Ephesians 1:2

Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(2) Grace be to you, and peace.—On this, St. Paul’s all but invariable salutation in every Epistle (found also in the Epistles of St. Peter, 2 John, and Apocalypse), see Note on Romans 1:7.

(2 a.) In Ephesians 1:3-6, the first section of the Introduction, the Epistle ascends at once into “the heavenly places,” naturally catching therefrom the tone of adoration and thanksgiving. It dwells on the election of the children of God by His predestinating love—an election based on His will, designed for His glory, and carrying with it the blessings of the Spirit, through which they become holy and unblamable before Him. On the whole section comp. Romans 8:28-30.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

1:1,2. All Christians must be saints; if they come not under that character on earth, they will never be saints in glory. Those are not saints, who are not faithful, believing in Christ, and true to the profession they make of relation to their Lord. By grace, understand the free and undeserved love and favour of God, and those graces of the Spirit which come from it; by peace, all other blessings, spiritual and temporal, the fruits of the former. No peace without grace. No peace, nor grace, but from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ; and the best saints need fresh supplies of the graces of the Spirit, and desire to grow.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Grace to you, ... - see the notes, Romans 1:7.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

2. (Ro 1:7; 1Co 1:3; 2Co 1:2; Ga 1:3).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Ver. 2,3. Blessed be; i.e. thanked, praised. We bless God when we praise him for, and acknowledge him in, his excellencies or benefits.

Who hath blessed us; hath vouchsafed or communicated, all spiritual blessings to us. God blesseth us when he doeth good to us: and so the word blessed is taken in a different sense from what it was in the former clause.

With all; of all sorts or kinds.

Spiritual blessings; in opposition to temporal and worldly, which the carnal Jews principally expected, and the law mostly promised, {Deu 28:1-14} and which were but types and shadows of those spiritual blessings which immediately relate to the spiritual life and salvation of believers.

In heavenly places; Gr. supercelestial, or heavenly: understand either:

1. Things; and then it seems to be the same as spiritual blessings, only in other terms. Or:

2. Places, in opposition to earthly places, particularly the land of Canaan, in which God had formerly promised to bless his people. These spiritual blessings are in heavenly places, because, though they reach us here on earth, yet they are derived to us from God and Christ in heaven, and in heaven only have their full perfection and consummation hereafter.

In Christ; by or through Christ; upon the account of whose merit, and by whose efficiency, these spiritual blessings are derived from God to us. Or, in Christ as our Head, the repository and seat of all Divine blessings, from whom they flow down upon us as his members, receiving all we have out of his fulness. He seems to have respect to the promise made to Abraham, Genesis 22:18: That in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed; pointing out Christ as that seed, and those blessings as spiritual. See Acts 3:25,26.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Grace be to you, and peace from God,.... See Gill on Romans 1:7.

Geneva Study Bible

Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Expositor's Greek Testament

Ephesians 1:2. χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη: Grace to you and peace. Supply εἴη, on the analogy of other optatives, e.g., in 1 Peter 1:2; 2 Peter 1:2; Judges 1:2. This is the Christian rendering of the greeting with which letters began. It combines the Greek form with the Hebrew, but translates the χαίρειν of the former into the evangelical χάρις. What Paul desires for his readers is the enjoyment of the free, loving favour of God and the peace which results from it. This is the usual form which the opening salutation takes in the Epistles of the NT. So it is in Romans , 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians , 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Philemon 1:1 and 2 Peter; as also in Revelation 1:4. It is not, however, the only form. In James, but only in him, we have the old formula χαίρειν (Ephesians 1:1). In 1 and 2 Timothy and 2 John (but not in Titus according to the best reading) it is χάρις, ἔλεος, εἰρήνη; and in Jude we find ἔλεος ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη καὶ ἀγάπη πληθυνθείη.—ἀπὸ Θεοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν καὶ Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ: from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. The grace and peace desired for the readers by the writer are blessings which come only from God the Father and from Christ. The “Lord Jesus Christ” is named along with “God our Father” as the giver of the grace and peace—a collocation impossible except on the supposition that the writer held Christ to be of the same rank with God or in a unique relation to Him. There is a distinction indicated here between God and Jesus Christ. But it is not in what they are able to give; for the gifts of grace and peace come from both. Nor is any distinction suggested here in respect of nature. But there is a distinction in respect of relation to believers. To the receivers of grace and peace God is in the relation of Father; to the same subjects Christ is in the relation of Lord. God is Father, having made them His children by adoption. Christ is Lord, being constituted Head of the Church and having won the right to their loving obedience and honour; cf. MacP., in loco,

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

2. Grace be to you, and peace] So in the opening words of Rom., 1 Cor., 2 Cor., Gal., Phil., Col., 1 Thess., 2 Thess., Philem., 1 Pet., 2 Pet., and Rev. In the Pastoral Epistles, and in 2 John, the remarkable addition “mercy” appears; in Jude, “mercy, peace, and love.” In these salutations, “Grace” is all the free and loving favour of God in its spiritual efficacy; “Peace” is specially the complacency of reconciliation with which He regards His people, but so as to imply also its results in them; repose, serenity of soul; spiritual happiness, in the largest sense. See further on Ephesians 6:23-24 below.

from God our Father] To St Paul God is the Pater Noster of Christians, in the inner sense of their union by faith with His Son. The Scriptures, while not ignoring a universal Fatherhood of God towards mankind, always tend to put into the foreground the Fatherhood and Sonship of special connexion; that of covenant, of grace, of faith. Among many leading passages see, in N. T., John 1:12; Romans 8:14, &c.; Galatians 3:26; 1 John 3:1-2.

and from the Lord Jesus Christ] He, equally with His Father, is the Giver of eternal blessing, and the Lord of the soul. Incidental phrases of this kind form a testimony to the Proper Deity of the Saviour weightier, if possible, than even that of direct dogmatic passages. They indicate the drift of the main current of apostolic belief. See further on Ephesians 3:19 below.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 2. - Grace unto you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. As in most of Paul's Epistles, "grace" is virtually the first word and the last (Ephesians 6:24), equivalent to free, undeserved mercy in all its manifold forms and manifestations. This Epistle is so full of the subject, that it has been called "The Epistle of Grace." The apostle dwells more fully on it than even in the Epistle to the Romans, and with a more jubilant sense of its richness and sufficiency. Peace is conjoined with grace; they are like mother and daughter, or like twin sisters. Grace is the only foundation of true peace - whether peace with God, peace of conscience, rest and satisfaction of soul, or peace toward our fellow-men. The source of grace and peace is "God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." The two are always in apposition as the Source of blessing, never in opposition. The notion is eminently unscriptural that the Father personally burned with anger until the Son rushed in to appease; both are in beautiful harmony in the scheme of grace. "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son," etc. Ephesians 1:2

Vincent's Word Studies

Grace

One of the leading words of the epistle. It is used thirteen times.