'Now the Lord of Peace Himself give you peace
always, by all means. The Lord be with you
all.'--2 THESS. iii. 16.
We have reached here the last of the brief outbursts of prayer which
characterise this letter, and bear witness to the Apostle's affection
for his Thessalonian converts. It is the deepening of the ordinary
Jewish formula of meeting and parting. We find that, in most of his
letters, the Apostle begins with wishing 'grace and peace,' and closes
with an echo of the wish. 'Peace be unto you' was often a form which
meant nothing. But true religion turns conventional insincerities into
real, heartfelt desires. It was often a wish destined to remain
unfulfilled. But loving wishes are potent when they are changed into
petitions.
The relation between the two clauses of my text seems to be that the
second, 'The Lord be with you all,' is not so much a separate,
additional supplication as rather the fuller statement, in the form of
prayer, of the means by which the former supplication is to be
accomplished. 'The Lord of Peace' gives peace by giving His own
presence. This, then, is the supreme desire of the Apostle, that Christ
may be with them all, and in His presence they may find the secret of
tranquillity.