Image: Peter Koenig, Conversion of St Paul, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt University Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://act.library.vanderbilt.edu/artworks/58543.
Dear friends: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen (Galatians 1:3-5).
Now, you’ll notice I rarely begin my sermons with the traditional “grace and peace” greeting, except for weddings and funerals. Usually I prefer a cold open to get into the text. But today’s an exception. That’s because the grace and peace we have through Jesus Christ are foundational to the gospel. And the gospel is essential for a healthy, shalom life.
I understand if there may be a little spiritual whiplash. We just spent eight weeks talking about God’s law, exemplified in the Ten Commandments. And that sermon series was titled “Rules for a Shalom Life”. Most of the time, that’s true. The Commandments give the blessing of boundaries so we can keep our priorities straight and our lives in order. Refraining from lying, stealing, adultery, murder, honoring parents and those in authority, and keeping God number one in our lives keep our lives well-ordered and pleasing to God.
But there’s another function of these Commandments. And that’s the function of judgment. No one, not even the holiest saint who ever lived, has kept them perfectly. No one meets God’s expectations, whether in thought, word, or deed. Even if, say, we haven’t murdered anyone or slept with another person’s spouse, we certainly have failed to keep those commandments in our hearts. For example, holding a grudge breaks the Fifth Commandment. So, the law not only blesses us by giving boundaries. It also accuses us when we fail, as we inevitably do.
The whole of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, can be read as a narrative of failure. Adam and Eve fail to keep one commandment. The people of Israel continually fail to fear, love, and trust God above all things and to care for the most vulnerable among them. Even Jesus’ ministry was a failure to all outward appearances, as he ended up on a cross outside the city walls. And even after the Resurrection, the church was plagued by deep disagreements and religious hucksterism. It was also mostly made up of people from the lowest rungs of society. The poor. The weak. Religious and cultural outsiders. That narrative of failure is the context of Paul’s letter.
Paul had planted several churches in Galatia, which is in modern-day central Turkey. After leaving some elders in charge, he went on his way. However, several teachers came after Paul and began to undermine his message. They probably said something like this: “Good people, Paul was right in saying that Jesus opened the door for gentiles like you to be saved. He was also right in saying that Jesus forgives all our sins and makes us right with God our Father. But he left out an important detail. To be part of God’s people, you need to do what God says and observe the Torah and undergo circumcision. After all, God says to Abraham, ‘Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant’ (Gen. 17:14). Unless you do these things, you can’t be saved.”
When Paul hears of this, he goes absolutely ballistic. He’s not so angry at the Galatians, whom he considers his children in faith, but at these teachers that are adding roadblocks to faith in Christ to the point of creating a fake gospel. Sometimes this is called “Jesus-plussing”. The idea is this. Jesus is indeed necessary for salvation, but something else is also seen as necessary. For the teachers, it’s circumcision. For the church today, it’s often political allegiance or cultural practices. Something is added. Whatever it is, it’s some kind of behavior that helps a person to feel self-righteous. That is anathema to Paul. This is why Paul starts by saying “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen." In the grace and peace of Christ, we have the whole good news. We have everything that makes us enough.
Grace and peace often seem like trite church words. Grace often means “cut me a little slack” or “go easy on me”. “Peace” often means “absence of conflict”. But grace and peace mean so much more than those things. In his commentary on Galatians, Luther wrote:
Grace and peace—these two words embrace the whole of Christianity. Grace forgives sin, and peace stills the conscience. The two devils who plague us are sin and conscience, the power of the Law and the sting of sin (1 Cor. 15:56). But Christ has conquered these two monsters and trodden them underfoot, both in this age and in the age to come. The world does not know this; therefore it cannot teach anything sure about how to overcome sin, conscience, and death. Only Christians have this kind of teaching and are equipped and armed with it, so that they can overcome sin, despair, and eternal death. It is a teaching that is given only by God; it does not proceed from free will, nor was it invented by human reason or wisdom.[1]
As Luther says, the world cannot believe that this is how we get grace and peace. It can’t believe that Christ would liberate us in this way. It wants us to earn it by:
- Professional advancement
- Parenting the “right way”
- Having the right body
- Being on the correct side, politically, socially, and historically
- Making a lot of money
- Being busy
- And even religious practice!
But none of these things can forgive our sins or settle our consciences. Even if we do them as well as we can, our consciences can still accuse us. The devil never tires of reminding us over and over of our past failures, no matter how outwardly successful we may be.
But through Jesus Christ, our God and Father gives us his grace that liberates us from sin and calms our troubled hearts. And here’s the kicker: God’s grace—that is, God’s forgiveness—is only given to the sinful. To the unworthy. To the ungodly. To those who have failed to live God’s way. That’s us. And God’s peace only comes to the forgiven. God’s grace and peace can’t be earned. They can’t be bargained for. They can’t be achieved by having enough faith, hope, or love. They can’t be gained by following the Commandments well enough. They are only given, and as Luther writes, we can only receive them as the soil receives the rain.
If your conscience still carries past failures; if it still judges and accuses you; if you carry sins that weigh on you, bring those before God and then come forward and receive that grace and peace in Communion. If nothing is troubling you right now, but you know you are a sinner in need of God’s grace—come forward. Forgiveness is here for you. Trust that word. Jesus is trustworthy and whatever he says happens. Over the next few weeks we will explore further what this forgiveness does for us and how it liberates and empowers us. God bless us with the riches of his Word. Amen.
© 2026, David M. Fleener. Permission granted to copy and adapt original material herein for non-commercial purposes.
[1] Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 26: Lectures on Galatians, 1535, Chapters 1-4, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999), 26.
