What grace actually means
Charis, the Greek word behind "grace", meant a favor freely given and the gratitude that came back for it. Paul used it for God's posture toward people who had done nothing to earn it. This translation prints "undeserved kindness" for most occurrences and "generous favor" where the emphasis falls on the size of the gift.
Where the word comes from
In the Greek cities, charis was working vocabulary for how benefits moved between people. A wealthy man paid for a grain shipment during a shortage or funded repairs to the gymnasium, and the city voted him a stone inscription and a seat at the front. The gift was charis. The honor sent back was also charis. Seneca wrote seven books on how to give and receive without wrecking the exchange, which tells you how carefully people were watching it.
The word had an older, physical sense as well: attractiveness, the quality that makes something pleasing to look at or hear. The Charites were the goddesses of it. Luke 4:22 uses the word in that direction when the crowd in the synagogue remarks on the words of charis coming out of Jesus.
Paul put charis where a Greek letter normally put chairein. Every ordinary papyrus letter of the period opens with that word, roughly "greetings." Paul swaps in the near-identical charis and adds the Jewish shalom behind it. 1 Thessalonians 1:1 ends "Generous favor and peace to you." He then closes almost every letter the same way, so the whole argument sits inside a frame made of that one word.
What Paul did with the word is still debated. John Barclay argued in 2015 that ancient gift-giving always anticipated some return, and that Paul's move was not to strip the return away but to make the gift ignore the worth of the person receiving it. Others hold to the older reading in which charis is one-directional and free of any expectation. The disagreement is about which feature of the gift Paul was pressing, not about whether the gift was unearned.
Why "grace" gets in the way
The English word survives mostly outside religion, and none of its ordinary uses point at the Greek. A dancer has grace. A credit card gives you a grace period. Someone says grace before dinner. It is a girl's name. A reader with no church background hears "Grace to you and peace" at the top of a letter and takes it for ceremonial filler.
Inside church usage the problem is different. The word is fluent and hollow. People can produce the definition, unmerited favor, on request, and the definition does not change the picture in their head, because both words in it have gone as soft as the one they were meant to explain. A term that everybody can define and nobody can feel is doing no work.
Both failures land hardest in the places where the word carries the most weight. Ephesians 2:8 is built on the contrast between what was given and what was earned. If grace has thinned into a pleasant abstraction, the sentence loses the thing it is arguing against.
What this translation prints instead
The NGET prints "undeserved kindness" for the large majority of occurrences and "generous favor" for the rest. 1 Timothy 1:2 opens "undeserved kindness, mercy, and peace to you." Hebrews 13:25 closes "May God's undeserved kindness be with all of you." The adjective is doing what the Greek social setting used to do for free: telling the reader the gift went to someone who had no claim on it.
The trade is length. Charis has two syllables, undeserved kindness has five, and in a letter that opens and closes with the word that weight accumulates. The translation accepts it because the alternative is a word that no longer transmits anything, and a heavy phrase that lands beats a light one that does not.
2 Corinthians 9:8 stacks the word onto abundance, and there, as in the greeting of 1 Peter 1:2, the translation prints "generous favor." Where charis means standing in someone's good opinion, as in Luke 2:52, it prints "favor." Where it means thanks, it prints thanks. And charismata, the gifts, are rendered as gifts of undeserved kindness so the family connection stays visible.
Read it in place
May undeserved kindness and peace be yours from God our Father and the Lord Jesus the One.
1 Corinthians 1:3
chosen according to what God the Father planned beforehand, set apart by the Breath of God, to live in obedience and be cleansed by the blood of Jesus the One. May generous favor and peace overflow in your lives.
1 Peter 1:2
For it earns God's approval when someone endures the pain of unjust suffering because they're conscious of God.
1 Peter 2:19
From Paul, Silas, and Timothy—to the gathered community in Thessalonica who belong to God the Father and the Lord Jesus, The One: Generous favor and peace to you.
1 Thessalonians 1:1
Questions people ask
What does grace mean in the Bible?
Grace translates the Greek charis, which meant a favor given and the gratitude returned for it. In the letters it names God's generosity toward people who have not earned it and cannot repay it. The English word has drifted toward elegance and manners, which is why this translation prints "undeserved kindness" instead.
What does grace mean in Ephesians 2:8?
The sentence sets charis against anything achieved: rescue comes through God's generosity, taken hold of by trust, and the whole arrangement is a gift rather than a wage. The point of the verse is the contrast between a gift and a payment, which is why the rendering "undeserved kindness" keeps the unearned part on the surface where the argument needs it.
What does charis mean in Greek?
Outside the Bible, charis covered three related things: the attractiveness of a person or a speech, a favor done for someone, and the gratitude owed in return. In public life it was the word for what a benefactor gave a city and what the city gave back in honors. Paul kept the gift sense and detached it from the repayment.
What does God's grace mean in the Bible?
It describes how God is disposed toward people, not a substance he hands out. The letters use charis for a settled generosity that operates without reference to whether the recipient deserves it. That is why Paul opens and closes almost every letter with the word: it frames everything in between as something given rather than something arranged.