letters. In each one, he ends with some variation of “Grace be with you.” At the close of II Corinthians, he adds a little to his closing, saying, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen” (13:14).
However, Ephesians contains the most extensive of Paul’s closing salutations. His salutation contains a prayer for peace, love, and faith—in addition to grace—to be extended to his readers. And interestingly enough, he refers to his readers in the third person. Unlike his other closings, he does not say, “Grace be with you all.” Rather, he says, “Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity.”
The implication of this, briefly, is that those who do not love Jesus Christ in sincerity are not recipients of grace. This is due to the simple fact that they are not saved. For indeed, Paul told us, back in chapter 2, that we are saved by grace.
In the truest sense, Paul has come full circle as he concludes this letter. As he opened the letter by saying, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (1:2), so he now uses almost the same exact wording at the end of Ephesians. In so doing, he reminds us, once again, that grace, peace, love, and faith all come only from God and from Jesus Christ. Even the faith required for salvation, as Paul states in Eph. 2:8-9, comes as a gift from God.
Now that we have come to the end of our study in Ephesians, rather than trying to write some kind of summary for the whole book, let me briefly tell you where we are going to go from here.
When I began writing “The Power of the Word,” I sought to write a devotional that does not skip around within the Bible from one day to another. I wanted to work my way through a particular book of the Bible, verse-by-verse. My reason for doing this has been that, when you skip around—when devotional entry focuses on an isolated verse—you run the risk of taking the verse out of context. And when you take a verse out of context, you run the risk of attaching a meaning to it that was never intended by the author.
As one undertaking to teach and comment on the Word of God, I recognized, early on, the need to address each verse in relation to its surrounding passage. Hence, the desire to work my way through a book of the Bible, such as Ephesians.
Little did I realize, however, just how long it would take to work my way through these six chapters. And as I look back, I see that I got bogged down in places. Perhaps I got carried away, wanting to say more than was necessary for a particular verse.
As I go forward, then, I want to change my strategy somewhat. Rather than going verse-by-verse, I think it would be better to go passage-by-passage, highlighting perhaps just a verse or two as I come to each passage.
As I do so, however, I must warn you that it will still take quite some time to get through what I feel the Lord leading me to do next. But for now, I have run out of space. So I will have to tell you about it next time.
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