What god is there like You, our God, forgiving rebellion and overlooking treachery among the remnant of His heirs? He doesn't hold onto His anger indefinitely, because He delights in khesed.
— Micah 7:18
Much of the meaning of the New Testament is understood through the lens of Paul the Apostle, and grace is the most central idea in his understanding of the "good news" of the new covenant. The word "grace" is in fact a
cognate word of the koine Greek word "χάρις" [kharis, charis] that is used in much of the New Testament
:
“For by χάρις are you saved through faith.” “For sin shall not have dominion over you: for you are not under law, but under χαρις.” “For the law was bestowed through Moses, but χαρις and truth were realized through Jesus the Anointed.”
Which leads us to a closely related word that recurs in Paul's letters:
χάρισμα
The famous "love" monologue ("Love suffers long ...") read at weddings is an integral part (not a digression) of a longer passage in Paul's letter to the Corinthians about "spiritual gifts," a phrase that variously refers to supernatural manifestations of the Holy Spirit or to vocations inspired by the spirit (e.g. as an apostle or prophet). It can't be a coincidence that this man that characterized the "good news" of the kingdom of God in terms of
χαρις characterized each manifestation of the
Paraclete as a
χάρισμα [
charisma]. The
χαρίσματα [
charismata, plural] are to be desired earnestly and sought after.
Charisma basically means 'a gift'. Outside the NT it is not at all a common word. In classical Greek it is rare. It is not common in the papyri, but there is one suggestive occurrence where a man classifies his property as that which he acquired apo agorasias, 'by purchase', and that which he acquired apo charismatos, 'by gift'. In the NT charisma is a characteristically Pauline word.
— William Barclay, New Testament Words
If
χαρίσμα was uncommon in ancient Greek, the rare usage of
χάρις among Hellenized Jewry in Paul's day is also worth noting.
Since 'grace' is so distinctively Pauline . . . it is important to grasp that Paul drew this term also . . . from his scriptural Old Testament or Tanakh (OT) heritage. This point needs to be reaffirmed, since it has been maintained that 'the word charis [χαρις] is almost unknown in the Jewish literature'. On the contrary, however, Paul would no doubt have been well aware of the two Hebrew words, chen ('grace, favour') and chesed ('gracious favour, lovingkindness, covenant love'). Both denoted the generous act of a superior to an inferior. But the former [chen] was more one-sided, . . . The latter [chesed] was a more relational term.
— James Dunn in Ancient Perspectives on Paul
That is, where Paul is writing in Greek he is still thinking in terms of the
Tanakh. "Surely goodness and
khesed will follow me all the days of my life." (Psalm 23)
Much nearer Paul’s use of charis [χαρις] is ratson (רָצוֹן), “acceptance,” in such passages as Isaiah 60:10, “In my favor have I had mercy on thee”; Psalms 44:3, “not … by their own sword … but … because thou wast favorable unto them.” Perhaps still closer parallels can be detected in the use of chesed (חֶסֶד), “kindness,” “mercy,” as in Exodus 20:6, etc. But, of course, a limitation of the sources for the doctrine to passages containing only certain words would be altogether unjust.
For Paul the Apostle everything that is by the Spirit is by grace, and everything that is by grace is by the Spirit. It is no wonder that he called the manifestations of the Spirit of God "gracings".
“In Paul ... χαρις is never merely an attitude or disposition of God (God’s character as gracious); consistently it denotes something much more dynamic—the wholly generous act of God. Like ‘Spirit,’ with which it overlaps in meaning (cf., e.g., [Rom] 6:14 and Gal 5:18), [χαρις] denotes effective divine power in the experience of men.”
— James D.G. Dunn, Romans 1-8 (Dallas: Word Books, 1988), p. 17 [emphasis mine]
To think about another word that is used by Paul to describe the connection between Jesus the Anointed and his anointed church:
“See, from his [Jesus'] pleroma we have all received χαρις on top of χαρις.”
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