The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ- 2 Corinthians 1:3

As we begin an examination of Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, we find that Paul, after a brief introduction, begins with “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”. Paul begins his letter with a phrase which is filled with meaning, and we will examine it closely in order to see just what Paul may intend to communicate here. The Greek word translated “praise” here is eulogetos, from which is derived the English word eulogy. It literally means “good word”, to praise someone is to say a good word about them, to speak well of them. The unusual feature in Paul’s usage here is that he uses it as an adjective rather than a verb. Paul is not merely saying something we are to do to God, but telling us who or what God is, and He is the one ultimately deserving of being spoken well of, of having good words spoken about Him. These good words are to be spoken of “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”. The God to whom Paul refers here is “the” God, the one who is truly sovereign over all of creation. He is to be distinguished from many others “gods”, from other “sovereigns”. The concept with which we are dealing here is the concept of man created in the image and likeness of God. As we learn from Genesis, what this basically means is each human functions as his or her own “sovereign”, as his or her own ultimate determiner of what is true or false, good or evil, right or wrong. As Christians, we have chosen to look to “the” God as our ultimate source of what is true, right and good, our “sovereignty” is submitted to His, while those who do not believe look to another “god” as their ultimate source of what is true, right and good. The one true sovereign God here is also referred to as the “Father” of our Lord Jesus Christ”. The term Father is used here not in the normal way in which we use it today, but in the sense in which Jesus uses it in John 8, in which he tells the Pharisees that their “father” is the devil, for it is the devil’s will which they seek to do, it is the devil’s business which they are about. Our father is the one whose business we are about, whose will we seek to do, and it is in this sense that God is the “Father” of Jesus, for Jesus was always doing the will of His Father. This very concept is then made applicable to the lives of all believers, for Jesus is referred to here as “our Lord”. The “our” here obviously refers to Christians, and the term “Lord” is used here of us in very much the same sense which “Father” is used of Jesus. Those for whom Jesus is “Lord”, seek to do His will, to be about His business, just as Jesus sought to do his Father’s will, to be about His Father’s business. So what we can ultimately conclude about Pauls’ message to us in the use of this phrase is that believers are to submit to God the Father as their ultimate source of truth, and also seek to do the will of God the Father just as Jesus the Son did.