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“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
—Galatians 1:3 ESV

“Salutations.”
“Salu-what?”
“Salutations.”
“What are they? And who are you?”
“Salutations are greetings; it’s my fancy way of saying hello.”

Is there anyone who doesn’t love the children’s story Charlotte’s Web and the adorable little pig named Wilbur? My granddaughter Lucy loves Charlotte’s Web so much she burst into tears the other night because Papa destroyed a spider web spreading from an olive tree to our garage. Bad Papa.

Every time I hear “salutations,” I smile and think of Charlotte and that wonderful story. I doubt anyone these days is as formal and articulate when greeting friends. However, the opening lines that we write (or more likely text) do have significance. They are clues about who we are, the type of relationship we have to the person we are addressing, and what we are about to say.

That is why we should pay attention to Paul’s signature opening. “Grace and peace” is found in some form at the beginning of all of his epistles. What you might not realize is that Paul coined a phrase that had never been used before. Grace might have sounded to a first-century person like a standard greeting in Greek, but it was full of deep theological meaning. Then he combined it with the Hebrew greeting Peace to create a uniquely Christian greeting.

What I love about this phrase is that Paul didn’t try to make the Greek believers lose their distinct cultural identity. Nor did he require Jewish believers to drop their rich heritage. In this lovely greeting, we see Paul’s brilliance and sensitivity to the Holy Spirit by using salutations (thinking of Charlotte again) that both groups would find familiar.

Paul didn’t compartmentalize either group by addressing them separately. Instead, he sought to lift them to a new height, a new way of relating to people from different backgrounds and different cultures. The beginning of this radical and beautiful concept was always in the heart of God, and the ground is level at the foot of the cross. The gospel should transform not only how we love and relate to God, but also how we love and relate to one another!

In Paul’s day, Jews and Greeks, slaves and free people, males and females lived in vastly different worlds and would rarely intersect without tension. But from eternity, deep in the heart of God, what once divided humanity in sin would find healing and reconciliation in our new births, our new identities as children of God. When you look at a stadium of people at a Harvest Crusade, you see skinny jeans and Hawaiian shirts, tank tops and polo shirts, tattoos and coiffed hair. This is the beauty of diversity and unity that is on display to a broken and fractured world. This is the power of the church’s witness.

So how is the beauty of the grace and peace of God working in your life? As each of us has received this grace, peace, reconciliation, and forgiveness from God, are we willing to extend it to others? These are the vertical and horizontal implications of the gospel in our lives. Look over the landscape of your world; how are you doing crossing the great divide?

“Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.” —2 Corinthians 5:18 NASB

Grace and peace,
Cathe