Out here in Colorado, it’s been beautiful with the changing colors. Riding my bike doesn’t facilitate pausing and taking photos…I LIKE FAST! But I went out recently into the high country on a last second hike with my dear friend Rachael. What a glorious time to bask in the glow of aspens.
Turning our attention back to our passage, you can see we’re getting close to the end of material to study. That means we will get to summarize soon, putting the pieces together for application. Exciting!
But before we finish this passage for now, I want us to analyze the two words in Paul’s greeting: grace and peace. From the context, all I can understand is that Paul is saying “hello”. And maybe that is all he’s saying. We have these insincere greetings in our American culture, don’t we?
“How’s it going?” Do you really want to know how it’s going?
“Hey guys!” That’s how I greet people when I’m biking on trail. I’m not trying to get their attention, just acknowledge. I know that not everyone is male, as well, but it’s a cultural thing being from the NW originally: everyone is ‘guy’. From the context, you wouldn’t necessarily know that, though.
Even if Paul’s grace and peace might be as simple as a “hello”, we also want to guard against approaching scripture with a mind that says, “Oh I know what that means.” As students of the word, let’s keep asking questions of the author. Learning from a previous Bite, we want to look at other places Paul uses these words.
The first place I looked was the cross reference the editors of the ESV provided next to the verse.
To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints:
Romans 1:7 (ESV)
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Verbatim. Which doesn’t shed any light on definitions of words. It does make it seem like this might be a common way Paul declares greetings in his letter, though. Let’s keep digging a bit by asking some language experts like the authors/editors of a couple of dictionaries.
When we look up words in the dictionaries, we first want to scan down through the entry to see if our exact verse is listed as an example. Not every verse will always be listed, but it will make the search for the applicable definition easier.
WARNING:
Please please please, my dear fellow student of the word! Join me in not falling prey to the temptation to find the neat-O definition, or the definition you like the best, or the definition you’ve heard before. We are on a search to find what the author meant when he wrote the words, not on a search for what we would’ve liked him to say.
There are fancy Greek words that describe methods of study that aren’t really important but I want to name this technique I’m describing in my warning and I have to define the terms so we will all understand how funny Jeremy and I think we are.
- Eisegesis. You decide what the text means. You press your preconceived ideas into the text and apply it accordingly.
- Exegesis. You pull out from the text the meaning that is already there. You let the text say what it says without coloring it at all.
- Neat-o-gesis. This is the word Jeremy and I made up to describe this technique of looking in a dictionary or lexicon and deciding what the neat-o definition is and going with that. Because it sounds cool. Even though it isn’t what the author meant. There’s even a Greek dictionary out there that helps you do neat-o-gesis by giving you definitions that weren’t even used in the timeframe of the biblical authors. To quote my friend Red, “No. Bad. Stop that.”
All right. Warning over. Don’t feel badly if you’ve done this; so have I. It’s hard not to. But we must be disciplined to strictly interpret what the author meant. When we make a mistake, we turn from it, learn from it, and we move on. We are always learning and growing. Our heavenly Daddy knows this and he is pleased we are pursuing him at all. This is part of why we pray before, during, and after studying. Reading the Bible and studying it is a spiritual endeavor. Left to ourselves, we will listen to our own hearts and invent our own truth.
I’m going to be using two of my favorite dictionaries, BDAG and TDNTA. For convenience, I will give the sources here and then refer to them using the abbreviations and page numbers.
The first one I’ll be citing is Arndt, W., Danker, F. W., & Bauer, W. (2000). A Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament and other early Christian literature (3rd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. This is the one abbreviated BDAG.
The other one I’ll be citing is Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans. This is the one abbreviated TDNTA.
Since χαρις (grace) comes first in the text, we will address it first. When I found Ephesians 1:2 listed in the entry on page 1079 (along with Ro 1:7; 1 Cor 1:3; 2 Cor 1:2; Gal 1:3; Eph 1:2; Phil 1:2; Col 1:2; 1 Th 1:1; 2 Th 1:2; Phlm 3; Rv 1:4 where they all say “grace to you and peace”) the language experts told us that grace is part of a fixed formula in greetings and closings of letters at the time of Paul. The word was used to convey a “sense of divine favor”.
To further confirm this idea that Paul used χαρις as part of his usual greeting, I also looked at TDNTA on page 1304. There the scholars stated that this word is part of a Pauline liturgical formula in relation to peace.
Let’s keep going and look up εἰρήνη (peace). In BDAG on page 288, the scholars tell us that it was a new development in the time of Paul and after to have the Greek word for grace and the Hebrew word for peace together for the greeting and the meaning conveyed “keep well”.
Looking at one more resource, on page 209 in TDNTA, the scholars listed many examples of how the word was used both in the Old and New Testaments and that it is used by Paul as part of his greeting. Additional information is that this Greek word eirḗnē was the typical word the Greek translation of the Old Testament (known as the Septuagint or LXX) used for the Hebrew word shalom, which you’ve probably heard before as a term of peace.
Learning both that this combination of words was new at the time of Paul and that he used them in a liturgical formula makes sense in the light of the entirety of scripture, doesn’t it? Even in light of just Ephesians because Paul uses a lot of papyrus in Ephesians 2 to talk about how Gentiles who were called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision were separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. That has to be some of most depressing description of us as Gentiles I could ever imagine. Until he went on to talk about the reality that we who were far off were brought near by the blood of Christ. Oh Glory!! No longer at war with God, but a description of the new relationship that can be had with him in Christ.
Paul has a mini sermon packed into his rote greeting at the beginning of most of his letters. He has a Greek and a Hebrew greeting for his readers because there are both in congregations all over the Holy Lands. Because of Christ, both Jews and Gentiles are greeted with grace (a sense of divine favor) and peace (which describes the reconciled relationship with God). The saints that first received this letter have a greeting that, in their culture, would have been oozing with all the emotion of the gospel that was for all nations because of the beauty of the meanings of these words.
When we explore a little more deeply than just surface English definitions, we get a fuller understanding of what Paul was trying to communicate, as if we were in the first century culture. If you have the time, looking at what words and images are used in the OT in contrast to the Hebrew word for peace helps to cement what this peace looks like.
Opening up original language dictionaries to help us understand the words Paul used is our Bible Study Bite for today. It takes a little work, I realize. Some of you may have Bible software to help you out, and some of you may need to go ask your pastor if you could borrow some of his books for a few minutes. Once you do, you will be a little further on your journey as a student of the Word. It’s challenging at first, but that’s why we’re doing it together. We can hold each other up when it gets difficult.
Next time, we will summarize and apply this little passage to our lives. Keeping summaries in mind will help us to keep the context of the entire book in mind as we continue forward.
