(2) When we come to the Fourth Gospel, we find that in the Prologue the word ' grace,' no doubt through the Pauline teaching and its consequences, has blossomed fully into those greater meanings with which the Church had become familiar.* In 1" the author describes the Incarnate Logos as ' full of grace and truth ' in His revelation of the Father's glory. The phrase recalls the frequent OT combination of ' mercy and truth ' (ncxi ten, LXX Aeos Koi dX^flcia) as a summary description of
• It is worthy of remark that while in the Proloffue x^fi; appears as a fundamental note of the revelation of Jesus Christ, the word is not used elsewhere in the work. In the rest of his Gospel, as m his Epistles, the author prefers the idea of love (316 131, 1 jn 316 and constantly). Like the Synoptists, he never once puts x<^pt^ into the mouth of Jesus, not even in a passatre like 719-23 (cf. 61018), „here Jesus is speaking of His relation to the law of Moses. Does this not ro to support the essential historicity of Christ's teaching as reported in the Fourth
Jehovah's character (Ex 34», Ps 251" §510 ggu gtg_)_ But the grace of Christ in the NT is something more than the mercy of God in the OT. It is remarkable that in the LXX x^p" i« not considered a rich enough word to render the Hfli. -irn. There Xdfn! signilies the Divine kinclin'^> or f^nimr (c-on-e- sponding to Heb. ]n, cf. Gn IS' ,iih1 /.".'/,/), Irat is not used of those energies wlii.li lirluu:; [.luperly to the sphere of redemption. I'or the icm ur mercy of God the word eXeos is employed ; so that in the LXX ^Xfds may be said to be a stronger and richer word than xapis- AVhen we come to the NT, how- ever, the case is reversed, x^ip's. as applied to the Christian coiiLeption of grace, has become a grander word than flvcos ; for while ?\eos denotes the Divine compassion in the presence of man's pain and misery, xa/"s is used to express God's attitude to man's sin. It is more than a Divine attribute, although it is that. It is the sum of those Divine forces from which our salvation flows.
In v.i" the Evangelist says that out of Christ's fulness we all received, ' anil grace for grace ' (xap'" avTi xdpiTos). In its general u.se, as we have seen, Xdpis pas.ses from a dispiisition of goodwill to be applied to the blessin-s whi.h L^cMichvill bestows. Here the reference i^ t^ 1 h.- I.li-,iii-s uf the Chris- tian salvation. Clui~t ,s lulm-,-. i> inexhaustible, and His grace is constantly bcsLuwing itself upon His followers. But ' grace for grace ' does not mean merely ' grace upon grace ' — one grace added to another. The force of the avrl is not to be neglected. In the next verse the author is going to contrast the NT system of grace with the legal system of the OT. And here, by a bold use of language, he applies to the economy of grace the very formula of the opposite dispensation, so as the better to bring out its • complete gratuitous- ness ' (Godet, Com. on Jn. in loc). Under the Law, with its system of exchanges, a blessing was received as the reward of (ivrl) merit, but under the gospel it is Christ's free grace itself, received and appropriated, which becomes our title to fresh and larger bestowals.
' For the law was given by Moses,' adds the Evangelist ; ' grace and trutli came bj' Jesus Christ' (v.i'). Here we have the justification of what we said above as to the x^"/"' ""' dX-ijfleia of the NT being much more than the ?Xeos Kai a\ri$ei.a of the OT. The Divine mercy (Aeoj) was an essential part of the OT revelation. It was on Sinai itself, and in connexion with the giving of the tables of the Law, that God revealed Himself to Moses as ' a God full of compassion and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and truth ' (Ex 34^). But in comparison with the glory of the Christian revelation, the revelation to Moses was legal and hard. It lacked that element of spontaneous favour towards the sinful, and aj^art from every thought of merit gained by obedience, which belongs to the very essence of grace as we know it in Jesus Christ.
2. The grace of Christ in the Pauline Epistles. — In discussing the meaning of grace in the Third and Fourth Gospels, we have been obliged to anticipate in part what has now to be said about the Pauline teacliing. For there can be no doubt that in tlie minds of both Evangelists that teach- ing was subsumed. It was the use which St. Paul had made of the word that determined its signifi- cance for Christianity ever afterwards.
(1) And first we notice that when the Apostle speaks of grace, he is invariably thinking of Jesus Christ in connexion with it. Most frequently it is the grace of God that he names ; for God the Father is always recognized as the primal fountain of all the blessings of the Christian salvation, and no greater misrepresentation can be made of St. Paul's gospel than to describe him as bringing the