Section 45
16 Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way. The Lord be with all of you.
17 1, Paul, write this greeting in my own hand, which is the distinguishing mark in all my letters. This is how I write.
18 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
Paul brings the letter to a close in his normal fashion. He stresses the peace that he prays will come to his correspondents from the Lord of peace, and concludes with his habitual prayer for grace. But in between he has an unusual section in which he explains his habit of authenticating his letters by writing a little in his own handwriting. Apparently he did this constantly, but he does not normally explain what he was doing.
16 Paul usually has a short prayer36 toward the close of his letters, and it not uncommonly includes a reference to "the God of peace." Because of this it is probably wrong to place a great deal of emphasis on the occurrence of "peace" just here. Yet at the least we may notice that it is appropriate immediately following his references to the unhappy division in the church. The Lord they serve is a Lord of peace, and those who serve him should likewise be characterized by peace. At the same time we must bear in mind that peace in the Bible is not simply the absence of strife (see on 1 Thess. 1:1). It means prosperity in the completest sense, and its association here with the Lord is a reminder that such a state comes only as the gift of God.
Though a prayer with a reference to "the God of peace" is common in Paul, one mentioning "the Lord of peace" is not (the expression is found here only in the New Testament). "Lord" with Paul usually means Jesus Christ, and there is every reason for thinking that it is Jesus who is in mind here. The "himself' gives it a certain emphasis, as is the case elsewhere in these epistles. The entire expression is a reminder to the Thessalonians that the solution to the problems before them, including those of the idlers and disobedient, rested not in their own efforts, but in the help that the Lord would bring them.37 "At all times" is not quite the force of the Greek, which is rather "continually" (as Moffatt renders it). The thought is not that of a peace that comes on a series of occasions, but that of a peace that is unchanging. It abides continually. The thought of a peace that is present no matter how the circumstances may change is contained in the following "in every way." "Way" literally means "turning." It has within it the idea of the manner in which conditions alter. No change in that which is outward can interfere with the Christian's deep-seated peace. His peace is not a matter of equilibrium with the tensions of the outward. It is the gift of the Lord, and comes independently of outward circumstances.
This is put in another way when Paul prays, "The Lord be with all of you." The Christian's peace is never independent of the Lord. It is the gift of the Lord, and it is impossible apart from him; indeed, it is the very presence of the Lord. It is only as the Lord is in the heart of the believer day by day that he knows this peace. It may be an example of the way Paul enjoyed it that he puts "all" at the end of his prayer. There is no resentment against those who disobey his injunctions. He prays for all the Thessalonians, those who were out of step as well as those who were in perfect harmony with him.
17 As the letter draws to its close, Paul explains the method he employs to authenticate his writings. It seems to have been his custom (as with most people of antiquity) to dictate his correspondence while an amanuensis wrote down what he said (in Romans we even read of Tertius, "who wrote down this letter," Rom. 16:22). The apostle would take the pen himself, however, toward the close of the letter and write a few lines himself; his own characteristic handwriting would show that the letter came from him (cf. GNB, "With my own hand I write this"). The stage at which Paul took the pen seems to have varied. He wrote quite a few verses at the end of Galatians (Gal. 6:11), but shorter passages in other letters (1 Cor. 16:21 and Col. 4:18 are other places where he draws attention to what he was doing). It is possible that in the case of a short letter like that to Philemon he wrote the whole (Phlm. 19). We do not know why he drew attention to the autograph on some occasions but not on others. There is no reason for thinking that he penned his salutation only in the cases where he specifically calls attention to it. He tells us here that it was his custom "in all my letters." Deissmann has drawn attention to an interesting example of this practice when he reproduces a letter from a gentleman called Mystarion to a priest.38 The letter is written in one hand, but the final greeting and the date are in another hand. There is no reasonable doubt that this latter is the hand of Mystarion himself. The interesting thing is that Mystarion says nothing about this. He just does it. If we had only a copy of his letter, and not the original itself, we would not know what had happened. And what Mystarion did, so also did Paul the apostle.
Paul proceeds to tell us that this is his customary "mark," that is, means of authentication. This is the way he shows that his letters are genuine. Some exegetes have thought that this mark shows that this is the first letter Paul wrote to the Thessalonians; such a statement would be necessary in a first letter, they maintain, but not after that. This, however, is to go too far too fast. Paul may well have simply followed his normal practice in his first letter. Later people were not certain about a letter that purported to come from Paul (2:2). Was it really from the apostle? To answer such questions he now makes his practice clear. They may know that this letter is authentic because they can recognize his handwriting. And since this is his normal practice, they have a test that they can apply to every letter that claims to come from Paul. Incidentally, the way he puts it, "the mark in all my letters," makes it seem as though he wrote other letters that are now lost. "This is how I write" probably means "This is what my writing is like," rather than "This is my custom" (cf. Knox, "This is my handwriting").