Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 
~ Ephesians 1:2 

Can you remember back to the beginning of camp?

To break the awkwardness of meeting new people and being in a new place, you may have played some ice breakers to help make greeting each other a bit more meaningful. In many cultures greetings don’t have much meaning. For most people living in North America we greet each other with, “Hi, how are you doing?” That can even be an awkward greeting at times—especially at funerals or in the midst of family problems. We lack a meaningful greeting. 

In biblical times greetings were a lot like blessings. When Paul began each of his letter with a similar greeting, it wasn’t a meaningless expression, it was a blessing that God would fill his readers with grace and peace. 

In Ephesians 1:2, the message of the whole letter is introduced by saying, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” This greeting clues us in to the whole message and how it is filled with grace and peace. 

What is Paul’s greeting communicating? First, he is praying that his readers would receive grace from God. Grace is our Father’s unmerited favor that he lavishes on his children. For the Christian, that grace is channeled through the work of Jesus Christ—as we see in the rest of chapter 1. Grace is how we’re saved. It’s the foundation of our hope. To read more about how Christ did this, see When Christ Became Cursed.

One of the by-products of grace is peace. It is a gift from God made possible through the reconciling work of Jesus. The word encompasses the idea of tranquility—of being in harmony. It definitely has a spiritual connotation to it; it’s not just peace from worldly troubles. 

Paul’s greeting expresses his desire that what follows would be a means of communicating the good news of God’s grace so that, among other benefits, the readers would experience the peace of God. 

May you experience and embrace the grace and peace that God showers on you through the work of Jesus your Lord.