trolling power of sin. They are therefore bound to live in accordance with tliis character. All the saints, i. e. all those in the place in which Paul then was. The communion of saints includes all believers who feel themselves to be one body in Christ. /Salute you, tliat is, wish you salvation, which includes all good.
14. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the commimion of the Holy Ghost, (be) with you all. Amen.
This comprehensive benediction closes the epistle. It in- cludes all the benefits of redemption. First, the grace, or fa- vour, of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the theanthropical designation of our blessed Saviour. It includes or indicates his divine nature, he is our Lord ; his human nature, he is Je- sus ; his ofiice, he is the Christ, the Messiah, the long-promised Redeemer. It is the flavour, the unmerited love and all that springs from it, of this divine person clothed in our nature, and who as the theanthropos is invested with the ofiice of Messiah, the headship over his own people and all power in heaven and earth, that the apostle invokes for all his believing readers. Every one feels that this is precisely what he, as a guilty, pol- luted, helpless sinner, needs. If this glorious, mysteriously constituted, exalted Saviour, Son of God and Son of man, makes us the objects of his favour, then is our present security and ultimate salvation rendered certain. The love of God. In one view the love of God is the source of redemption. God manifested his love in giving his Son for us, Rom. 5, 8. But in another view the love of God to us is due to the grace and work of Christ. That is, the manifestation of that love in the pardon, sanctification and salvation of men, was con- ditional on the work of Christ. We are reconciled to God by the death of his Son. His death as a satisfaction for our Kins was necessary in order to our being actually introduced into the fellowship of God and made partakers of his love. Therefore the apostle puts the grace of Christ before the love of God, as, in the sense mentioned, the necessary condition of its manifestation. A?id t/ie coinmunion (Koivwvta, the partici- pation) of the Holy Ghost. The primary object of the death of Christ was the communication of the Holy Spirit He re- deemed us from the curse of the law that we might receive 14