2 Timothy 1:2

‘To Timothy, my beloved child: Grace, mercy, peace, from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.’

He then names the recipient. It is Timothy his ‘beloved child’. Timothy was especially dear to him, and was like a son to him. He may well have been his son in the Gospel.

‘Grace, mercy and peace.’ Compare 1 Timothy 1:2; Titus 1:4; 2 John 1:3). This was in contrast to the regular ‘Grace and peace to you’ of the earlier letters. But in fact this is what we might have expected, for as godly men grow older they grow more contemplative, and become more aware of the mercy and compassion of God, as had happened to Paul here. He had become conscious that he was ‘the chief of sinners’ (1 Timothy 1:15). Thus do we continually need grace, God’s unmerited love active towards us; His mercy and compassion poured out on a continual basis; and peace, peace with God and peace in our hearts through Him.

‘From God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.’ Here ‘God’ parallels ‘Christ’ and ‘the Father’ parallels ‘the Lord’. Compare James 3:9, ‘the Lord and Father’. Here Jesus is ‘the Lord’. Both share the same status and deity, with the Father as Lord over Creation, and Jesus as Lord over salvation, for His Name means ‘YHWH is salvation’. We will see in Titus that this also applies to the designation ‘our Saviour’ which is used in a parallel way there of both God and the Lord, Jesus Christ.