Calvin (06/07/23)
- 5:28
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V. Conclusion (5:23-5:28)
4. Final Blessing (5:28)
Calvin (06/07/23)
Matthew Henry (06/07/23)
Adam Clarke (06/07/23)
Ironside (06/07/23)
Barnes' Notes (06/07/23)
Wycliffe (06/07/23)
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown (06/07/23)
New Thoughts: (06/08/23-06/09/23)
I seem to have rather agonized over the syntax in my first set of notes on this final verse. Yet, I completely missed something noted by a couple of our commentaries. The letter ends as it began: in notice of grace. Paul’s first thought to them is “Grace to you and peace” (1Th 1:1). Now, it must be said that this first greeting is utterly characteristic of all Paul’s letters. And in similar fashion, the final benediction of grace is commonly found in closing his letters. But this does not require us to reduce their inclusion to mere formulaic nicety.
To the degree that we still write letters, we recognize such formulaic components, don’t we? Even with an email between colleagues, a certain form applies. We don’t tend to use this ‘from us, to you,’ sort of introduction that are found in the Epistles, but then, a written letter generally has an addressed envelope, and we know who the from and to are. Likewise, email comes with identification, assuming, at least, that we’ve seen that particular sender before. Oh, it’s from so and so. And clearly, it’s to me. It’s in my inbox. But still there are those bits that hold true. There will be a greeting. It may be no more than to note the receiver’s name, particularly in work-related communications. It may be more formal, such as the “Dear Jeffrey” that opens the letter on my desk reminding me to make an appointment for an eye exam. It might take a more personal form, if we are communicating to somebody we’ve known for years and have some degree of relationship with.
Likewise, the way we close such communications have something of formula about them, don’t they? Yours, sincerely, love, thank you… We have our list, depending again on the nature of our relationship to the recipient. Perhaps, when connecting with fellow believers, we might opt for grace, or peace, or in Christ as our choice. But there will be something there. It’s almost a marker: Communication complete; signing off.
While there is assuredly something of that to the writing of these epistles – after all, they are written by real human beings for the consumption of real human beings – I don’t think we can dismiss them as merely that. After all, they are also written of the Spirit of God to His beloved, adopted children. There is nothing in all of Scripture that is pointless as to its inclusion. It can be hard to read some portions because the nature of the content is repetitious, or seemingly to no particular purpose for those of us living in these last days. Get to those places where Moses is rattling off the lineage for this or that patriarch, or for this or that seed of the serpent, and it can get rather tedious. Most of these names mean little or nothing to us. And when it gets to being the second or third repetition of such lists, I expect many of us, like myself, tend to just glaze over. We read, but nothing registers. We would do well to recall that God saw fit to have Moses as His writer, and saw fit to see that Moses included these genealogies. Why? Well, that’s a subject for a different study, should I ever get to it. But for us, the message is: Watch yourself! Don’t allow yourself to become jaded to what you’re reading, and start just gliding over it. Wonder at it. Seek to understand the point, not just the words.
So it is when we come to these greetings and benedictions. It’s easy to write them off, to stop a verse short and say, there, I’ve read the letter. I think, as we are inundated with writing all day long, as emails pour in, texts come by, articles flash on screen for us to peruse, we get to seeking shortcuts, don’t we? We scan the subject line, maybe, if we even get past the sender’s identity, and we’re already hitting delete. We read news sites, perhaps, but never beyond the headlines, and maybe the one-liner summation of the site’s writers. But it’s going to take doing to get us to read further. We’re too busy, too overloaded, and rather like the poor sod reviewing a pile of applications for employment, the first thing on our minds is making that pile smaller. What can I reject out of hand? How can I make this manageable.
Well, don’t take that mindset into your consideration of Scripture! And we do, don’t we? It can get so that our reading of a morning devotional is but a task we’re trying to get through, and we have a schedule for it. After all, if it takes longer than we think it should, that’s time we don’t have for the next thing. If I look at my morning routine, I can see the danger. I have Table Talk to read, and such verses as they may find applicable to the day’s message to review. But really? You want a whole chapter of that book? It’s more than a screenful! I don’t have time for that. I’ll take the first few verses. I probably remember the drift of that chapter anyway. And now, after my study time that leads to these lengthy notes, there’s reading assignments for our men’s group. More chapters, and they should be read with at least some thought, not just to check off the day’s duties. It’s easy, with such a load, to start speeding through with little consideration. Thank God that as far as these notes of mine go, I can take whatever time I care to take. If I don’t finish today (and I won’t at this point), I can pick up tomorrow. And if it takes several days, where’s the harm? But there’s always awareness of the clock, awareness of the next thing that needs doing, and the thing after that, for the day proceeds as days tend to do.
And with that in mind, I’m going to pause for the day, to allow time to properly consider the bit of Exodus that’s on my schedule today. May God be pleased to keep me attentive and thoughtful as I do.
One thing that I had failed to note in my efforts was the way in which these letters are wrapped in grace. It is not just the last word Paul has for his readers, but also the first. Clarke, observing this, writes, “For the grace of Christ must be at the beginning and end of every work, in order to complete it, and bring it to good effect.” I think we have been conditioned to think it should be our prayers that thus bracket the work and make it effective. And to be sure, prayer ought rightly to saturate every endeavor we undertake, whether it be ministry or more mundane matters of employment or even simply the necessities of daily life. But our prayers to not render the work effective. Our prayers are not the foundation for effectual ministry, though they are a needful ingredient of that ministry. No. It is the grace of Christ that determines whether a ministry shall prove fruitful for His kingdom.
That certainly includes these writings of the Apostles. Paul, much though we may esteem him as a giant of the faith, was nothing except the grace of Christ inhabited the words he wrote. And those words, though Scripture and powerful to the saving of souls, would themselves achieve nothing except the grace of Christ likewise enwrap the one who reads or hears them. Experience demonstrates the reality of this being the case. We have all known those who, though they read the Scriptures, found them nothing more than an interesting glimpse at antiquity. They might, perhaps, appreciate the style of the Psalms. They might think the first several books to be little different from Greek mythology, or they might accept them as attempts at recorded history. But they do not see it as holy. They may not even have any sufficient concept of holiness. After all, we have enough difficulty laying hold of that. Many of us, myself included, could look back on a time in our own lives when this described us quite well. We may even have been dragged to church religiously as children. But while we sat through it as we must, it did nothing. It meant nothing.
But then comes the grace of Christ, and suddenly the whole thing has changed. This, I think, makes sense as a subject for prayer when we would see this person or that hear God’s Word to good effect. We tend more towards, “Lord, make me to speak rightly of Your truth.” But perhaps the better prayer would be, “Lord, open their hearts to receive what You are saying.” And, I think, if we listen more attentively at our services of worship, I suspect we shall hear that both sentiments are expressed with regularity, if not necessarily with constancy. We gather to pray before service begins, and to what end? Well, there is the general stuff of prayer, the giving of thanks, the simple acknowledgement of God as God, and the desire that we might manage to bring Him honor and perhaps even pleasure in what we would say and do. But more, there is the desire that God would inhabit our praises, inhabit the preaching of His word. In short, it is the desire that God would indeed cause His grace to be poured out upon all who are in attendance, whether members, attenders, visitors, or even those dragged in somewhat against their will. What may be missing is the similar prayer in closing. But even there, I think if we listen more carefully, we would find something of this expressed.
So then, returning to this epistle, we have cause to recognize that Paul himself realizes this to be the case. All the instruction that he has imparted on this letter, God-breathed though it may be (and is), would be to no avail, would fall on deaf ears and stony hearts, except it be that they who received this letter had already been recipients of God’s unmerited favor. What, after all, is salvation, if not the greatest expression of unmerited favor? We were sitting happily in our darkness, even if it was the happiness of blind ignorance. We were, per God’s own assessment, at enmity with Him. We were actively suppressing His truth in order to maintain our happy ignorance. We had opted to worship created things rather than the Creator. We had earned nothing but His utmost wrath, having thumbed our nose at Him, disregarded His law, and heaped abuse upon the very idea that He even exists. We had treated that which is truly holy as being utterly contemptable, laughable at best. And still, with all that we had done to offend this Almighty Maker of heaven and earth, He opted not to destroy, but to redeem, to rescue. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ with you. That is your reality, believer. That is our present state. If it were not, on what basis would any of us spend the sort of time it would take to read these notes, or for me to write them? There would be no point to it. If it is not the case with us, then we remain without hope. All our exercises in piety avail nothing. All our dedicated care to spend time reading, spend time meditating, spend time praying, or fasting, or whatever spiritual disciplines we may pursue, will achieve absolutely nothing. Unless this is truly our story: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ with us. And if it is our story, then we must surely recognize that it is not our story because we have earned the right. It is our story because God, quite without any merit on our part, chose to make it so.
Here is your story and mine: God’s grace is with you. God’s grace being with you, it governs your spiritual condition. God’s grace is in the driver’s seat. For all that the world would have us to think we are each of us the captain of our own ship, it ought rightly to be our most devout hope that this is not the case. Far be it from us to think we have the capacity to steer ourselves to heaven’s shores. No, if God’s grace is not driving, our only expectation can be shipwreck. Now, I could make the case that even for those who are not among the called, the elect, God remains in the driver’s seat. But I should have to say His grace is absent. And I ndeed, shipwreck is certain. But that is not our consideration here. We are looking upon those who have heard and received, upon whom God’s grace and peace have come. We are looking upon those of whom Paul could say, “We give thanks to God always for all of you” (1Th 1:2). God’s grace was quite evidently in them. It showed. God’s grace, when it is in us, cannot help but show. It may show imperfectly through the distortion of our fallen flesh, but it will show. We cannot, really, help but be witnesses to the goodness of God. It will manifest in our character and habit, if indeed it is in us, because it cannot do otherwise. The seed of the Spirit cannot but bear the fruit of the Spirit. And the fruit of the Spirit is of such nature as no sane law would oppose (Gal 5:22-23).
Beloved, you are being shaped by grace. This is our story. When we come to God’s Word, it is not to empty entertainment, it is not to a curiosity shop, full of interesting bits, but ultimately pointless – nothing we would buy, certainly. No! You have come, in the Scriptures, to Mount Zion, the city of the living God. You need not seek some earthly restoration of Jerusalem. You have come to heavenly Jerusalem. You have joined myriads of angels. You are now part of the general assembly, the church of the first-born, enrolled in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, and to Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant made in His blood (Heb 12:22-24). What has been given you by grace is so far and away superior to any earthly thing, even the earthly manifestations of His glory. And all by His grace. All in spite of our utter lack of merit. Yes, in spite of ourselves, and to our eternal benefit, the grace of God has come. He abides in us. He directs and corrects us. And He, by His own power, is gently but surely making us to be all that we can and should be.
Matthew Henry observes that we need no more than the grace of Christ to be made happy. I wonder, do we feel this to be the case? Do we recognize this as valid? We should, and I suspect that even if we don’t feel it to be so, we feel that it should be. This, beloved, is cause for us to pursue those means of grace He has so graciously supplied. This is cause for us, knowing His grace, to seek that we might in fact know that grace better. It is cause for us to take interest in that grace which He has poured out upon us. What does that mean? Well, it certainly indicates that we do not take it for granted, even knowing it has been granted, and He, being faithful and certain to complete His work, we are assured His grant shall not be revoked. But let that not be enough for us! It is well and good to rest upon the assurance of our Lord’s favor. But it is horrible indeed to become presumptuous in our assurance. Does the grace of Christ make you happy? Is it enough for you? Have you that contentment of which Paul writes elsewhere? If not, why not? Seek that you might understand and recognize His grace for what it is, that it might indeed be so with you. Know His grace is yours. Take interest in that. Seek to recognize it more, to know it more fully. Seek that you might partake of His grace more fully, submit to Him more fully, represent Him more fully.
And if you would do so, begin with thanksgiving for this most gracious gift of the Scriptures. God has revealed Himself. He has spoken to us in terms that we can understand, and He has gifted us with a mind by which to understand what He has spoken. Do you have yet a sense of marvel at this? I have tried, the last few days, to arrive at a reasonable point of comparison. Perhaps if you could consider the idea of going outside and trying to make yourself understandable to a bird, or maybe an ant. Imagine, if you can, the degree to which you would need to stoop down, to reduce your language, indeed, abandon your language. You would need to adopt whatever passes for language in the bird or the ant, whether it be chirps and body language in the one case, or touch and chemical in the other. In either case, you contemplate something far and away beneath your normal capacities. Consider, too, the magnitude of size and strength differentials between you and your intended audience. You tower over them, unimaginably huge, to the degree they can be said to imagine. You could crush them quite by accident and they, in their turn, are quite powerless to do more than perhaps annoy you a bit. And even this fails utterly as comparison to what God has, of His own free will (for how could it be otherwise?) opted to do in order to make Himself comprehensible to you. And He has not merely said, “Look at ME! See My magnificence.” No! He has expressed His love for you. He has expressed His intentions for you, how you were designed to live, what you were created to be. He has given you meaning and purpose! You are not a pointless collection of atoms, but a being created for the very purposes of God, to do those works He has designed and set in place for you to do. Happy? Yes, I think we should have cause to be quite happy in discovering that we are not adrift, but creatures of significance in the eyes and heart of our Creator.
Barnes writes, “The richest blessing of heaven to mankind is the Bible.” Some might take offense at that, even among Christians, I suppose. Is this not, after all, raising the Bible up as some sort of idol? No. No, it is not. It is recognizing what enormous privilege we have been given, that infinite, all-knowing God has seen fit to make Himself known to us. He has seen to it that we have this tangible, testable, proven testimony from Him. If we have questions, here is our guidebook, that we might know His answers. Is it all-encompassing, as concerns the knowledge of God? It cannot be, for it is written for us in our finiteness. But it is sufficient. Everything needful for life and godliness is here to be found, in terms understandable, by him who would sincerely seek not only to become acquainted with the God Who Is, but would prove desirous of pleasing Him, having discovered himself to be the object of God’s grace.
Father, thank You for this. Thank You that You have ensured that
in spite of the worst machinations of man and devil, Your Word
remains. Thank You for setting me in such a time that I have so great
a wealth of tools by which to pursue understanding what You have
written, so rich an outpouring of grace both in my person and in the
church, that I might receive Your training and Your guidance so as to
abide in this grace, to walk in the power of Your grace, and to live,
somehow, pleasing in Your sight. And thank You, above all, for that
great comfort and assurance of knowing that You work in me, and You
are faithful to see that work completed. Thank You that I am Yours,
and You are my God. May my life this day and every day give testimony
to that truth, and to my true thankfulness that it is so.
