Definition of Grace

Grace in greek is charis meaning 'kindness' i think thats a better more simpler way of thinking of grace rather than the clumsiness of defining it as unmerited favour.

I had certainly never heard of grace meaning unmerited favour before..that seems like just another american church teaching.
 
We all touched by Gods kindness if we know Jesus. He was nothing if not kind to everyone he met. Thats the quality about him..his loving-kindness.
 
G5485
χάρις
charis
khar'-ece
From G5463; 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).


It certainly is not clumsiness to describe the wonderful grace of God as unmerited or unearned. For Jesus has done all the work necessary for us to experience it. Do you not understand the rightness of describing God's grace in this way?

Why do you buck against the simple truth of it? Is there something getting in your way?

I had certainly never heard of grace meaning unmerited favour before.

Well, Lanolin, you can learn something new every day.
 
A lot of american churches teach grace as license to sin which is wrong, I guess thats why Im trying to get to the bottom of this. They will say, oh since we have grace now we covered. Therefore..and here is where they take it too far...we will call it unmerited favour and it means this and this, cos the way we conduct ourselves is no different from the world, just more religious.

Thats when I cant even tell if someone is christian, they had no change of heart, they just now going to church and speaking some weird christianese.
 
A lot of american churches teach grace as license to sin which is wrong, I guess thats why Im trying to get to the bottom of this. They will say, oh since we have grace now we covered. Therefore..and here is where they take it too far...we will call it unmerited favour and it means this and this, cos the way we conduct ourselves is no different from the world, just more religious.


Thats when I cant even tell if someone is christian, they had no change of heart, they just now going to church and speaking some weird christianese.

Not ONE church I have ever heard of teaches grace as the license to sin! The bible clearly states that it isn't! I challenge you to provide an example of your accusation.

The truth about God's grace being "unmerited favour" lends NOTHING to the idea that we have license to sin---so you are going off on a tangent, now---but is demonstrative of the FACT that there is NOTHING we can do to earn God's favour or salvation. His righteousness is a FREE GIFT of His GRACE.

Grace2_zpssi9hrc3f.jpg
 
Last edited:
Grace in greek is charis meaning 'kindness' i think thats a better more simpler way of thinking of grace rather than the clumsiness of defining it as unmerited favour.

I had certainly never heard of grace meaning unmerited favour before..that seems like just another american church teaching.

Hi Lanolin,
Your view on un-merited Favor and "Grace" is pretty weak. Let me show you this.
To say Gods Grace is just loving kindness is pretty much limiting the depth of what Gods Grace truly is and not just a dictionary view of Grace but the Grace of The Most High.

We are all sinners and as filthy rags before God from birth. There is no way we could every dwell with God being such a filthy sin ridden person. We are all born into sin thanks to the first adam. Nothing we can do to change this. However God still loves us and desires us to fellowship with Him so He made a way to do so and that was through Jesus Christ.

Now not one of us deserves this chance or earned it or could ever be good enough to entitle us to recieve this mercy or favor of God and be made right in His eyes so we can not only fellowship with Him but spend eternity with Him as well.

This is called God's Grace towards us. Unmerited Favor simply means ...Favor bestowed onto us or another words favor towards us without merit which means out of His deep and desiring LOVE for us. It's like the ultimate Gift from God. We can not buy this gift of favor nor can we earn it or come across it any other way out side of Gods deep desiring love for each and every one of us.

Gods word tells us to not love the things of this world. Did not say we could not have them or enjoy them but to NOT Love them. God is Love. We Love God and His word and we Love people and the things of God but beyond that we enjoy or really like and so forth.

It is the same with His grace or unmerited favor. People use the word favor and grace for a lot of things and then expect Gods favor to be understood in its true depth. Peole have gotten sloppy with their words and in the end limits how one grasp the true depth of the description of the words used towards God and describing God.

I hope this helps you Lanolin to understand the true depth of the Grace of God or His unmerited favor towards us.
Have a wonderful week end Lanolin
Blessings
Jim
 
A lot of american churches teach grace as license to sin which is wrong, I guess thats why Im trying to get to the bottom of this. They will say, oh since we have grace now we covered. Therefore..and here is where they take it too far...we will call it unmerited favour and it means this and this, cos the way we conduct ourselves is no different from the world, just more religious.

Thats when I cant even tell if someone is christian, they had no change of heart, they just now going to church and speaking some weird christianese.

I think that you have discovered what God wants to change about the definition of Grace. People all over the world do not need a license to sin. For because we were born with a sin nature, or sin in our dna (because adam sinned), we can sin without a license.

God wants people to truly love Him, and know or realize how much He loves us. He desires that we focus on Him and what Jesus did on the cross to set us free from sin. Not the sin itself. And as we learn how much Jesus loves us, then we begin to desire to do the things to please God, not commit sins on purpose. So if we truly study unmerrited favor or grace or God's overwhelming desire to treat us as if sin never happened in the garden (God wants to bless us and give us all of the things that He wanted adam to have when He created the earth for adam to dwell in, and to be happy in. Originally God wanted to bless adam, and He did, until adam and eve decided to disobey God. So when we accept God's grace, it means that God wants to totally bless us and give us everything like He did before adam and eve sinned.

It takes a while to learn about grace, and God's love for us. And what The Blood of Jesus has purchased for us. And when we focus on our sin, it takes even longer. Because we are focusing on ourselves not Jesus.

Blessings to you!
 
But that is not the whole story. God actually changes our hearts. Of course he doesnt remember the sin, but the grace is that the heart is changed. It is not now God just looks at us differently. He actually changes US by his power of love, which is grace. Its not just we stay the same, cos, if we stay the same, we continue to sin without a care, dont we?

Grace is not just a blessing given to say: Oh, we ok now. it is the POWER working in us to effect a change, a divine power, to make us more like Jesus.

When you meet someone who is full of grace, that person does not just overlook your sin and uncouth manners. their graciousness actually convicts you to be more like them. Is that not so? You behave more like them, you are careful in what you say and how you act, so as not to offend. You are not just someone who is favoured and in good books like a special pet, doing what you like, on your own terms and think wow Im blessed. Those other people, they just not blessed, they unlucky, I lucked out. I didnt even deserve it. No it is not like that.

But when people describe grace like that, that is their attitude and its really unhealthy IMHO, and not a good witness for Jesus as it engenders pride. Judas could say he was given unmerited favour. And he would be right.
 
The unmerited favour of God does not generate pride in one who knows that very truth---that we are saved by God's grace and not through anything we have done or could do.


Ephesians 2:8-9

God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. 9 Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.

 
But that is not the whole story. God actually changes our hearts. Of course he doesnt remember the sin, but the grace is that the heart is changed. It is not now God just looks at us differently. He actually changes US by his power of love, which is grace. Its not just we stay the same, cos, if we stay the same, we continue to sin without a care, dont we?

Grace is not just a blessing given to say: Oh, we ok now. it is the POWER working in us to effect a change, a divine power, to make us more like Jesus.

When you meet someone who is full of grace, that person does not just overlook your sin and uncouth manners. their graciousness actually convicts you to be more like them. Is that not so? You behave more like them, you are careful in what you say and how you act, so as not to offend. You are not just someone who is favoured and in good books like a special pet, doing what you like, on your own terms and think wow Im blessed. Those other people, they just not blessed, they unlucky, I lucked out. I didnt even deserve it. No it is not like that.

But when people describe grace like that, that is their attitude and its really unhealthy IMHO, and not a good witness for Jesus as it engenders pride. Judas could say he was given unmerited favour. And he would be right.

You are confusing Grace with walking in His blessing to common courtesy and working out or salvation and so many other things. Actually it is the Blessing of God that covers us that draws others to us. They can sense the blessing. It's not our anytyhing that draws others to us for it will always be God and Jesus in us.
 
But that is not the whole story. God actually changes our hearts. Of course he doesnt remember the sin, but the grace is that the heart is changed. It is not now God just looks at us differently. He actually changes US by his power of love, which is grace. Its not just we stay the same, cos, if we stay the same, we continue to sin without a care, dont we?

Grace is not just a blessing given to say: Oh, we ok now. it is the POWER working in us to effect a change, a divine power, to make us more like Jesus.

When you meet someone who is full of grace, that person does not just overlook your sin and uncouth manners. their graciousness actually convicts you to be more like them. Is that not so? You behave more like them, you are careful in what you say and how you act, so as not to offend. You are not just someone who is favoured and in good books like a special pet, doing what you like, on your own terms and think wow Im blessed. Those other people, they just not blessed, they unlucky, I lucked out. I didnt even deserve it. No it is not like that.

But when people describe grace like that, that is their attitude and its really unhealthy IMHO, and not a good witness for Jesus as it engenders pride. Judas could say he was given unmerited favour. And he would be right.

You are right that part of grace is God giving us a new heart, and changing us on the inside, but we do have to do some renewing of our minds to get the outside to resemble the changed heart that God gave us.
And as we rely more and more on the Grace of God to change our outside, we fall more and more in Love with Jesus....and that is what causes us to desire to do everything that we can to please Him.

There are a lot of people in this world who have not grabbed ahold of the full definition of grace...and thus some of them become prideful. But those who are prideful, are relying on their own power and ability to succeed. They are not relying on God. Because if they were, they would not be prideful. They would be humble, because they know that without God they cannot be made in right standing with God.

There is another part of grace. And that is grace and favor that God gives us in certain situations. For example....if you are trying to buy a house, or rent an apartment....and you know that this is the one that you really like, you can ask God to give you favor with the owner so that you can be able to rent it. Or it could be with a job, that you really believe that God wants you to be there.

Favor with God is relying on Him to help us to do things that we cannot do on our own. It should be this way with sin as well, we should be relying on God to help us stop doing things that we don't want to do.
 
We can do nothing without Him. Amen!

We are given...grace upon grace. This grace is not given arbitrarily, or unmerited. It is because it cost Jesus his life. God loves us and sent Jesus because he knew we COULD NOT keep all those commandments all the time no matter how hard we tried. Only Jesus could.
 
And now with Jesus help, we can...cos theres only two commandments now.

And they fufill all the law and what the prophets said.
 
grace is unmerited because Jesus gave his life.. We don't deserve to have a savior, go to heaven, or have the lord with us. But because God showed his grace, and redeemed us, we are saved, and this salvation is definetly unmerited, to say we deserve to be saved it prideful and wrong.
 
We can do nothing without Him. Amen!

We are given...grace upon grace. This grace is not given arbitrarily, or unmerited. It is because it cost Jesus his life. God loves us and sent Jesus because he knew we COULD NOT keep all those commandments all the time no matter how hard we tried. Only Jesus could.

Lanolin,

You just described why the grace that we receive is unmerrited or maybe a better word that means the same is undeserved to us. We do not deserve to receive this free(to us) gift that Jesus paid for with His Blood. It cost Jesus more than we could ever imagine, or pay...and He freely gives it to us so that as we fully rely on Him, (because without Him we can do nothing) He then can work through us.

And as you said God planned to give us this grace. And not because we did anything to deserve it, but simply because He loves us
 
We can do nothing without Him. Amen!

We are given...grace upon grace. This grace is not given arbitrarily, or unmerited. It is because it cost Jesus his life. God loves us and sent Jesus because he knew we COULD NOT keep all those commandments all the time no matter how hard we tried. Only Jesus could.

Yes, grace is given, unmerited by us. Do you get it, now?
 
He loves us, because he made us. Why do you keep thinking we dont deserve this? He loves us in spite our sinful way, he knew we weak and needed Jesus. When we in Jesus, we accept his son, we like Jesus, therefore we as worthy as Jesus was.

When jesus at the last supper, saying this is my blood, the new covenant, and sharing the cup, did he ever say to the disciples, you dont deserve this? no way, even when Peter was acting like he didnt know him and asking silly questions.

It was Jesus offering his lifeblood to us. He wanted to wash our feet. PEter was the one who kept saying Lord, I dont deserve this, dont wash my feet. But Jesus sharply rebuked him. He loved Peter.
It was Judas who really didnt deserve anything, and he left before Jesus could wash his feet, cos he kNEW he wasnt worthy. Judas didnt even share with the last supper.

I rebuke all this unmerited favour nonsense. Jesus loves me. This I know, for the Bible tells me so.
Do not look on Jesus blood and think you not worthy. He loved you enough to save you didnt he?
 
I keep thinking that it is unmerited because that's what the definition is, and I know I don't deserve his love.

Nothing I've done, or any human has done is enough to earn grace from God, that's why it is grace. We don't deserve a savior, or salvation, but by Gods grace, we have it.
 
Back
Top