What is God's Divine Grace?

By: Sarah Martin

Often, when we think of the word ‘grace’, a few things may come to mind. But the grace I am going to be referring to today is God’s divine grace, which I will further discuss a little later. For now, I want to start with a simple question—what does the term “Thanksgiving” mean exactly? Well, if we bring it down to the Greek translation, ‘eucharisteo’, it means “He gives thanks”, but then the root of that word, “charis”, actually translates to “grace”. I find it interesting how the term “Thanksgiving” is associated with this specific word, but there is a reason for that. We can simply illustrate the connection between the two words with The Last Supper in Matthew 26. In verses 26-28, we read that “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to His disciples, saying,’ ‘Take and eat; this is my body.’ Then He took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying,’ ‘Drink from it , all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins".

When Jesus gave thanks for the bread and wine that was before them, it was more than just a prayer for the food. When Jesus gave the bread as “His body” and the wine as “His blood” to His disciples, it was a representation of God’s grace being offered through salvation and eternal life by His Son Jesus Christ, or in other words, God’s hand of favour stretching out to us. If we look at the word for grace in Hebrew, “hen”, it translates to the word ‘favour’. God's grace is for a fact is His undeserved favour to mankind, but the wonderful thing about God’s divine grace, as shown in Matthew 26, is that it is offered to not just some, but all. So this Thanksgiving, when you sit down to say grace at the table, remember a prayer of thanks for the one divine and truly great grace, which is God's amazing grace.