WE will conclude our remarks on the subject of peace with a few words on the greetings opening the epistles. The first eight have the greeting in these wondrous words― “Grace to you and peace from God our (in Galatians, the) Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.” That to Philemon is the same, with the addition of “mercy.” Those to Timothy are very similar to that to Philemon, as is also that to Titus, only it ends, “The Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour,” and omits “mercy.” The greeting in the second Epistle of St. John runs thus― “Grace be (or, shall be) with you (or, us), mercy and peace, from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love,” and that in the Revelation is as follows: “Grace be unto you, and peace, from Him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before His throne; and from Jesus Christ, the faithful Witness, and the Prince of the kings of the earth.”
If we receive a letter from a friend, its mode of commencement and termination has a peculiar interest to us, and so must it ever be with us as we read these gracious letters, penned by the servants of God to us, but indited by God through His Spirit. Grace to us and peace to us is the beginning of the words our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ address to us. Let us seek to fill the soul with this fact each time we read but a verse from these portions of the sacred word. Let this be our chief thought―for it is the practical one― in considering these most precious greetings.
The Father does not sound quite so close and near to the heart as our Father. Perhaps the Galatian believers having gone so far in listening to legal teaching may account for this difference in the greeting to them. There is surely a sense of nearness in “our” Lord (not the Lord) as we read in the greeting given in the Epistles to Timothy. But why our, before Father, is left out in the second of these is not so simple to explain. We feel the sweet force of “our Saviour” in that to Titus, for in the difficulties the epistle deals with, to know Him as “our Saviour God” is rich assurance to the soul. Also to have “mercy” added to grace and peace is most comforting to the heart, for mercy is what we all daily need. Why the letters to Timothy should open with the word mercy and that to Titus should not have it, may be explained by the presence of the words “our Saviour” in the latter case, for the title Saviour conveys the thought of mercy.
Again, in the greeting of the second Epistle of St. John, how beautiful are the words there added, “the Son of the Father, in truth and love,” It was a day when the Person of the Lord was attacked by false teachers, and the aged apostle sends to the elect lady and her children, through the Spirit, not only the blessed assurance to them “Grace shall be with you, mercy and peace from God the Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ,” but adds the words which express the glory of the Eternal Son. What joy would a greeting contain for us, were we ignorant of the person sending it?
And as we open that book of judgment the Revelation, what comfort it is that at its very beginning the words of grace and peace come to us from the Everlasting God, the Holy Spirit, and the Lord Jesus, the Prince of the kings of the earth, whose rights in reference to this world God chronicles in the book, which so fully tells of Christ’s coming and kingdom. He who is going to judge this world that rejected Him, and the people who crucified Him, sends to us whom He loves the gracious greeting of grace and peace, before He unrolls the coming judgments.