There is another false teaching going around that the word “grace“ means “joy.“ This is based on the misunderstanding that a Greek word's English element is the definition of that Greek word. This is a serious mistake.

The definition of a word is based on Scriptural context, not upon the Greek word family. The consequence of this teaching is that those teaching it say that "grace" no longer means “the unmerited favor of God.“

Goodbye, “unmerited favor of God.“

So what will we now call the unmarried favor of God, seeing as how they've taken that beautiful and accurate definition away from the word grace? And not only that, but they've taken away the word "grace" and illicitly replaced it with "joy."

Or—is there no longer any such thing as the unmerited favor of God? If indeed it still exists, will they assign a new word to it?

These teachings are designed to be new and exciting, but what they are is dangerously misleading. And they spread like gangrene because of the gentle character of the people teaching it. Today and tomorrow, I expose it in order to preserve the true meaning of the word "grace." After all, if "grace" no longer means the unmarried favor of God, then do we suddenly MERIT the favor of God?

That is in fact, the unfortunate conclusion.