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The Bible: Exploring Facts and Myths About the Word of God  /  Are You Really Reading God's Word?  /  Discussion Questions
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Question 10
Bercot argues that “special theological words” (grace, justification, sanctification, etc.) were not used as technical terms by Jesus or the earliest Christians, and that later theologians reshaped them; what happens to your understanding of God’s character and expectations if you start reading “grace” as “favor/goodwill” and refuse imported definitions that separate grace from obedience?
Another way to ask: If you read “grace” as “favor” or “goodwill” instead of a special religious term, how would that change what you think God expects from you and how obedience fits in?

Direct Answer Based on Bercot’s teaching, reading “grace” as ordinary “favor/goodwill” can pull you back toward hearing Scripture in plain language, resisting theological redefinitions that can “completely alter” Scripture and potentially disconnect God’s favor from the call to obedience.

Support from Transcript:

  • He criticizes translations for maintaining “special theological words” that lack ordinary English meaning or are used unnaturally.
  • He strongly contends the NT writers and Jesus “did not write in theological terminology,” and early Christians understood words in “their ordinary senses.”
  • He says the claim these were “technical terms in New Testament times” has “no…evidence,” and pre-Nicene writings show “overwhelming evidence” of the opposite.
  • He argues theologians later “turn the ordinary everyday words…into special, technical…words.”
  • Result: theologians can “completely alter the meaning of Scripture” by giving “special theological definition[s].”
  • His practical remedy: look up the Greek in Strong’s; for grace, “simply insert…favor…or goodwill,” ignoring imported definitions (the transcript ends mid-sentence but the instruction is clear up to that point).
Discussion Follow-ups If grace is God’s favor, how would you describe the kind of life that fits living under His favor? In what ways might ordinary-word reading make Jesus’s commands sound less “theoretical” and more actionable?

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