Ephesians 1:1-2
“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Paul often began his letters with the introduction “grace and peace.” This is no mere formality. Grace is the basis and foundation of the Christian life. Peace is the result and fruit of the Christian life.
Grace is the Greek word charis, and it means unmerited favor. Grace is God’s love and kindness toward those who are undeserving. Grace means that God does not give us what we deserve and instead gives us gifts and blessings that we don’t deserve.
Keep in mind that while grace is free, it is also very costly. It is free to us in the sense that we cannot earn it. But it cost God the life of his Son. We must understand this. To talk about grace as just the kindness of God is to miss something profoundly important to the Christian faith. Embedded deeply within the word “grace” is what it cost God to offer it to us.
Paul gives us a sense of this in 2 Corinthians 5.21. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
But grace is also costly to us. Receiving God’s grace in Christ requires us to give up our old self-oriented life and receive new life in Christ. Scripture is clear. We must die to the old life. We must turn away from those things that are not pleasing to God (what scripture calls repentance).
Jesus clearly communicated the message of repentance to his disciples: “Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?” (Mt.16.24-26)
In his classic book The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned against what he called cheap grace. He wrote: “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.”
What we need, Bonhoeffer said, is costly grace. “Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: ‘My yoke is easy and my burden is light.'”
Peace is the Greek word eirene. It is closely tied to the Hebrew shalom (verb shalal), which means “fulfillment and completeness.” Peace is the healing of wounds and the restoration of what is broken. By God’s grace, we who were once estranged and separated from God, we who were fragmented and broken, have been made whole and complete. We have been restored to a right relationship with him.
True peace only happens through Christ, and that is a central message of Ephesians. “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.” (Ephesians 2.13-14).
Apart from Jesus, there is no lasting peace. Let us, then, abide in his grace and embrace the peace which he has given us. And let’s acknowledge that living a life of grace and peace in the real world is not easy.
When life gets hard and circumstances turn against us, let us remember Paul’s greeting in Ephesians: grace and peace.
When life is good to us and we are experiencing success, let us remember: grace and peace.
When we get into a disagreement with a loved one or friend, let us remember: grace and peace.
As we do our job every day, let us remember: grace and peace.
Both grace and peace come to us through Christ, and both should permeate every part of our life and work. The presence of God’s grace and peace does not exempt us from life’s difficulties and pain, but it does empower us to navigate any circumstance (good or bad) knowing that God is in control and that he will fulfill his purpose in our lives as we trust him and abide in his truth.
