MOST OF US, I think, know what it’s like to get engrossed in a story. There’s the unbelievable tale a friend tells you about her day. The novel you can’t put down. The streaming series you can’t stop binge-watching. Once the plot gets its hooks into you, you have to know how it turns out.

Centuries before Jesus and Paul, the Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote that a well-formed plot has a beginning, middle, and end. That may sound trite, as if he were merely saying that every story has to start and stop, with something in-between. But the point is that a good plot begins with some definitive event and leads the characters through important conflicts and changes before reaching a satisfying conclusion. The middle follows naturally from the beginning, and must be resolved at the end.

Something similar might be said about Paul’s letters. He doesn’t just report a random series of events or jot down a list of ideas. His letters have a deliberate argument and structure, an internal logic and dominant themes. They have a beginning, middle, and end. And as we come to the end of his letter to the Colossians, I want to suggest that the theme suffusing them all is the grace of God.

Here again are his final words:

I, Paul, write this greeting in my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you. (Col 4:18, NIV)

These words, in turn, echo how he began:

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to God’s holy people in Colossae, the faithful brothers and sisters in Christ: Grace and peace to you from God our Father. (Col 1:1-2)

He then immediately celebrates the faith of the Colossians, the way the gospel is bearing fruit in and around them. The fruit he emphasizes is love, which grows from an authentic understanding of grace:

We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people—the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel that has come to you. In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world—just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace. (Col 1:3-6)

That’s the end and the beginning. The middle of the letter deals with the problem of false teaching in Colossae, and the practical application of what it means to live transformed lives as Christians, not merely as people following religious rules. Sandwiched between the end of his instructions for Christian households and his final greetings, the emphasis on grace and the gospel returns:

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. (Col 4:2-6)

Seen this way, his final instructions aren’t a last-minute grab bag of loosely related thoughts. It’s not enough for the Colossians to say, “Okay, great. Paul’s given us the rules for Christian households. Now we know what to do.” That attitude risks being just one more instance of the kind of external religion he argued against earlier.

Rather, he wants them to have the big-picture perspective with which he began the letter. The gospel is about the grace of God. The Colossians have heard the gospel and received that grace, which in turn has begun to transform them from the inside out. But the gospel is for the benefit of the world; their transformation is to be a witness to others who have yet to believe. That’s why their conversations with people outside the church always need to be full of grace; they are to embody what they’ve received in a way that others can see and experience it.

The cross, in other words, is the beginning of the story of who they now are in Christ by the grace of God. They are in the middle of that story now, learning to live under grace, and their hope is that the story will end in glory.

Thus, Paul’s final words, “Grace be with you,” aren’t just a religious way of saying, “goodbye” — which in English, has lost its original meaning of “God we with you” — any more than his opening “Grace and peace to you from God our Father ” is just another way of saying, “Hi.” It’s something like a pastoral prayer that God’s grace and shalom would be present to them and continue to grow in them, permeate their life together, and shape how they respond to others outside the church.

That’s a prayer we can take to ourselves. Instead of taking God’s grace for granted, let’s pray that our lives, our attitudes and behaviors, would constantly be shaped by the consciousness of and gratitude for that grace. Let’s pray that God’s grace would spur in us the desire to be more than merely religious, the desire to live in newness and transformation instead, especially love. Let’s pray that we would look at each other through the eyes of grace and cherish the opportunities we’re given to speak wisely and winsomely of God’s grace to those who have yet to receive the gospel in faith.

That, I think, would be Paul’s prayer for us. Let us pray it for ourselves and for each other, that grace would be the beginning, middle, and end of our story.