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Grace (2)
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or GRACE (χάρις).—The Gr. χάρις, with which ‘grace’ in English fully corresponds, is one of those words (cf. ἀγαπάω, ἀγάπη, ‘love’) which have been raised to a higher power and filled with a profounder content by the revelation of Jesus Christ. In accordance with its derivation from χαίρω, it originally signified in classical Gr. something that gives joy or delight, hence charm or winsomeness. From this it came to be used in a subjective sense of a courteous, kindly, or, as we say, a ‘gracious’ disposition; and so became equivalent to goodwill or favour. From the sense of favour as an attitude of will and feeling, the transition was natural to ‘a favour,’ a concrete token of kindness and goodwill. Finally, as grace implies not only a giver but a receiver, it was employed to denote the gratitude felt by the latter for the favour bestowed, and the thanks by which gratitude is expressed (cf. the English phrase ‘grace before meat’). In nearly all these senses the word is found both in the LXX Septuagint and the NT. But, while the LXX Septuagint does not carry us beyond the point reached in the classical authors, when we pass to the NT the old meanings of χάρις are wonderfully enlarged, until, as Cremer says (Lex. s.v.), ‘it has become quite a different word in NT Greek, so that we may say it depended upon Christianity to realize its full meaning and to elevate it to its rightful sphere.’
1. Grace in the Gospels.—In Authorized Version of the Gospels, ‘grace’ occurs only 4 times, once in Lk. (Luke 2:40) and thrice in Jn. (John 1:14; John 1:16-17). When we turn to the Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885, however, and include the marginal readings, we find the word in 4 other Lukan passages. Thrice it is used as a marginal alternative for ‘favour’ or ‘favoured’ (Luke 1:28; Luke 1:30; Luke 2:52), while in one important passage (Luke 4:22) ‘words of grace’ is substituted for ‘gracious words.’ In every case, both in Lk. and Jn., the corresponding Gr. word is χάρις, with the exception of Luke 1:23 where the derivative vb. χαριτόω is used. Besides these passages in which either in Authorized Version or Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885 it is rendered ‘grace,’ χάρις occurs 4 times in Lk. (Luke 6:32-34; Luke 17:9) in the sense of ‘thanks.’
(1) We observe that grace is not a word or idea that is used by the Synoptists generally, St. Luke being the only one who employs it. It is also worthy of notice that the term is not one which the Evangelist ever attributes to Jesus Himself. It is true that he represents Jesus as using χάρις 4 times, but only in the ordinary colloquial sense of thanks. Thus, although χάρις or ‘grace’ was to undergo something like a transfiguration through the influence of Christianity, and indeed was to become not only a specifically Christian word, but a word of which we might say that it shines like a jewel on the brow of Christ Himself, whose life and death and teaching gave birth to the ideas which it has come to express, it is not a term which we find in any of our Lord’s recorded utterances.
In 4 out of the 5 Lukan passages in which ‘grace’ occurs, it has the ordinary sense of ‘favour.’ Twice the Virgin Mary is declared to have been the object of the Divine favour (Luke 1:28; Luke 1:30). Of Jesus it is said in one passage that the grace (or favour) of God was upon Him (Luke 2:40), and in another that He advanced in favour (or grace) with both God and men (Luke 2:52). The remaining passage (Luke 4:22) is the only Synoptic one which may possibly carry us on to the peculiar Christian significance of the word. When Jesus preached His first sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth, His fellow-townsmen are said to have wondered ἐπὶ τοῖς λόγοις τῆς χάριτος. Authorized Version renders ‘at the gracious words’; Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885, more literally, ‘at the words of grace.’ But what does the expression mean? Does it point merely, as has commonly been supposed, to our Lord’s winsomeness and charm as a speaker, His grace of manner, His possession of one of the most effective of the gifts of an orator? Or is χάριτος to be taken not as a Hebraistic gen. of quality, but as an objective gen., so that ‘words of grace’ = ‘words about grace’? It is not impossible that by this phrase, which is thus capable of a double interpretation, St. Luke intended to convey a twofold meaning, and to let his readers understand that the words of Christ, as Dr. Bruce puts it, were ‘words of grace about grace’ (Exp. Gr. Test. in loc.). In any case, however, it seems probable that the objective meaning was the one immediately before the Evangelist’s mind. The fact that genitives of quality are frequent in writings influenced by Heb., and that parallels to the use of χάρις to denote the quality of charm in a speaker can be adduced not only from the LXX Septuagint (Ecclesiastes 10:12, Psalms 44:3, Sirach 21:16), but from the classical authors (Hom. Od. viii. 175; Dem. Orat. li. 9), weighs little in comparison with the analogies offered by the usage of St. Luke himself in Acts. It is admitted that λόγος τῆς χάριτος αὐτοῦ (Acts 14:3; Acts 20:32) means the message of salvation, and that τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τῆς χάριτος τοῦ θεοῦ (Acts 20:24) means the gospel of the grace of God in the full Pauline and Christian sense of the expression. Moreover, the text from which our Lord preached His Nazareth sermon (Luke 4:18-19, cf. Isaiah 61:1-2) lends itself most readily to this larger interpretation, and so do the opening words of the sermon itself, ‘This day hath this Scripture been fulfilled in your ears’ (Luke 4:21). Noteworthy, too, in this connexion is the fact that in quoting the glowing words of the Evangelical prophet regarding ‘the acceptable year of the Lord,’ Jesus made the utterance still more gracious by omitting any reference to a coming day of Divine vengeance (cf. Luke 4:19 with Isaiah 61:2). But, above all, we must bear in mind that whether the Third Gospel was written or not by Luke the companion of St. Paul, it is matter of common consent that strong Pauline influences run through it, and that more than any other it gives prominence to those aspects of our Lord’s life and teaching which present His gospel as a message of Divine grace. This is the Gospel of the publican (Luke 18:10 ff., Isaiah 19:2 ff.), of the ‘woman which was in the city, a sinner’ (Luke 7:36 ff.), of the malefactor forgiven even as he hung upon his cross (Luke 23:39 ff.). Above all, it is the gospel of the great ‘Parables of Grace’—the Lost Coin, the Lost Sheep, the Prodigal Son (15). It seems natural, therefore, to conclude that the Evangelist, on whom Christ’s grace to the sinful had made so deep an impression, intended in this ‘frontispiece’ to his story of our Lord’s public ministry, when he described the listeners in the synagogue as wondering at ‘the words of grace which proceeded out of his mouth,’ to set Jesus before us not merely as a winning speaker, but as the anointed herald of the grace of God. See also art. Graciousness.
(2) When we come to the Fourth Gospel, we find that in the Prologue the word ‘grace,’ no doubt through the Pauline teaching and its consequences, has blossomed fully into those greater meanings with which the Church had become familiar.* [Note: It is worthy of remark that while in the Prologue χάρις appears as a fundamental note of the revelation of Jesus Christ, the word is not used elsewhere in the work. In the rest of his Gospel, as in his Epistles, the author prefers the idea of love (John 3:16; John 13:1, 1 John 3:16 and constantly). Like the Synoptists, he never once puts χάρις into the mouth of Jesus, not even in a passage like John 7:19; John 7:23 (cf. John 5:10-18), where Jesus is speaking of His relation to the law of Moses. Does this not go to support the essential historicity of Christ’s teaching as reported in the Fourth Gospel?] In John 1:14 the author describes the Incarnate Logos as ‘full of grace and truth’ in His revelation of the Father’s glory. The phrase recalls the frequent OT combination of ‘mercy and truth’ (חֶסֶר וֶאַמֶח LXX Septuagint ἔλεος καὶ ἀλήθεια) as a summary description of Jehovah’s character (Exodus 34:6, Psalms 25:10; Psalms 85:10; Psalms 89:14 etc.). But the grace of Christ in the NT is something more than the mercy of God in the OT. It is remarkable that in the LXX χάρις is not considered a rich enough word to render the Heb. חֶסֶד. There χάρις signifies the Divine kindness or favour (corresponding to Heb. תֵן, cf. Gn 18:3 and passim), but is not used of those energies which belong properly to the sphere of redemption. For the חֶסֶד or mercy of God the word ἔλεος is employed; so that in the LXX ἔλεος may be said to be a stronger and richer word than χάρις. When we come to the NT, however, the case is reversed. χάρις, as applied to the Christian conception of grace, has become a grander word than ἔλεος; for while ἔλεος denotes the Divine compassion in the presence of man’s pain and misery, χάρις is used to express God’s attitude to man’s sin. It is more than a Divine attribute, although it is that. It is the sum of those Divine forces from which our salvation flows.
In John 1:16 the Evangelist says that out of Christ’s fulness we all received, ‘and grace for grace’ (χάριν ἀντὶ χάριτος). In its general use, as we have seen, χάρις passes from a disposition of goodwill to be applied to the blessings which goodwill bestows. Here the reference is to the blessings of the Christian salvation. Christ’s fulness is inexhaustible, and His grace is constantly bestowing itself upon His followers. But ‘grace for grace’ does not mean merely ‘grace upon grace’—one grace added to another. The force of the ἀντί is not to be neglected. In the next verse the author is going to contrast the NT system of grace with the legal system of the OT. And here, by a bold use of language, he applies to the economy of grace the very formula of the opposite dispensation, so as the better to bring out its ‘complete gratuitousness’ (Godet, Com. on Jn. in loc.). Under the Law, with its system of exchanges, a blessing was received as the reward of (ἀντί) merit, but under the gospel it is Christ’s free grace itself, received and appropriated, which becomes our title to fresh and larger bestowals.
‘For the law was given by Moses,’ adds the Evangelist; ‘grace and truth came by Jesus Christ’ (John 1:17). Here we have the justification of what we said above as to the χάρις καί ἁλήθεια of the NT being much more than the ἔλεος καὶ ἀλήθεια of the OT. The Divine mercy (ἔλεος) was an essential part of the OT revelation. It was on Sinai itself, and in connexion with the giving of the tables of the Law, that God revealed Himself to Moses as ‘a God full of compassion and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and truth’ (Exodus 34:6). But in comparison with the glory of the Christian revelation, the revelation to Moses was legal and hard. It lacked that element of spontaneous favour towards the sinful, and apart from every thought of merit gained by obedience, which belongs to the very essence of grace as we know it in Jesus Christ.
2. The grace of Christ in the Pauline Epistles.—In discussing the meaning of grace in the Third and Fourth Gospels, we have been obliged to anticipate in part what has now to be said about the Pauline teaching. For there can be no doubt that in the minds of both Evangelists that teaching was subsumed. It was the use which St. Paul had made of the word that determined its significance for Christianity ever afterwards.
(1) And first we notice that when the Apostle speaks of grace, he is invariably thinking of Jesus Christ in connexion with it. Most frequently it is the grace of God that he names; for God the Father is always recognized as the primal fountain of all the blessings of the Christian salvation, and no greater misrepresentation can be made of St. Paul’s gospel than to describe him as bringing the grace that is in Christ into some kind of opposition to the justice that is in God. Sometimes again ἡ χάρις stands alone; for the Apostle treats it at times not merely as a Divine attribute, but as the operative principle of the whole economy of redemption. But as it is Christ who embodies this great principle in His own person, as it is in Him that the Father’s grace is revealed, and by Him that it is mediated to men; as, to use his own words, ‘the grace of God was given you in Christ Jesus’ (1 Corinthians 1:4), and ‘grace reigns through Jesus Christ our Lord’ (Romans 5:21), he does not hesitate to speak of it again and again, and especially in the benedictions with which he concludes his Epp., as ‘the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (Romans 16:20, 1 Corinthians 16:23, 2 Corinthians 13:14, Galatians 6:18 etc.; cf. the opening salutations, Romans 1:7, 1 Corinthians 1:3, 2 Corinthians 1:2, Galatians 1:3 etc.).
(2) When we ask how St. Paul arrived at this distinctive conception of the Christian gospel as an economy of grace, and of Jesus Christ as the dispenser of grace, the answer undoubtedly is that he owed it to that revelation of the Lord Jesus Himself near the gates of Damascus by which his whole life was suddenly transformed. As a Pharisee he had sought to earn salvation by his zeal for the Law. But everything he had done had proved ineffectual. The commandment which was unto life he found to be unto death (Romans 7:10). Nay, in his endeavours to be exceedingly zealous according to the Law he had been led into the greatest sin of his career—his furious opposition to Jesus Christ, his savage persecution of the saints. Then came the great, astonishing act of spontaneous grace. Christ appeared in person to this bitter enemy, convincing him beyond the possibility of doubt that that Jesus whom he persecuted was no other than the Lord of glory, and at the same time addressing him in those tender and gracious and yet heart-shaking words of reproach and appeal by which Saul the persecutor was turned into the slave of Christ. From that day Christ was to Paul the Lord of grace no less than the Lord of glory. It was the grace of God in Christ, and that grace alone, which had called him and saved and made him what he was (Galatians 1:15, 1 Corinthians 15:10). And that same grace which had redeemed Paul at the first was with him all along. It guided him in the path of wisdom (1 Corinthians 3:10). It enabled him to be more abundant in labours than all others (1 Corinthians 15:10). It taught him how to behave himself in the world (2 Corinthians 1:12). And when the messenger of Satan came to buffet him, and he thrice besought the Lord that this thing might depart, it was the Lord Himself who said to His servant, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee’ (2 Corinthians 12:7-9).
(3) What did St. Paul understand by the grace of Christ, as he used that term in his fully developed teaching? What distinctive contents did he put into this great Christian idea, which he knew in his own experience to be a great Christian fact? (a) We shall perhaps find our best starting-point in a passage in which he sets a certain view of that grace before the Corinthians as one with which his teaching had made them familiar. He regards it as an act of astonishing self-sacrifice. ‘For ye know,’ he writes, ‘the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might become rich’ (2 Corinthians 8:9). How much was involved in this self-sacrifice he shows more fully in another Epistle, where he describes it as a self-emptying, on Christ’s part, of His Divine form, the assumption of a lowly human nature, and the rendering of a lifelong obedience even unto the death of the cross (Philippians 2:5 ff.). It is in this quality of self-sacrifice most of all that the grace of Christ in the NT differs from the mercy of God as revealed in the earlier dispensation. Christ’s grace is not merely the compassion which a great and strong and blessed nature feels for one which is sinful and sorrowful and weak. It is the self-renouncing love which so yearns to save that it surrenders all the wealth that is its own, and welcomes all the poverty that is another’s. It is that love which finds its crowning symbol, as it found its absolute expression, in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. ‘I am poor and needy,’ said a saint of the OT, ‘yet the Lord thinketh upon me’ (Psalms 40:17). ‘The Son of God,’ exclaims St. Paul, ‘loved me, and gave himself up for me’ (Galatians 2:20).
(b) The absolute freeness of Christ’s grace was another element in the Apostle’s conception. This brings us to his characteristic antithesis between grace and law. We noticed this antithesis already in the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel, but it was St. Paul who first formulated it when he wrote, ‘Ye are not under law, but under grace’ (Romans 6:14). Formerly the Divine blessings were secured by obedience to the Law. Righteousness was the fruit of works, and rewards were reckoned not as of grace, but as of debt (Romans 4:4). But now we are ‘justified freely (δωρεάν) by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus’ (Romans 3:24). The grace that saves us has nothing to do with works (Romans 11:6); it is the ‘free gift’ of God by ‘the one man, Jesus Christ’ (Romans 5:15, cf. Ephesians 2:8).
(e) Again, Christ’s grace, in St. Paul’s view of it, was marked by its sin-conquering power. Besides the great antithesis between grace with its free gifts on the one hand, and the Law with its works and debts on the other, we have in the Apostle’s teaching a further antithesis between grace and sin. This antithesis follows of necessity from the former one, for it is the fact of the Law that leads to the imputation of sin (Romans 5:13), and it is the coming in of the Law that causes trespasses to abound (Romans 5:20). But that same grace of Christ which rises superior to the Law shows its power to master the sin which is the transgression of the Law. ‘Where sin abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly’ (ib.). And this superabundance of grace over sin is manifested in two distinct ways: (α) It removes the guilt of sin and the dread consequences which flow from guiltiness. This it does by not only forgiving the sinner (Ephesians 1:7), but justifying him freely (Romans 3:24), bestowing upon him the gift of righteousness (Galatians 2:21), and giving him the assurance that as sin reigned unto death, even so shall grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life (Romans 5:21). (β) It breaks the dominion of sin over the sinners heart. The antinomian indeed may say, ‘Let us continue in sin, that grace may abound.’ But St. Paul’s answer is, ‘God forbid!’ (Romans 6:2, cf. Romans 6:1). The free gift bestowed by the grace of the One Man (Romans 5:15) carries within it an ‘abundance of grace’ (Romans 5:17). And among the things included in this abundance of grace are a death to sin and a life unto God (Romans 6:2 ff.). The fact that we are not under the Law, but under grace, implies that sin’s tyranny over us is broken (Romans 6:14), and that we have been set free from it (Romans 6:18) for a life of righteousness and holiness in the service of God (Romans 6:18; Romans 6:22).
(d) Finally, we may say that in the Pauline teaching the grace of Christ, the ‘riches of his grace’ as we have it in Eph. (Ephesians 1:7), stood for the sum-total of all Christian blessings. There is an abundance and superabundance in grace (Romans 5:17; Romans 5:20, 2 Corinthians 4:15), which makes it a stream of endless benefaction flowing from an inexhaustible fountain. Christ’s riches are unsearchable (Ephesians 3:8), but all that Christ is His grace is, for grace is the most essential quality of His being, while He Himself is the very incarnation of everything we mean by grace. We are called by grace (Galatians 1:15), and justified by grace (Romans 3:24), and sanctified by grace (Romans 6:14). Through grace also we obtain eternal comfort and good hope (2 Thessalonians 2:16), and strength (2 Timothy 2:1), and liberality (2 Corinthians 8:1), and happy songs (Colossians 3:16). And so it was the great Apostle’s custom, when he would gather up into a single word all his wishes and hopes and prayers for the Churches, to say, ‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all’ (2 Thessalonians 3:18, Romans 16:24; cf. 1 Corinthians 16:23 etc.).* [Note: Besides the use of the word ‘grace’ in the Pauline Epp. to designate the spontaneous favour of God to sinners as revealed and mediated by Jesus Christ, it is employed in various derivative senses, such as (Romans 5:2) the state of grace (status gratiae), a particular gift of grace (Ephesians 4:7), the special grace required for the Apostolic office (Galatians 2:8-9, Ephesians 3:2; Ephesians 3:7). The discussion of these, however, lies somewhat beyond the scope of this Dictionary.]
3. The grace of Christ in the rest of the NT.—The material here is very much scantier than in the Pauline writings, but it is quite sufficient to show how deeply the great Pauline word had lodged itself in the general Christian mind. It is true that we do not find grace defined as to its nature by those antitheses of law and works and sin which give the Pauline conception its peculiar colouring, but the word is still used to express the Divine favour as revealed in Christ, and those saving blessings of which He is the Mediator. The chief relevant passages in Acts have been referred to already in connexion with the usage of the Third Evangelist. In 1 Peter we find the grace of salvation made to depend on the revelation of Jesus Christ, and associated in particular with the Saviour’s sufferings and the glories that followed them (1 Peter 1:9-13). The author of 2 Peter exhorts his readers to ‘grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’ (2 Peter 3:18). In Hebrews the fact that Jesus is our great High Priest is urged as the reason why we should draw near with boldness unto the ‘throne of grace’ (Hebrews 4:14-16); and the treading under foot of the Son of God is regarded as equivalent to doing despite to ‘the Spirit of grace’ (Hebrews 10:29). As in the Fourth Gospel apart from the Prologue, so in the other Johannine writings, love takes the place held by the idea of grace in the Pauline teaching. But the familiarity of the thought of Christ’s grace is shown by its appearance in the forms of salutation (2 John 1:3, Revelation 1:4-5). And what could be more fitting than that the NT as a whole, of which grace is the distinctive watchword, and over every page of which we might inscribe the words ‘Grace reigns,’ should conclude, in the last sentence of the Apocalypse, with the benediction, ‘The grace of the Lord Jesus be with the saints’ (Revelation 22:21)?
Literature.—The Lexx. of Liddell and Scott, Grimm-Thayer, and Cremer, s.v. χάρις; Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible, art. ‘Grace’; PRE [Note: RE Real-Encyklopädie fur protest. Theologic und Kirche.] 3 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred] , art. ‘Gnade’; Weiss, Bibl. Theol. of NT, Index, s.v., but esp. i. 385 ff.; Dieckmann, Die christliche Lehre von der Gnade (Berlin, 1901); Wells, artt. on ‘Grace’ in ExpT [Note: xpT Expository Times.] , viii. ix. [1897]; Bruce, Expos. Gr. Test. ad Luke 4:22, Galilean Gosp. ch. ii.; Dale, Ephesians, ch. x.; Expositor, i. xii. [1880] p. 86 ff., v. ix. [1899] p. 161 ff.
J. C. Lambert.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Grace (2)'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/g/grace-2.html. 1906-1918.
