The Word Paul Coined for a Grateful People

Colossians 3:15 · Rare or unique word · 2026-08-15

καὶ ἡ εἰρήνη τοῦ Χριστοῦ βραβευέτω ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις ὑμῶν εἰς ἣν καὶ ἐκλήθητε ἐν ἑνὶ σώματι καὶ εὐχάριστοι γίνεσθε

And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be ye thankful.

The English reader takes 'be ye thankful' as a familiar, ordinary closing exhortation — one more item in a list of Christian virtues.

The word behind 'thankful' is εὐχάριστοι (eu-kharistoi), built from eu ('good, well') and kharis ('grace, favor'). It appears only here in the whole New Testament — nowhere else does Paul or any other writer use this exact adjective. Its root, kharis, is the same word underlying 'grace' and 'thanksgiving' (eucharist) throughout the New Testament, but this precise form — a people described, as a class, as 'grace-filled' or 'well-graced ones' — Paul apparently minted for this moment alone.

This is not decoration. Paul has just spoken of the peace of Christ ruling (brabeuo — literally acting as umpire, deciding the contest) in hearts, and of the one body into which believers were called. The rare word he chooses to close with does not simply mean 'grateful' in the thin, modern sense of feeling good about things. It names people who are themselves saturated with grace — as though thankfulness were not a mood to summon but a nature to inhabit, the fitting shape of a person who has received kharis and now becomes it.

That Paul had to reach for a word used nowhere else suggests ordinary vocabulary could not hold what he saw happening in these Colossian believers — a community of former strangers, Jew and Gentile, slave and free, now one body, arbitrated by Christ's own peace. Grace does not stop at forgiveness; it presses on until the forgiven become gracious, until receivers become a grace-shaped people. God is not merely the giver of a gift called grace — he is the kind of God whose grace, once received, remakes the recipient into its likeness. That a unique word was needed here means something unique was, in fact, occurring.

Today

Name one specific grace you have received this week — an answered prayer, a kindness, a forgiveness extended to you — and write a one-sentence prayer thanking God for it before you do anything else today.