Twelve Words 6 min read Lesson 10 of 12

The Greek word behind grace, the Hebrew favor it grew from, and why the same word means thanks

Charis: The Favour Nobody Earned

Grace is a word that has almost stopped meaning anything: it names a prayer before dinner, a way of moving, a period of days before a bill is due. The Greek word behind it in your New Testament is sharper. It is favor given to someone who has no claim on it, and it comes with a shadow-meaning that explains why the meal at the centre of Christian worship is called by the same root.

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Lesson 10 of 12 · Greek

Charis is favor: goodwill shown by someone who need not show it, and the gift that goodwill gives. In Greek it also meant charm, and the gratitude a gift produces, and the same word does all three. The Greek Old Testament used it for the Hebrew chen, the favor a person finds in another’s eyes — Noah in God’s, Esther in the king’s. Paul took that ordinary word and made it the name of the whole thing God does in Christ: favor toward people who had earned the opposite. English grace keeps the gift and has mostly lost the giver; the Greek never separates them. Read grace as "favor you did not earn, from someone who chose to give it," and both halves come back.

Found favor

The word’s Old Testament root is a phrase, and the phrase has a direction: favor is found in someone’s eyes, never produced from one’s own.

But Noah found favor in Yahweh’s eyes. — Genesis 6:8 · WEB

Read the comment on Every intention of the heart, and one man who found favor

Noah found favor in the eyes of Yahweh: the Hebrew is chen, and the Greek translators rendered it charis. The sentence stands at the head of the flood story as the reason one family lived, and it gives no reason of its own. Noah did not achieve the favor; he found it, which is the grammar of the word from here to Paul.

χάρις cháris G5485

from χαίρω; graciousness (as gratifying), of manner or act (abstract or concrete; literal, figurative or spiritual; especially the divine influence upon the heart, and its reflection in the life; including gratitude):--acceptable, benefit, favour, gift, grace(- ious), joy, liberality, pleasure, thank(-s, -worthy).

From a root meaning to rejoice: that which delights — charm, graciousness, and the goodwill that makes a gift; the gift itself; and the thanks the gift calls out, so that charis is also gratitude and eucharistia, thanksgiving, is built on it. In the Greek Old Testament it stands for Hebrew chen, favor found in someone’s eyes. In Paul it appears over a hundred times and means the favor of God shown in Christ to people with no claim on it, and by extension everything that favor gives.

Mary, and the angel’s word

Luke opens the story of Jesus with the word said to a girl in Nazareth.

The angel said to her, “Don’t be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. — Luke 1:30 · WEB

Read the comment on Gabriel and Mary

You have found favor with God: the same phrase as Noah’s, in Greek the same word, and again with no reason attached. The older versions say grace, the newer say favor, and the verse is the best place to see that they are one thing: what Mary has found is charis, and it is about to become a child.

Paul’s word

Paul took the word and built a theology on it, and the sentence in Ephesians is where he says it most compactly.

for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, that no one would boast. — Ephesians 2:8–9 · WEB

Read the comment on By Grace, Through Faith, for Works

By grace, through faith, not of yourselves, the gift of God, not of works, so that no one may boast. Every clause fences the word: it is not earned, not produced, not a reward, and the boast it forbids is the boast that would make it something else.

“The law came in that the trespass might abound; but where sin abounded, grace abounded more exceedingly,” Romans 5:20 · WEB
Where sin abounded, grace abounded more: favor measured against the thing it forgives, and exceeding it.
“He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Most gladly therefore I will rather glory in my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest on me.” 2 Corinthians 12:9 · WEB
My grace is sufficient for you: favor as a sustaining presence, given to a man whose prayer was refused.
“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to the intent that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we would live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age;” Titus 2:11–12 · WEB
The grace of God has appeared, teaching us to deny ungodliness: favor that trains, which is the answer to anyone who thought it excused.
“Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one.” Colossians 4:6 · WEB
Let your speech be with grace, seasoned with salt: the ordinary Greek sense, graciousness, still alive in Paul’s vocabulary.

Why the meal is called by this word

The shadow-meaning is worth a paragraph, because it explains a word every reader has heard. Charis is favor, and favor received produces thanks, and Greek used the same root for both: charis is also "thanks," and the verb eucharisteo is "to give thanks." When Jesus took bread at the last supper he gave thanks — that verb — and the church called the meal the Eucharist, the thanksgiving. The word for what God gives and the word for what we say back are the same family, which is the Bible’s own way of saying that the only answer to grace is gratitude.

The argument, marked

The word carries the oldest argument in Western Christianity, and a reader should know its shape. Everyone agrees that grace is unearned; the argument is about what follows. Does grace do everything, so that even the faith by which it is received is itself a gift — Augustine’s answer, and the Reformers’? Or does grace make a response possible that a person then makes — the answer of much of the Eastern church, of Wesley, and of many since? And if grace is free, does it ask anything afterward — the question Bonhoeffer answered with the phrase "cheap grace," meaning favor taken as licence? Titus 2 says the grace that appeared teaches; Ephesians 2 says it excludes boasting; the verse after Ephesians 2:9 says we are created in Christ for good works. The word holds all of that, and this lesson does not rank it.

What the word asks

It asks for thanks, which in this word’s own grammar is the same thing as grace received. A favor you did not earn cannot be repaid and can only be answered, and the answer the New Testament names is gratitude that shows in how you treat the next person who has no claim on you.