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People have charis when they are delicate, tactful or artful. In secular Greek, a good wine and a fine choice of words are examples of charis. It means "beauty or charm of form, composition, movement or expression an attractive quality, feature or manner goodwill, favor."Įach of these usages shows grace to have a fairly close relationship to the secular use of charis. Instead, it comes from the Latin gratia, which in turn comes from gratus, meaning "beloved" or "pleasing." Grace, according Webster's New World Dictionary closely follows the Latin definition. In fact, the English word grace is not even derived from charis, the Greek word used in the Bible. To say that grace is simply "a gift" is to fall woefully short of exhausting its meaning. And He gives us grace so that we may continue to stand before Him. God gives us grace so that we might stand before Him.
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In I Corinthians 11:28, written just prior to the spring holy days amidst instructions about observing Passover, Paul writes, "But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup." Earlier, he had admonished, "Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall" ( I Corinthians 10:12). With spring only weeks away, we have once again come to that wonderful time of the year when, because of the meaning of Passover, we are guided to focus more intensively and specifically on how and where we stand before God.
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