Cheesy Beef Tostadas 👍 Grace & Peace to you...

Ephesians 1:1-2

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

This salutation… or greeting by Paul has three important things that I want to point out to you.

First, is Paul's credentials: Notice he describes himself as "an apostle... by the will of God."

An apostle was one sent with a message.

Paul gloried in the fact that he was an apostle of Jesus Christ. And, as he tells us in his letter to the Galatians, the Lord Jesus appeared to him directly.

Paul did not learn what he knew about the gospel by discussing it with the other apostles.

The truth that he imparts to us he learned directly from Jesus Christ, and that is his authority.

Therefore, when you read Paul you are reading an authorized spokesman for the Lord Jesus. What he says is what he has heard.

So, if you don't agree with Paul, you don't agree with the Lord either! And even Peter identifies Paul’s writings as “Scripture.”

Paul was always amazed by the fact that it was "by the will of God" that he was an apostle. He had no other glory in his life than that God… in the amazing wonder of His grace, had called him, a man who was a bitter and intense persecutor of the church had changed him and sent him out to be an apostle to the Gentiles.

Notice that Paul doesn’t give any other credentials.

He doesn't refer to his training or his Hebrew background or his lineage or anything else. He simply says, "I'm an apostle by the will of God. That is the ground upon which I write."

Second is how these Christians are described: "saints... the faithful in Christ Jesus."

The word Saint can often cause us to wince a little.

Perhaps because we have the wrong idea of what a saint is. We often think of them as being holier than we are… unlike ordinary human beings.

But the saints of the New Testament are people like us, people who have struggles and difficulties, who have problems at home and at work.

But there is one remarkable thing about them: they are different.

That is really the basic meaning of this word saint.

In the Greek it comes from the word holy. And holy means distinct, different, whole, belonging to God and, therefore, living differently.

It isn't that they don't have problems, but it’s that they handle them in a different way. They have a different lifestyle.

Then third, comes the usual greeting from Paul: "Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."

The two great gifts bestowed upon the Christian… grace and peace.

We can always have grace and peace, no matter what is happening in our circumstances. And these two characteristics ought to evident in the Christian life.

There is a great, life-changing heritage available to believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. And our lives should be characterized by God's gifts of grace and peace.