Page:Jesus and the Gospel.djvu/49

and have their being in Christ. The Church of the Thessalonians is a church in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ; the grace and peace which are the sum and the fruit of all the divine blessings it enjoys come to it from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (I Thess. 1¹; II Thess. 1¹). And this co-ordination of Christ with the Father, this elevation into the sphere of the divine in which Christ and the Father work harmoniously the salvation of men, is not a formality of salutation: it pervades the epistles throughout. Every function of the Christian life is determined by it; the place of Christ in the faith and life of Christians can only be characterised as the place of God, not of man. St. Paul has confidence in the Lord toward the Thessalonians (II. 3⁴); he charges and entreats them in the Lord Jesus Christ (II. 3¹²); they stand in the Lord (I. 3⁹); he gives them commandments through the Lord Jesus (I. 4²); church rulers are those who are over them in the Lord (I. 5¹²); the Christian rule of life is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning them (I. 5¹⁸); the Christian departed are the dead in Christ (I. 4¹⁶); all benediction is summed up in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ (I. 5²⁸); II. 1¹², 3¹⁸); Jesus and the Father are co-ordinated as the object of prayer (I. 3¹¹), and prayer is directly addressed to the Lord, i.e. Christ (I. 3¹²). Our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we are to obtain salvation at the great day, is He who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep we should live together with Him (I. 5¹⁰). It is as though all that God does for us He does in and through Christ, so that Christ confronts us as Saviour in divine glory and omnipotence. We may trust Him as God is trusted, live in Him as we live in God, and appeal to Him to save us as only God can save; and this is the essentially Christian relation to Him. It is what we found before in the primitive preaching of Acts; it is