Please Pass the "Hesed" and the "Charis"
Experience God's Steadfast Love This Thanksgiving
We can hear it now all over America:
“Pass the turkey.” “Oo-oo! Could you send over that special stuff Mom makes every year? Whacha call it? Yeah, that!” “Please pass the gravy! Oh, the glory of gravy!” “Sure do like that stuffing Grandma.” And, perhaps, “Dad, will you please pray so we can eat! Those ‘never-heard’ war stories will have to wait until we are half asleep on tryptophan and watching a lopsided football game!”
Ouch. That last one is personal. Well, back to my point:
The familiar sounds of Thanksgiving cannot be improved. But maybe introducing some ingredients into your personal thanksgiving with the Lord in prayer will produce a life-transforming potion even more potent than the tryptophan in the turkey. Brothers and Sisters, I introduce you to Hesed. It looks like this in the Hebrew: חֶסֶד. But you don’t have to read Hebrew to get the power of Hesed. The term shows up 245 times in the Old Testament. Hesed is lovingkindness, faithful love, enduring love, and unbreakable love. I prefer the phrase “covenant love.” This is a love that will never let you go.1 The word is prominent in one of the great Thanksgiving Psalms: Psalm 136, which is a litany, a congregational prayer that employs a refrain between pastor and people that builds, like a musical canon, weaving its way through all of the days of our lives, until the crescendo when we see the Lord face to face. We might look back and think of our unfaithfulness as we appear before a holy God. But the Lord has secured salvation through His covenant love, a love that never lets us go. Our Lord Jesus is the fulfillment of hesed, viz., God’s covenant love. And if you are covered by the life and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, you are safely within the eternal grip of God.
This Thanksgiving, let us pause to reflect on the beautiful truth of Psalm 136:1-3:
"Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.
Give thanks to the God of gods, for his steadfast love endures forever.
Give thanks to the Lord of lords, for his steadfast love endures forever!"
Hesed is front and center at Thanksgiving. God’s covenant love is like unto Charis in the New Testament. Charis (χάρις) is God’s grace. Now, some prefer to equate Hesed with Agape, divine love. That is most appropriate. Agape is, as many of us learned, an unconditional love. But I think the word “Grace”—Charis— in the New Testament is the central concept most similar to Hesed, God’s covenant love. Both Hesed and Charis indicate the loving disposition of God towards sinners. God binds Himself to His Word to provide a way for sinners to be redeemed: through the fullness of God’s promises in our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by charis that we are saved through faith (Ephesians 2:8-9). This divine grace, a love beyond measure that entered our world through Jesus, will never let you go. My publisher would (quite justifiably, I’m sure) go nuts at what I am about to write, but I am corny to the core. So, I would have to say, “Please pass the Hesed. And pour some of that good Charis on it, too.” So satisfying. So peaceful. So deserving of my heart’s eternal thanksgiving.
If you are covered by the life and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, you are safely within the eternal grip of God. You are bound to that condition of salvation by God’s hesed: a love that will never let you go.
“An Attitude of Gratitude”
Thanksgiving is more than a holiday—though it remains a cherished day of national prayer—it is a posture of the heart. In this Thanksgiving sermon (the publisher thought my original title was too kitschy, “An Attitude of Gratitude,” but I "borrowed that oft-used title legitimately! Salem Media published the Bible message with a more reasonable—likely wiser—title, Living with an Attitude of Thanksgiving) I explore how understanding hesed, God’s faithful love, transforms how we live. Cultivating gratitude changes our perspective, strengthens relationships, and deepens our faith, allowing us to embrace trust and joy in every season.
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May this season be filled with gratitude for the steadfast love of the forever faithful Lord, the God of grace.
In Christ,
Mike
Michael A. Milton, PhD
Faith for Living, Inc.
“The key to the meaning of hesed is the concept covenant that we have explored often in this book (see especially chapters 2–4), Lord being God’s covenant name. In Deuteronomy 7:9, 12, Moses exhorts Israel:
Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations . . .
And because you listen to these rules and keep and do them, the Lord your God will keep with you the covenant and the steadfast love that he swore to your fathers.
Love in the phrase “covenant and steadfast love” is hesed, in a Hebrew phrase that closely identifies hesed with the covenant itself.” From John Frame (2013). Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief (pp. 248–249). P&R Publishing.