Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Galatians 1:3

"Grace to you and peace from God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ," — Galatians 1:3 (ASV)

Paul’s nearly standard formula of Christian blessing and greeting seems particularly appropriate at the start of this letter. Normally, Paul alters the traditional Greek greeting (chairein) to the important Christian word “grace” (charis; GK 5921). This is always striking, but it is doubly striking here, inasmuch as it occurs in a letter to churches where the sufficiency of salvation by grace was being questioned and perhaps even denied. In the same way, “peace” (eirene; GK 1645), the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew greeting shalom (GK 8934), is appropriate, for it denotes that state of favor and well-being into which people are brought by Christ’s death on the cross and in which they are kept by God’s persevering grace. To choose law, as the Galatians were doing, is to fall from grace. To live by works is to lose the peace with God that was purchased for believers by Christ’s atonement (cf. Romans 5:1).

Paul characteristically joins the names of the Father and Son together in the statement that they are the source of grace and peace (cf. Jn 17:21). But inverting the order, as he does here (from v.1 to v.3), heightens the effect.