Last time (not yesterday, sorry) I shared about one of the two unexpected features in Paul’s greeting to Timothy – the placement of God in the role as Savior. This time I want to look at the insertion of a word into his greeting.
Paul had a standard greeting in all his letters to the churches and to individuals – “grace and peace to you.” This greeting was a fusion of the common Gentile greeting, “chaire,” which meant “rejoice” in the verb form but is translated “grace” in the noun form and “irene” which is Greek for the Hebrew greeting “shalom” meaning “peace.” That greeting seems to have been unique to Paul and perfectly supports his call for the inclusion of the Gentile people into the nation of Israel under allegiance to one king – Christ Jesus.
Paul’s greeting to Timothy goes like this:
To Timothy, my true child in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. (1 Timothy 1:2 NRSVue)
When I approach this letter, I expect it to be less formal than Paul’s epistles to the churches. If he used “grace and peace” to reinforce his message about Jews and the Gentiles as one people, then we might expect that he would shed it when corresponding with his protege. Surely Timothy, as a half-Jew circumcised as an adult and chased out of several towns with Paul over this mission, would have known its importance. I suppose I would expect that Paul to just use something like, “Dear Timothy.” But Paul unexpectedly retains his usual greeting complete with a reminder about his apostleship.
All this leads me to think this letter wasn’t just a personal correspondence with Timothy but a letter to be read over Timothy’s shoulder (so to speak), by the Ephesian church. By this I mean that his letter was likely to be read to Timothy in front of the church or at least selectively by Timothy to the church. It was likely a letter of commendation to bolster young Tim’s authority especially since he was to appoint elders and keep them on track. As we go through the rest of the letter, we can expect to encounter sections of a personal nature and those aimed over Timothy’s shoulder to the church. The inclusion of “grace and peace” might be an example of the latter.
But Paul does change up his usual greeting for Timothy. He includes, “mercy, between “grace” and “peace.” While Paul uses “God our Savior” also in Titus, we find the addition of “mercy” only in the letters to Timothy. We can only speculate as to why this might be so, so I will.
Paul often includes a theme statement in his greetings, so he might have included “mercy” here to signal a purpose for the letter. It does seem that mercy is an important theme in 1 Timothy. Before we get out of chapter 1, we find Paul praising Christ Jesus for the mercy he showed him as “the chief of sinners.” As the letter develops, we find Paul calling on Timothy to instruct the church to pray for the pagan rulers in Ephesus. That’s not an easy ask. To seek the good of immoral, powerful people we must absorb injustice for the sake of peace. This is mercy. And yet, God doesn’t expect us to pick up the tab for someone else’s offenses. Instead, he first supplies us with the mercy he means for us to dispense.
At some point along the way, it’s easy for Christians, especially those who like Timothy were beneficiaries of healthy spiritual nurture, to claim rights to their righteousness. They forget that they too are the chief of sinners. This illusion of personal, relative righteousness makes them intolerant and judgmental. They stop serving as vessels of mercy and become vessels of wrath. It’s a dangerous slide, not into immorality, but into self-righteousness. To people like that, Paul wrote:
Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. (Romans 2:4-5 NRSVue)
So, our hearts were made to hold and serve God’s mercy. Self-righteousness makes us stop accepting it and even believing we ever needed it. Without the fresh supply filling and pouring out of our hearts, the poisonous secretions of offense come in. The cavity within us meant to receive and serve mercy becomes an infected pustule filled with disappointment and disdain. Regardless of our polite veneer (for surely a self-righteous person must be polite) we come to reek of wrath. We become sick with wrath and eventually will die forever from it.
Looks like I made a lot out of the inclusion of one word into Paul’s greeting. I think I might be projecting. I’m disappointed with people on the regular. If I’m honest, I’m disappointed with God. In my disappointment, I’ve retreated from ministering his grace and lost my peace. I’m sulking while nursing a perceived offense. From my judgmental perch, I can’t imagine that I’m the problem. And yet, this inability to imagine it is the very blinding beam in Jesus’ warning.
This morning, may you and I receive grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.
Nathan Wilkerson 