“May grace incorruptible be with all who love our lord Jesus Christ. Amen” (Eph. 6:24).
After preaching twelve sermons on Ephesians over the past three months, there are two sections I seem to have neglected: 1:1-2, 6:21-24.
Ephesians 1:1-2 reads as follows: “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who live in Ephesus and those faithful to Christ Jesus who are there. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
In 6:21-24, Paul concludes the letter by saying: “And so that you may know the things concerning me –i.e. what I am doing, etc.– Tychicus, the beloved brother and faithful servant of the lord will relay all such things to you. I have sent him to you for this very reason, so that you may know the things concerning us, and by this your hearts might be encouraged. Peace to the brothers and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. May grace incorruptible be with all who love our lord Jesus Christ. Amen.”
Ephesians thus opens as any ancient Greco-Roman epistle would, by identifying the author (and his credentials) and recipients, and providing a formulaic salutation or greeting (“Grace to you…”).
After mentioning the beloved Tychicus –who probably wrote the letter based on the apostle’s dictations– Paul resumes the convention from the opening, adding Tychicus as another “author” (who carried the letter to the Ephesians and was the first to “perform it” or “recite it” to them) and re-identifying the letter’s recipients, now called brothers (*although P46, one of the earliest papyrus manuscripts of Paul’s letters, reads: “Peace to the saints [not brothers],” thus replicating Paul’s language from Eph. 1:1).
Rather than, “Grace to you and peace…” (1:2), a formulaic greeting in which grace and peace stand in close proximity, here Paul writes, “Peace to the brothers and love with faith” (6:23), and “May grace incorruptible be with all who love our lord Jesus Christ” (6:24).
Now, while peace, love, and faith are here mentioned, all of which deserve careful attention and study, my focus at present is upon grace.
The final verse in the Greek text of Ephesians is notoriously difficult to translate. The first eleven words (in Greek) pose little difficulty: “May grace be with all who love our lord Jesus Christ.” Rather straightforward if you ask me.
The difficulty comes in the last two words, however: en aphtharsia or “in/with/by incorruptibility/immortality.” Many have read this final phrase as modifying the love of those who “love our lord Jesus Christ.”
The NIV, for example, reads: “Grace to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love.” The ESV: “Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible.” Or the NASB: “Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with incorruptible love.”
What this would suggest is that such grace is given only to those whose love of Christ is undying or incorruptible. Only those who exhibit such love are worthy of grace by this reading.
This just doesn’t seem right. It doesn’t accord with Paul’s language elsewhere and it seems a rather awkward way to end a letter, especially one sent to persons less familiar to Paul.
Another more viable option (if you ask me!) is to read this final phrase as modifying another item in this verse, and that is (you guessed it!): grace.
The NLT’s rendering moves in this direction: “May God’s grace be eternally upon all who love our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This rendering, however, translates en aphtharsia with the temporal adverb “eternally,” as opposed to incorruptibly or imperishably.
This views Paul’s final prepositional phrase as a statement about time and duration rather than quality.
My contention, however, given Paul’s discourse about grace in Ephesians and his other letters, is that grace incorruptible captures the essence of Paul’s diction in Eph. 6:24.
Years ago, when it just came out, I had the privilege of reading and reviewing (for a class) John Barclay’s magisterial study, Paul and the Gift (2016; which has since been digested and repackaged in the shorter volume, Paul and the Power of Grace, published in 2020).
Over the 20th century many scholars began to study Paul’s letters and theology in relation to that of other Jewish writers in the Second Temple Period (roughly 516 BC – 70 AD). One study in particular was that of E.P. Sanders entitled, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977).
In that study, Sanders demonstrates how the concepts of “grace” and “covenant” seem to permeate Second Temple Jewish literature.
In so doing, he argued against a host of previous scholars who had argued that “intertestamental Judaism” (i.e., the Judaism between the closure of the OT period and the beginning of the NT period) seemed to exhibit the pursuit of “righteousness by works.”
Many agreed with Sanders’s thesis that the Judaism of this time was not “a religion of works-righteousness which neglected God’s covenant of grace.”
Others, however, were less sympathetic, thinking Sanders’s thesis rendered inexplicable Paul’s teaching on “justification by faith.”
John Barclay’s book (Paul and the Gift) appeared nearly 40 years after Sanders’s work and continues the same line of inquiry.
Barclay’s overall thesis is as follows: “Although the notion of grace abounds in intertestamental Judaism, Paul and other writers of his day ‘perfected,’ or drew out the ultimate meaning of grace, in different ways” (from Frank Matera’s review of Paul and the Gift)
Such “intertestamental Judaism” was not a religion of “works-righteousness” as Sanders had argued, but “neither was it a religion in which there was a uniform view of grace.”
According to Barclay, grace as a concept seems to be perfected or drawn to its logical extreme in six ways (throughout Jewish literature), all of which are quite legitimate, he adds.
These six perfections are: superabundance (which emphasizes the size or significance of the gift); singularity (which emphasizes the giver who gives the gift for the sole purpose of benevolence); priority (which emphasizes that the gift is given prior to any action on the part of the recipient); incongruity (which emphasizes that the gift is given without regard for the worth or deserving status of the subject); efficacy (which emphasizes that the gift achieves what it was designed to do); and non-circularity (which emphasizes that there is no reciprocity expected)
It is not as though grace needs to operate in one of these six ways (or in combinations of these six). Barclay is simply observing how humans have employed the language of grace within Second Temple Jewish literature, including the letters of Paul.
Where Barclay’s work intersects with our study is in his characterization of Paul’s perspective on grace.
As a Jew of the 1st century (AD) Paul is “both similar to and different from his contemporaries,” notes Barclay. Like other Jewish authors of the time (and before his time), Paul repeatedly emphasizes grace in his writings.
However, unlike nearly all other Jewish authors of this period, Paul repeatedly emphasizes the incongruity of God’s grace in Christ.
What this means is that Paul’s vision of grace, while not excluding the other five perfections, puts particular stress on the notion of incongruity, that is: God gives without regard for the recipient’s worth or deserving status.
With an eye toward Eph. 6:24, however, a text Barclay does not mention in Paul and the Gift, I want to dwell on Barclay’s fifth perfection: efficacy.
Grace can also be perfected in a way that emphasizes the effect the gift is meant to achieve and does achieve in many cases.
Rather than translating Eph. 6:24 as: “Grace to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with incorruptible love,” if we instead translate, “May grace incorruptible be with all who love our lord Jesus Christ,” we see the efficacy of God’s grace in the life of believers.
In other words, grace –which really means gift given the basic sense of the Greek term– i.e., the grace of God in Christ, can make us incorruptible, imperishable, indestructible, wholly fit for life in God’s kingdom.
Paul is thus wishing that through everything he’s already said and through their obedience to his commands and their commitment to Christ's vocation in their lives, the Ephesians might experience the full effects of God’s grace, efficacious in the truest sense of the term.
This grace, omnipresent throughout Ephesians, promises an incorruptible, imperishable, indestructible existence, which can only be sourced from God himself.
This grace, as we know, has overflowed in a multitude of spiritual blessings in the heavenly places. It has called into existence a diverse yet united people for God's own possession. It has promoted us to reign with Christ over all the forces of evil and promises life eternal in Christ's kingdom which will soon be all in all.
The book of Ephesians, if anything, is about grace.
It's about how God's grace, which began as an idea, a kind of dream in God’s heart, took shape as an intricate plan to redeem and sanctify a people for his own possession.
Ephesians thus shows us how grace, sourced ultimately from God in Christ, can inform and inspire our life together and in so doing gives rise to a new world. God’s grace in Ephesians is incongruous but also efficacious, forming a new humanity, and consequently, a new creation.
Jonah Bissell
Pastor