The form of the benediction seems to be more correctly given in the
Revised Version, which reads 'with your spirit' instead of 'with you
all.' That form reappears in Galatians and in Philemon. What Paul
especially desires of his favourite church is that they may possess 'the
grace.' Grace is love exercising itself to inferiors, and to those who
deserve something sadder and darker. The gifts of that one grace are
manifold. They comprise all blessings that man can need or receive. This
angel comes with her hands and her lap full of good. Her name is
shorthand for all that God can bestow or man can ask or think.
And it needs all the names by which Christ is known among men to
describe the encyclopædiacal Person who can bestow the encyclopædiacal
gift. Here we have them all gathered, as it were, into one great diadem,
set on His head where once the crown of thorns was twined. He is Lord,
the name which implies at least absolute authority, and is most probably
the New Testament translation of the Old Testament name of Jehovah. He
is our Lord as supreme over us, and wonderful as it is, as belonging to
us. He holds the keys of the storehouse of grace. The river of the water
of life flows where He turns it on. He is Jesus--the personal name which
He bore in the days of His flesh, and by which men who knew Him only as
one of themselves called Him. It is the token of His brotherhood and
the guarantee of the sympathy which will ever bestow 'grace for grace.'
He is the Christ, the Messiah, the name which points back to the Old
Testament ideas and declares His office, realising all the rapturous
anticipations of prophets, and the longings of psalmists, and more than
fulfilling them all by giving Himself to men.
That great gift is to be the companion of every spirit which looks to
that Jesus in the reality of His humanity, in the greatness of His
office, in the loftiness of His divinity, and finds in each of His names
an anchor for its faith and an authoritative claim for its obedience.
Such a wish as this benediction is the truest expression of human
friendship; it is the highest desire any of us can form for ourselves or
for those dearest to us. Do we keep it clear before us in our
intercourse with them so that the end of that intercourse will naturally
be such a prayer?
Our human love has its limitations. We can but wish for others the grace
which Christ can give, but neither our wishes nor His giving can make
the grace ours unless for ourselves we take the great gift that is
freely given to us of God. It is no accident that all his letters close
thus. This benediction is the last word of God's revelation to man, the
brightness in the clear west, the last strain of the great oratorio. The
last word or last book of Scripture is 'the grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ be with you all.' Let us take up the solemn Amen in our lips and
in our hearts.