Grace Of God

The grace of God is God’s unearned favour and generosity toward people — his free giving of what is not owed, supremely in Christ. Scripture presents it as the ground of salvation rather than a reward for it: “who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before times eternal” (2 Timothy 1:9). Its measure is God’s own character, not human deserving: “In him we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace” (Ephesians 1:7), and “God commends his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). The underlying Greek word is charis, the ordinary word for favour or a gift, and it is the standard Septuagint rendering of the Hebrew khen, “favour”; that is a matter of established lexical fact, not interpretation.

The text says grace is prior to and independent of human works, and that it is purposeful. Ephesians 1:5 speaks of believers as “predestined us for adoption as children through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his desire,” and Ephesians 1:11 of an inheritance assigned “according to the purpose of him who does all things after the counsel of his will.” 1 Peter 5:10 addresses God as “the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus.” So grace in Scripture is not only a disposition of leniency but a settled plan of God to give himself to people through Christ.

Scripture also treats grace as present power, not merely past pardon. Ephesians 3:16 asks that God would grant “according to the riches of his glory, that you may be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner person”; Ephesians 6:10 tells believers to “be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.” Philippians 2:13 states that “it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure,” and Colossians 1:11 speaks of being “strengthened with all power, according to the might of his glory, for all endurance and perseverance with joy,” with the result that believers “walk worthily of the Lord … bearing fruit in every good work” (Colossians 1:10). 1 Peter 1:5 describes the same keeping power: “by the power of God are guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”

Christian traditions read this differently at several points. In Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox teaching, grace is a real gift that heals and transforms the person and is communicated through the sacraments, and human freedom is understood to cooperate with it; historic Reformation teaching typically describes grace as God’s unmerited favour in Christ reckoned to the believer and received by faith, with good works as fruit rather than cause. Traditions also divide over whether grace can be finally resisted and over how divine predestination and human response relate, while Wesleyan and Arminian teaching speaks of a prevenient grace given to all. The main lines of agreement are broad — grace is God’s initiative, given in Christ, and not earned — but how grace is defined, conveyed, and resisted is a genuine and long-standing confessional difference.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.