The prayers of Paul

I started this series on the prayers of Saint Paul found in his writings in the New Testament back on the first Friday of August 2022. This last post was published on the last Friday of July 2023. It has been a year, though there have been breaks for Advent and Lent. I will end as I began, with grace.

This is a series of the prayers of St Paul found in the letters attributed to him in the order he is believed to have written them. Letters to the same place or person will be treated together with the first letter to that destination.

¹⁵ All who are with me send greetings to you. Greet those who love us in the faith.

Grace be with you all.

Titus 3:15

In the first blog post in this series a year ago I talked about the difference between karma and grace. Karma means you get what you deserve, but despite pleas from Psalmists and Wisdom writers, our God is not a god of karma. Grace means that we do not get the bad stuff we deserve from what we have deliberately done. Hold it: I’m wrong, that’s God’s mercy.

That description does not really tell us what grace is. But first, another contrast, this time between earning your way into God’s favour and grace. It is easy to take a verse out of context and build your theology, your dogma around it. You could easily do this in Titus chapter 3. “I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works.” (Titus 3:8). Isn’t devoting yourself to good works a way of getting into God’s favour? Well no, as it says the opposite when taken in the context of the whole of the passage. Here’s what comes before it:

But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Saviour appeared, ⁵ he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, ⁶ whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour, ⁷ so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Titus 3:4-7

We work because God has already met us in three ways (Three? There’s a sermon in here for someone):

The goodness and loving kindness of God – This is a translation of a Greek word, χρηστότης chrēstótēs, which the Blue letter Bible tells me (I speak no Greek) means not only goodness and kindness but is also about integrity. The goodness of God can be trusted.

His own mercy – Again I’ve used the blue letter Bible. The word translated Him, αὐτός autós, does not imply the masculinity of God as it is used as a possessive pronoun for all cases singular and plural and is translated in English Bibles as his, her, its and their as well as mine, yours and theirs. Because autós refers back to something already mentioned it also means same. We cannot imply the gender of God from this. Mercy is used here as something that has to be received. God wants to forgive us, but are we ready to be forgiven? Mercy is the opposite of karma in that we do not get the punishments we deserve.

Being justified by his grace – Grace is God’s unconditional love for everyone, whether or not they have behaved as he wants them to. So say the BBC study notes for GCSE Religious studies. Another way of looking at grace is that it is the love of God given to the unlovely, the peace of God given to the restless. It is unearned.

You do not get into the kingdom of God by good works, God accepts us as we are. Because we are citizens of heaven we get all the privileges that belong to citizens. Good works are because we are in the Kingdom of God, because of all the good things, the goodness and loving kindness, mercy and grace of God we have received, and we then go and offer these things to others, for free. We become the instruments through whom the grace of God is spread to others, even those who are not nice, even people we don’t personly like. For free.

This is what Paul prays for at the end of his letters, that God will continue to give his grace to those who read it. It is plural, even in letters which are addressed to a single person like Titus.

Grace be with you all.

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