Sense of the Day: Grace (Outworking)

Sense: grace (outworking)

n. — the resulting activity that is a necessary consequence of genuine, beneficent goodwill; especially used of the outworking of God’s goodwill.

And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.

Acts 4:33

The Bible Sense Lexicon does not deny that the word normally translated, “grace” (χάρις) means “freely given favor” in many contexts; see the sense, grace. But as I was annotating, I realized that many times the context was not focusing on God’s favor towards the believer, but instead on what was God’s response to that favor. God looks down upon the objects of His delight, cloaked in the righteousness of Christ, and His power is exercised in their behalf. While watching his daughter learning to walk, a father would not merely watch his daughter fall; the favor that he has for her compels him to act in her behalf. That is what I tried to capture with this sense: when God’s favor is acting for us.

What is the Bible Sense Lexicon?

Sense of the Day is based on content from Logos’ Bible Sense Lexicon, which organizes biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek words by meaning based on a variety of semantic relationships. Sense of the Day provides examples of senses in context, along with insight into their application for theology and interpretation.

The Bible Sense Lexicon is a Logos dataset available in Logos 5 Gold and higher base packages. If you’re enrolled in the Logos Academic Discount Program, you can also find the Bible Sense Lexicon in the Biblical Languages base package. Take your studies even further by exploring semantic domains, engaging the biblical text like never before.

Learn more about the Bible Sense Lexicon.