Grace

Hebrew: chen (חֵן, favor, grace; from the root chanan, to be gracious, to show favor; often rendered "find favor in your eyes"). Chen is regularly paired with hesed (steadfast covenant love) in YHWH's self-description. In Exodus 34:6 the full triad is racham (tender compassion) + chen (gracious) + hesed (steadfast love). Chen is the disposition of the powerful to look favorably on the powerless, not because the powerless deserve it but because the powerful freely choose it. Noah "found favor (chen) in the eyes of the LORD" (Genesis 6:8) before any covenant is described, favor precedes covenant.

Greek: charis (χάρις, grace, favor, gift; cognate with chara = joy, charisma = gift). The word carries connotations from the Hellenistic world (royal beneficence, the patron's gift to the client) but is radically transformed in the New Testament: the charis of God does not flow from social hierarchy or the expectation of return but is freely given to those who can offer nothing. Paul uses charis approximately 100 times in his letters, it is the most distinctively Pauline theological word.

The contrast Paul develops (Romans 4:4-5): "Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift (charis) but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness." Grace and wages occupy incompatible categories: wages are owed to the worker, grace is given to the unworking. The moment grace is owed it ceases to be grace. Romans 11:6 makes this explicit: "But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace would no longer be grace."

John 1:14-17 introduces grace in the context of the Incarnation:

"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth (charin kai aletheian, χάριν καὶ ἀλήθειαν). For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace (charin anti charitos, grace instead of grace, or grace answering grace). For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ."

"Grace and truth" (charin kai aletheian) is the Greek rendering of the Hebrew pair hesed ve-emet (steadfast love and faithfulness), the word pair from Exodus 34:6. John is saying: in Jesus, the character of YHWH that the Exodus 34 self-disclosure described has now arrived in person. "Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ", not that the Mosaic era had no grace (it was full of YHWH's hesed), but that the grace it pointed toward has arrived in its fullness.

"From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace", the construction charin anti charitos means "grace replacing grace" or "grace answering grace" (like wave replacing wave): the inexhaustible supply of Christ's fullness pours out in an unceasing succession of gifts.

Ephesians 2:8-9: "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God (Theou to doron, of God the gift), not a result of works, so that no one may boast."

Six exegetical notes on this verse: (1) "by grace" is the ground; "through faith" is the instrument, grace is not dispensed through faith as if faith creates grace, but received through faith; (2) "And this is not your own doing", "this" (touto, neuter) does not refer to "faith" (pistis, feminine) or "grace" (charis, feminine) individually but to the whole event of being saved; (3) "it is the gift of God", not supplementary to another path but the only path; (4) "not a result of works", works are not the ground; (5) "so that no one may boast", the elimination of boasting is one stated purpose of the grace-not-works architecture (see also Romans 3:27 and 1 Corinthians 1:29-31); (6) verse 10 follows: "For we are his workmanship (poiema), created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them", the elimination of works as the ground does not eliminate good works from the Christian life; it relocates them from the cause of salvation to its fruit.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's warning in "The Cost of Discipleship" (1937): cheap grace is "the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession... Grace without the cross, grace without the living, incarnate Christ." Cheap grace is the corruption of grace: the word "grace" applied to a relationship with God that makes no demands because it asks for no real faith, no real death-to-self, no real following.

Biblical grace is not cheap because it was purchased at infinite cost: "you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot" (1 Peter 1:18-19). The free gift was not free to give.

Grace is also not permission: Paul addresses the anticipated misreading directly in Romans 6:1, "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?" Grace that enables ongoing willful sin has not been understood as grace; it has been mistaken for moral permission.

Grace is also not mere therapeutic kindness: it is not simply "God being nice." Grace required the satisfaction of divine justice, the propitiation of wrath through the blood of Christ (Romans 3:25). The God who is "rich in mercy" (Ephesians 2:4) is also the God who "did not spare his own Son" (Romans 8:32). Grace operates within and through justice, not by suspending it.

The Sanctum holds that grace is not an attribute that softens an otherwise severe God, it is the very nature of YHWH as he has revealed himself, from the garden onward. The one who makes garments for the fallen (Genesis 3:21), who preserves Noah, who calls Abraham out of Ur, who delivers Israel from Egypt, who sends the prophets, who becomes flesh, who dies, who rises, this is grace from beginning to end. "He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?" (Romans 8:32). Grace is not the exception to God's character; it is its most complete expression.