Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Philippians 1:1 ESV)
Grace and Peace
When I leave the house, I make sure I have keys, mints, my wallet, and insulin. Because I have learned over the years that I need those things. Maybe your list is different, but you do probably have a list of the bare necessities.
In every one of his letters, Paul speaks of Grace and Peace. Perhaps because he knows we need those things.
We need grace every day because we sin every day. We are unrighteous every day. We are self-focused every day. The day is coming when we will no longer need that daily gracious grace from God, wherein He purposefully attributes our sin onto Jesus, and Christ’s perfectness onto us. But that day is not today. We need grace to survive in a world deserving God’s wrath, when we ourselves also deserve wrath.
We need peace because we worry. We do not merely ‘tend’ to worry. We do not merely ‘lean towards’ worry. We do not merely have a bad habit of occasionally worrying. We simply worry. And God’s peace is the answer to worry.
And so Jesus, when Paul was writing his epistles, makes sure his readers have those two necessary things. And He makes sure we have them, too.
We need grace to deal with our sin. We need peace to deal with sin’s effects.
We are peculiar, we have what we need.