CHAPTER III THE GRACE OF GOD BY REV. C. X. SCOFIELD, D. D., EDITOR "SCOFIELD REFERENCE BIBLE”
Grace is an English word used in the New Testament to translate the Greek word, Charis, which means favor, with out recompense or equivalent. If there is any compensatory act or payment, however slight or inadequate, it is “no more grace’’— Cha/ris. When used to denote a certain attitude or act of God to ward man it is therefore of the very essence of the matter that human merit or deserving is utterly excluded. In grace God acts out from Himself, toward those who have deserved* not His favor, but His wrath. In the structure of the Epistle to the Romans grace does not enter, could not enter, till a whole race, without one single exception, stands guilty and speechless before God. Condemned by creation, the silent testimony of the universe (Rom. 1:18, 20) ; by wilful ignorance, the loss of a knowl edge of God once universal (Rom. 1 :21 ) ; by senseless idolatry (Rom. 1:22, 23) ; by a manner of life worse than bestial (Rom. 1:24, 27) ; by godless pride and cruelty (Rom. 1:28, 32) ; by philosophical moralizings which had no fruit in life (Rom. 2 :1 , 4) ; by consciences which can only “accuse” or seek to “excuse” but never justify (Rom. 2: 5, 16) ; and finally by the very law in which those who have the law boast (Rom. 2 :17 ; 3 :20 ), “every mouth” is “stopped, and all the world be comes guilty before God.” In an absolute sense, the end of all flesh is come. Every thing has been tried. Innocence, as of two unfallen creatures 43
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