Grace

Favour no one can earn

Grace is the kindness of someone greater toward someone who has no claim on it. When the LORD proclaimed his name to Moses, he called himself "compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion and faithfulness" (Exodus 34:6). The New Testament word, charis (χάρις), held together favour, gift and the thanks a gift calls for, and Paul uses it to tell the whole story of salvation:

For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.

Ephesians 2:8-9

Grace and wages are opposites: "if it is by grace, then it is no longer by works. Otherwise, grace would no longer be grace" (Romans 11:6). Matthew Henry put it plainly: "The grace that saves is the free, undeserved goodness and favour of God" Matthew Henry. And grace has a face: "grace and truth came through Jesus Christ" (John 1:17).

Grace does not stop at pardon. It "instructs us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions" (Titus 2:12), and it is strength in weakness: the Lord told Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9). Paul worked harder than the other apostles, "yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me" (1 Corinthians 15:10). Grace is opposed to earning, not to effort.

How the church came to say it

Early in the fifth century the teacher Pelagius urged Christians that the nature God gave them was able to keep his commandments Pelagius, Letter to Demetrias. Augustine answered that fallen nature is healed only by grace Augustine, On Nature and Grace; the law, he wrote, "threatened, but assisted not, commanded, but healed not" Augustine. The Council of Carthage (418) condemned Pelagius's teaching Council of Carthage, and the Second Council of Orange (529) confessed that even the beginning of faith is a gift of grace Council of Orange (see Pelagianism).

The Reformers made ‘grace alone’ a watchword. Philip Melanchthon's Loci Communes (1521) described grace first as God's favour toward us, and distinguished it from the gift that favour brings, the Holy Spirit in the heart Melanchthon, Loci Communes. Theologians also speak of grace in several ways: common grace, God's goodness to all people; prevenient grace, which in Wesleyan teaching goes before every human response; and the saving grace of the gospel, which Reformed theology sets within the covenant of grace. Many churches teach that God gives his grace through the Word, the sacraments and prayer.

Where the traditions differ

All the churches confess that salvation begins and ends in grace. They differ on what grace is and how it meets the human will. The Catholic Church describes grace as God's free and undeserved help, and as the gift of his own life, poured into the soul by the Holy Spirit in baptism to heal and sanctify it; God's initiative calls for a free human response, itself moved by grace Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Orthodox churches speak of grace as God's own uncreated energies, by which believers become "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4) in a cooperation that God always begins. The Reformation churches stress grace first as God's favour for Christ's sake, from which the Spirit's renewal flows.

Among evangelicals the question is whether grace can be finally resisted. Reformed churches confess that when God calls his elect he surely turns their hearts (effectual calling); Wesleyans and Arminians teach that grace is given to all and can be refused; Lutherans hold that conversion is God's work alone, yet that grace can be resisted. All agree that no one will boast before God. See also What is grace? and the lesson Grace alone, faith alone.