The grace

"May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." (2 Corinthians 13:14)

I once attended a church where the minister would bow his head and intone "The grace of our Lord..." when anyone walked in late, as if the service was about to end. His congregation soon learned to turn up on time! Sometimes the words do seem barely more than a pious version of "See you later".

Yet surely Paul didn't mindlessly scribble the words down as a way of ending his letter to the church in Corinth. He wanted the Corinthians to understand that his apparent harshness with them in his previous letter was not meant to bolster his weak authority, but to build them up and make them more Christ-like. He was deeply hurt by their attitude towards him, and the way they were comparing him to the more charismatic "super apostles".

He made no apology for having disciplined them, but he longed for them to demonstrate that they loved him as he loved them, by living as he had taught them. Rather than concluding simply with "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you", as he did in many of his other letters, he added an even greater blessing, one which we can all use.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ: God doesn't offer us a life free from weakness and hardship, but grace to demonstrate His power in our lives. "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (1 Cor 12:9). It is the same grace which took Jesus through the weakness of death on the cross to the power of the resurrection and victory over sin.

The love of God: In his previous letter Paul had tried to convince the Corinthian Christians that no matter how important the gifts of the Spirit are to the life of the church, they are useless without love (1 Cor. 13). Now he prays that they will experience the source of that love, God himself.

The fellowship of the Holy Spirit: Twice in this letter, Paul refers to the Holy Spirit being given to us as a guarantee of our salvation and future resurrection (1 Cor 1:22, 5:5). To experience the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is to know the assurance of our place in God's kingdom. Our relationship to other Christians then becomes something more than just human fellowship. We are bound to each other by a bond stronger than common beliefs or even family relationship - the presence of the Holy Spirit within us.