C. The Grace (3:18)
C. THE GRACE (3:18)
18 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
Since this closing “grace” is nearly identical to that in the first letter, I begin here by simply appending those comments, with only some slight modifications. But the one difference, the addition of “you all,” needs further comment.
18 It is noteworthy that the standard “good-bye” in ancient letters was errōso (lit. “be strong”), which occurs in the New Testament only in the letter of James recorded in Acts 15:29. As with the salutation with which our letter began, this standard conclusion has been Christianized. It was “grace,” God’s own favor that is theirs through “the Lord, Jesus Christ,” with which he greeted them at the beginning; and now that same “grace” is what he wishes for them in conclusion. It is the one word in Paul’s vocabulary that embraces all that God has done, and that he desires that God will do, for his Thessalonian friends through Christ Jesus.
The addition of “you all” at the end of this salutation seems to be quite in keeping with the content of the letter itself, especially in light of the immediately preceding concern which Paul has chosen to deal with at the end. One should perhaps not make too much of such an otherwise “slight” addition, but since it is basically unique to this letter,1021 more needs to be said. As with the proviso sentence that concludes the preceding instruction/correction (v. 15), this seems to be yet another way (subtle perhaps, but real nonetheless) of embracing the entire community in the concluding grace. Looked at in this way, it is perhaps his own offering of the right hand of fellowship to some who otherwise need correction in order to be part of the “all.”
At the end we should note once more that those who think this letter to be a forgery are faced with enormous historical difficulties. The ultimate question is “why,” why would anyone take the trouble to write such a letter in Paul’s name — and for whose sake — one can only wonder? First of all, the time it would have taken its “author” to have entered so thoroughly into Paul’s skin as to duplicate the scores of incidental matters that only an author can truly do seems beyond the reach even of historical imagination. And then to do so with regard to matters that seem so much less weighty than others that might have been addressed would seem to be without purpose. This is not to put the letter itself down as less than important, but to ask the ultimate question of “why?”
Not only so, but the question of “how” must also be asked; how could a forger have so thoroughly entered into Paul’s skin, as it were, and yet have kept to the grammar and stylistic matters that are related only to 1 Thessalonians in the Pauline corpus? In the end, this is a letter one can well understand Paul to have written after some things in the first letter had not gone as well as he might have hoped; but it seems beyond historical imagination that anyone this early in the church would have done so. And to have done so at a later date, without once yielding to the temptation to bring to it matters from the rest of the corpus only increases the difficulties. Thus this remains a “theory” pure and simple, and one that should eventually lose its place in Pauline studies.