2 Thessalonians chapter 3 and verse
16. Now the Lord of peace himself
give you peace always by all means the Lord be with you all
the salutation of Paul with mine own hand which is the token in
every epistle so I write the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
be with you all Amen. The apostle is bringing his second
epistle to the Thessalonians to an end and he does so with
a short benediction and salutation. A benediction is a prayer or
a request for God's blessing. And here Paul asks for God's
blessing on the believers in the fellowship in Thessalonica. A salutation is an expression
of goodwill, an expression of goodwill on meeting someone,
or in this case, when ending his letter. So here is this benediction
and salutation right at the end of the letter. One is a prayer
for God's blessing on the church and another is a closing greeting
or a closing expression of goodwill to the Thessalonians. And Paul
gives a particularly noteworthy closing salutation in verse 17. He says, The grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. So that is his salutation. He's got a prayer in there for
peace for the believers and he's got a salutation of goodwill
which is that the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you
all. Amen. And actually, this little
salutation is a frequently used salutation from the apostle. It seems to have been used by
him as a kind of seal. or stamp or authenticating signature. It was his little phrase at the
end of his letters, and we see it repeated in a goodly number
of his epistles, almost in exactly the same word. He appears to
have written it, indeed, with his own hand. and it perhaps
suggests that ordinarily when he was writing these letters
he dictated them using an ammunensis who transcribed the main body
of his letters as Paul dictated them and then Paul signed them
with this little addendum the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
be with you all. Amen. That's one suggestion as
to part of the interpretation of the apostles phrasing here. There is a suggestion indeed
that already there were fake epistles circulating amongst
the churches claiming to be from different apostles. And that
just shows us that Satan doesn't waste any time in causing trouble
and spreading confusion amongst the people of God, if he is able
to. So, if this indeed was the Apostle
Paul's way of authenticating and validating what came personally
from him, then if you look at chapter 2, verse... Verse 2,
just to look back, he says there that you may not be soon shaken
in mind or troubled neither by spirit nor by word nor by letter
as from us. as that the day of Christ is
at hand. And that little reference in
there, again, nor by letter as from us, it might be that he
was referring to the first letter that he wrote, but it could also
be that there were others writing to the church pretending to be
Paul and causing division. So that's just a possible spin
on the way in which Paul is actually bringing this letter to an end,
that he is aware that there are other letters and he authenticates
his letter with his signature and this little phrase, the grace
of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Be that as it may, whether
that is the way to interpret that, All I can say is it's a
fine conclusion to any letter and it shows that the Apostle
Paul's emphasis from beginning to end has been the grace of
the Lord Jesus Christ. He began with grace and peace
the grace and peace of God and the Lord Jesus Christ, and he
ends also on this same high theme of the grace and peace of God
and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I'm going to, in a moment
or two, return to God's peace. But let me just make a wee reference
to this use of the word grace by the Apostle. This is not saving
grace. The Apostle's not talking here
about saving grace. The Apostle was writing to believers
who had already experienced God's grace in salvation. likely in
fact under Paul's own ministry sometime previously when the
apostle had been with them in Thessalonica. But Paul is rather
showing them and showing us as well that continuing grace is
necessary to go on in the Lord. Yes, we need that initial that
energising, that experience of conversion at the beginning of
our Christian life. But we need grace every day as
well. We need the Lord's help constantly. And that is why Peter, for example,
says, in 2 Peter 3, verse 18, which is the last verse of his
second epistle. So this is his own, as it were,
benediction and salutation. He says almost exactly the same
thing as the apostle. He says, grow in grace, and in
the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to him
be glory both now and forever. Amen. So here is this recognition. Paul has been writing to believers,
Peter has been writing to believers, but there is this emphasis and
this apostolic message that we keep an awareness of ongoing
need. of God's grace day by day. This is a relationship that we
are in. This is a day by day, step by
step experience of the presence of the Lord with us. We need
grace to stand in the evil day. We need constant supplies of
sustaining, enabling, strengthening grace to face the challenges
of the day. We need that grace to come from
the presence of God himself so that we can serve, so that we
can honour him, so that we can trust the Lord despite all the
attacks of the world and the flesh and the devil. How easily
we'd be deceived in this world, in this flesh, if the Lord did
not give us sufficient grace for the day. How readily we would
stumble and fall. The Lord told Paul, my grace
is sufficient for thee. and that is our hope too in the
sufficiency of the grace for the day that we live in. We've
got enemies that we don't even know about. We have trials yet
to be faced and yet to be endured in this life. We've got troubles
that are waiting for us before the Lord will gather us to himself
in eternal glory. The grace we have today is our
promise of glory tomorrow. Now I just want to make a couple
of points concerning the peace that the apostle speaks about
here as well. We've kind of started at the
end and then gone back to the beginning of the little passage
that we've read. But I wanted to go back to this
thought about peace and really just end on that. Because Paul
emphasises this, peace, as he closes his letter. And let me
remind you that Paul knew himself the opposition that these people
experienced. Remember when we started our
study in the book of Thessalonians, or the books of Thessalonians,
we made mention of the fact that Acts chapter 17 tells us about
Paul's experience in Thessalonica. And Luke there gives us a first-hand
account of the violence that Paul encountered in Thessalonica. Luke uses words like envy, assault,
uproar, and he describes the people who attacked Paul and
Silas and the other disciples there as base and lewd. So Paul and Silas escaped Thessalonica
by night. That was when they travelled
to Berea. And I'm sure that that experience stuck in the Apostle's
mind. so that with a personal awareness,
he desired peace from God for his brethren in Thessalonica
from the violence inflicted on them by haters of the gospel. But Paul also knew that there
were troublemakers within the church as well. and he also desired
peace for his brethren against those who would disturb them
with false doctrines, with legal burdens, with man-made rules. And we've spent some time in
these past few weeks thinking about these false teachers as
we've read together 1st and 2nd Thessalonians. Paul knows there's
a blessed peace to be found under a clear view of the Gospel. Not mixing it with law, not mixing
it with works, not mixing it with our own righteousness, but
with a clear view of the Gospel. There is contentment in that
settled understanding of the truth of the Gospel and the simplicity
that there is in Christ. The Apostle has been writing
to direct and confirm the Thessalonians in the true Gospel doctrine by
which peace is maintained in a congregation and by which false
teachers are recognised and expelled. There is a lot of false teaching
goes by the name of Christianity today, but we shall be kept in
peace as we hold fast the truth. Or as Paul tells Timothy elsewhere,
hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me in
faith and love, which is in Christ Jesus. And there's another aspect
to this prayer for peace that the Apostle gives on behalf of
the Thessalonians. There's a peace of heart and
a peace of conscience that we also need from the Lord. And this is a Holy Spirit blessing
applied to God's elect in this fallen world as we return time
after time to the blood of Christ for comfort and to acknowledge
Christ's precious blood alone to be the ground of our acceptance
and reconciliation with God. Yes, we learned about that blood
in conversion. But we are nevertheless always
prone to take our eye off the Lord and start looking at ourselves. That's just the way of flesh
and it will beset us as a problem till the day that we leave our
flesh behind. Flesh won't bring peace. The
peace that passes understanding is the peace that washes over
the child of God because of Christ's blood and righteousness. And
despite all the evidence and accusations to the contrary,
both within and without. The Lord of peace must grant
us peace. So Paul's prayer, Paul's benediction
is a prayer to the Lord on behalf of the Thessalonians and he says,
You see, God is the God of peace to his people and If it is that enemies persecute
us from without, it is the Lord who allows them to strive with
us for a brief moment and for our greater good before bringing
them down to destruction with utter vengeance. If it is false
doctrine that confounds and confuses the great swathes of men and
women, the Lord promises that the elect will not be deceived,
but will be brought to a knowledge of the truth. And if it is to
bring us back to the cross, to the blood, to the person of Jesus
Christ, it is the Lord alone who does that. and who knows
what peace we need and when to apply it to our individual case. So it is very appropriate that
the Apostle asks the Lord to initiate these things, this peace
in our experience. Two final thoughts and then I'm
done. There is a rest and a peace that will follow our time on
earth. and we should not lose sight
of the fact that heavenly peace accompanies our entrance into
our heavenly mansion. Our brother, Malwin, is in perfect,
unchanging, everlasting peace right now. All his troubles are
past. All his hopes are realised. and soon it will be so for us
too. We sometimes say, don't we, it
isn't death that we're afraid of, but dying. But in the end,
dying is just falling asleep in the arms of the great peacemaker
and pacifier of our souls. So let us not worry or be anxious
about dying. When it is our turn, the same
peace-bestowing saviour will be our companion on that final
run home. And look at that lovely little
phrase used by Paul. He says, by all means. He says, by all means. Now the Lord of peace himself
give you peace always by all means. We use that phrase a lot,
though we probably don't think about it too much. When somebody
makes a request of us, If we're kind and if we're generous, we
say, sure, no problem, by all means. Well, the Lord is kind
and generous and he delights to honour the Apostle's prayer
for his church and people. By all means. By all means. Because all things work together
for good to them that love God, to them who are the called, according
to His purpose. Amen.