Are Good Works Necessary For Salvation?

[Mustard]

If I, as a credal, cradle Catholic, uphold in my life the laws of the Catholic Church and remain in communion with Her, but do no more than that, am I worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven?

 

[Victor2211]

Jesus wants us to do so much more. He wants us to live our faith and to share it. I’m the first to admit that this is a challenge. But being a follower of Christ was never promised to be easy. Read Matthew 5:14-16. God bless you.

 

[LegoGE1947]

Jesus wants us to do so much more. He wants us to live our faith and to share it. I’m the first to admit that this is a challenge. But being a follower of Christ was never promised to be easy. Read Matthew 5:14-16. God bless you.

If you don’t think GOOD works are needed for salvation, try and see how far you get doing BAD works!

 

[meltzerboy]

If I, as a credal, cradle Catholic, uphold in my life the laws of the Catholic Church and remain in communion with Her, but do no more than that, am I worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven?

This is not in keeping with Church teaching although it does conform with some–not all–Protestant denominations. Certain movements in Judaism (which in general doesn’t pay too much attention to personal salvation to begin with) go so far as to say that sincere good works alone, even without apparent faith, are the surest form of salvation and indeed are the best sign of true faith.

 

[JRKH]

If I, as a credal, cradle Catholic, uphold in my life the laws of the Catholic Church and remain in communion with Her, but do no more than that, am I worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven?

Short answer is YES…Because - in upholding the “laws” of the Church - you will be on a lifelong journey of growth and development that will necessarily involve many good works.

For the most fundamental law of the Church - received from Christ and recorded in the Gospels is LOVE. Love of God first and neighbor as yourself - Love for each other as Jesus has loved us…to seek to be perfect in Love as our Heavenly Father is perfect. These are the very foundation of our faith…

If one** tries** to “uphold the laws of the church” without embracing and upholding this foundation of love…they will be like the description Paul gives in 1 Corinthians 13:1-3…
**and **
he will have failed to uphold the “laws of the Church” by not upholding the foundational law…which is Love.

Peace
James

 

[Spider42]

If I, as a credal, cradle Catholic, uphold in my life the laws of the Catholic Church and remain in communion with Her, but do no more than that, am I worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven?

Stricly speaking, we do not, and could not, know. Salvation is in God’s hands alone (CCC 169), but we would, for your sake, fear not. We believe the Gospel is the revelation of God’s mercy (CCC 1846) and as was noted above, the answers that Jesus gives when asked about salvation center around a life of service (other examples would be Matthew 25, judgement by the Son of Man or Luke 10, both the preamble and the parable of the Good Samaritan).

But, in a sense, it is also a bit of a trick question. If one truly is upholding the doctrine of the Catholic Church then something like charity is the most important social commandment (CCC 1889) and we view the Beatitudes as a central proclamation of Jesus’ teachings (CCC 1716) that represent the true meaning and goal of human acts (CCC 1719). There are also special obligations to the poor (CCC 2439-2463), a command to proclaim the Gospel to others (CCC 2), and an obligation to promote the common good (CCC 1913)…

No single Catholic can do all these things, that is why we are organized as a community of faith, answering our true vocations in the overall body of the faithful.

 

[Spider42]

Love of God first and neighbor as yourself - Love for each other as Jesus has loved us…to seek to be perfect in Love as our Heavenly Father is perfect. These are the very foundation of our faith…

Excellent point. The two commandments of love are the simplest formula for the entire Catholic faith (see the Compandium to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Appendix B).

 

[po18guy]

At your confirmation, you received the Holy Spirit. The Spirit gave you a gift (charism), or gifts, that you are expected to use in building the Church up. At the fulness of time, you will be asked to produce the return to the Lord for the gifts He gave you in His absence. Read the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30) and you will see that we will have much to answer for - especially if we simply hid the talent and did not use it for the Lord’s gain.

 

[Bookcat]

Are Good Works Necessary For Salvation?

Not to “enter” the state of salvation…such is by grace via Faith and Baptism.

Now once a Christian --one lives by love…so good works will be part of that.

Now what happens if say a baby dies --before any “good works” well – they go to heaven.

An adult will start actively living their faith pretty much right away – by prayer …love etc…

 

[Tomdstone]

If I, as a credal, cradle Catholic, uphold in my life the laws of the Catholic Church and remain in communion with Her, but do no more than that, am I worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven?

A reading of Matthew 25 indicates that good works are very important for salvation. I don’t know about absolutely necessary.

 

[Mustard]

I have always found Matthew 25:14-30 to be a troubling parable. The lord who is referred to by Jesus (presumably, a metaphor for the actual Lord) is said to be “a hard man” who “reaps where he has not sown”, who “gathers where he has spread no seed” and who calls the third servant “wicked and lazy” for returning to him what is his, although no more than that. This is not an image of a loving and compassionate father, and while I accept that a good father should encourage and, if necessary, push his children to do more than they might otherwise do alone, once we get into the concept of “good works”, a horizon so vast opens up as to be uncrossable. Should I help the poor? Oppose abortion? Preach on street corners? If I concentrate on one of these things, am I guilty of neglecting the others? What of more mundane “good works”? My wife, for instance, is not a Catholic. Does quietly praying and offering up communion that she may, in her own time, join us count as a good work? How about defending the faith to those who run it down? Does that count? Or should I be out pounding the pavement in front of abortion clinics, or whatever?

 

[down_under]

This is a very good discussion. I was sort of thinking this would go horribly wrong (or right depending on how you look at it) by a plethora of alternate view points. Some have heard this before but the passage that brings this home for me was always

Paul… I make up in my body what was lacking in the sufferings of Christ.
He clearly thinks works are involved with salvation. To the point that he must do what Christ could not (participate). It is desired and required when possible that we participate in salvation with works of mercy, or any of the other suggestions the other posters have given.

And of course there is the book of James …“faith without good works is dead” It pretty well sums it up. You are expected to be in the boat with both feet, and give God the tiller. To go where you are called to go and do what you are called to do to make up what was lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the people in front of you. We are called to be salt and light and leaven. Its a big job.

 

[JRKH]

I have always found Matthew 25:14-30 to be a troubling parable. The lord who is referred to by Jesus (presumably, a metaphor for the actual Lord) is said to be “a hard man” who “reaps where he has not sown”, who “gathers where he has spread no seed” and who calls the third servant “wicked and lazy” for returning to him what is his, although no more than that. This is not an image of a loving and compassionate father,

Yes I can see where this can be troubling.
Perhaps I can offer some insight.
In regards to the “hard man” aspect. I see this as a call to not be afraid. The problem was that the third servant acted out of fear. Note that the idea that the master is a “hard man” came from the servant’s perception of him. The master then feeds this back to the servant - basically saying that if this is how he saw the master - it was all the more reason to invest the talent instead of hiding it.
Now as for calling the servant “wicked and lazy”, I see this as an "attention getter. While “Fear of the Lord” is the beginning of wisdom, fear to the point of inactivity is despair. Inactivity on behalf of our Lord IS wicked and lazy. Fear of the Lord must mean “respect” giving way to Love.
All three servants saw the same master. Two of them respected the master and saw that if they worked on the master’s behalf they would gain. The third servant did not respect the master but only feared him…to the point of inactivity.

So - as JP II said many years ago. “Be not Afraid”.

and while I accept that a good father should encourage and, if necessary, push his children to do more than they might otherwise do alone, once we get into the concept of “good works”, a horizon so vast opens up as to be uncrossable. Should I help the poor? Oppose abortion? Preach on street corners? If I concentrate on one of these things, am I guilty of neglecting the others? What of more mundane “good works”? My wife, for instance, is not a Catholic. Does quietly praying and offering up communion that she may, in her own time, join us count as a good work? How about defending the faith to those who run it down? Does that count? Or should I be out pounding the pavement in front of abortion clinics, or whatever?

Yes this can be difficult. There is so much to do and so little time.
The best answer here is that if you are doing the best that you can with what you have, then there is no guilt. Start from this perspective. As to the more “mundane” works - of course they count and they are some of the most important of the works.
St Therese of Lisieux, a doctor of the Church, built her so called “Little way” on just this idea. “Do little things with great Love”. She referred to this as the “elevator to heaven”.

So my suggestion is this. Begin with the little things. Prayer first among them. Praying for your wife must be first because God has given you this woman and your love for her must naturally mean that you wish her to make it to heaven. Pray too for God to open your eyes to the many little ways that you can witness your faith. Not on street corners, but by opening a door for someone, taking a further parking spot, letting someone go ahead of you in line, mopping the kitchen floor when yo uknow your wife is tired, and so forth.
Pray that God reveal to you other things that you can do.
Praying in front of an abortion clinic is indeed a wonderful work - and this does not mean that you need to confront people. Leave that to those trained. But even if you cannot pray in front of the clinic, you can say a quick prayer as you drive by it.

In short - we do what we are able…Only God can do it all.

Peace
James

 

[djames99]

If I, as a credal, cradle Catholic, uphold in my life the laws of the Catholic Church and remain in communion with Her, but do no more than that, am I worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven?

“Doing” could be as much as praying. For instance, those strapped to life sustaining devices are that much closer to our Lord because of their suffering, and so are those incarcerated in solitary confinement without amenities. These are but two conditions of many that one may find himself in where he is capable to do works.

A properly honed conscience will inspire him to pray for those who have difficulty in carrying out works, so it would be unconscionable for some to “do” nothing.

But it is good that you bring up such an important subject. It is the root of so much misunderstanding as to the obligations of Christians who claim by this identity to uphold all the requirements for being one. Full communion also entails carrying out what one believes.

 

[Tomdstone]

I have always found Matthew 25:14-30 to be a troubling parable.

Many things in holy Scripture are troubling. They are there to shake us up out of our complacency and reflect upon methods and strategies to increase our spiritual awareness in the context of the conflicts and fragmentation of our lives

 

[Spider42]

I have always found Matthew 25:14-30 to be a troubling parable.

Part of the problem with trying to understand scripture is not knowing first century context. And the context for each of the Gospels is different. That is because the Gospels themselves were originally written to evangelize the faith to different audiences. Sometimes this means that minor details are changed to make them more familiar (a roof changes from thatch to tile), sometimes the changes are more substantial. For example, look at Luke 19:12-27, it is the same basic lesson, but with a substantially different context to convey it.

The version you refer to, Matt 25:14-30 was originally intended for a Jewish audience. In the first century, Judea was largely a sharecropper economy, and the audience was familiar with various lessons and examples from what we call the Old Testament. Let’s face it, God as depicted in the Old Testament is pretty scary. And “Fear of God” was already held as a virtue in the Jewish faith.

Jesus did not change this, Fear of God is still a gift of the Holy Spirit in Catholic faith (CCC 1831). What Jesus did was correct our understanding of how to use and view this gift.

Ultra devout Jewish sects in the first century, like the Pharisees and some splinters of the Essenes were fairly extreme xenophobes. They feared contact with people outside their closed group. Jesus’ response to this was to explain that our fear of God is a gift, in part, because it frees us from having any fear of our fellow man (Luke 12:4-5 is a good example).

Another way in which Fear of God was missunderstood was that people were often (and still are!) literalist rule followers, who focussed on avoiding God’s wrath by strict rule following to the point where they lost sight of the foundations of the very ‘rules’ they were trying to uphold.

Case in point, many people assume that the Levi and the Priest in the parable of the Good Samaritan are just heartless jerks (Luke 10:29-37). But they were probably both just very strictly following Mosaic cleanliness laws - and following the rules specifically to avoid incurring God’s wrath. The choice of a Samaritan as the person who truly reflects the spirit of the law is very pointed. The Samaritan wasn’t just a foreigner, he was an untrusted and generally feared foreigner. The Samaritans had their own Torah, and were seen as representing precisely the sort of corrupting influence that Pharisees, etc. saw as a major threat to their faith.

So, in this parable, Jesus is telling us a lot of things, including that our “neighbour” in Leviticus 19:18 (the context of the attempted ‘trick’ question) includes even our feared enemies, that the foundation of the moral law is always what is most important (the two commandments of love again), and that God is best served by what we do for others, not the religious constraints we place on ourselves.

Now return to the parable that troubles you. Try to put yourself in a position that this is a parable, a familiar situation. Your boss gives you some money to invest on his behalf. You are so paralized by fear of your boss and concerns about what might go wrong, you do something stupid. You bury the money in the ground. Of course the boss is displeased! He gave you the money to *serve his purposes *and you were so confused and consumed by fear that you tried to serve him by effectively doing nothing!

But this is a parable. God is not interested in earthly money. He gives us each individual gifts with instructions to use them as best we can to serve Him. Even though it may appear that some people are given more gifts, what gifts we each have are there so that we can *serve his purposes *and we do not please Him by keeping our gifts burried, or hidden, and doing nothing.

Now, relate this to your original question. If I strictly follow our doctrines and dogma, basically our New Covanent version of Mosaic Law, will God be pleased? The answer in scripture, including the parable that troubles you, appear to be, following the rules is great, but that can’t be at the expense of the true foundation of the law, the two commandments of love, and if you truly want to please God, you need to do your best to put the gifts He has given you to use serving Him.

The above is not meant to be a definitive explanation. When I normally teach this portion of Holy Scripture, we approach it a very different way. The most important point I am trying to convey is that there is a reason that we Catholics are not ‘sola scriptura’, we have Tradition and a Living Magisterium because it is all to easy to make comparisons like ‘that doesn’t sound like a loving father’, when even things like our modern concept of family structure and ‘loving father’ would be completely alien to the Gospels’ original audience. Jesus taught for all ages, but the writings recording his lessons often have to be seen through 1st century eyes to be properly understood. Church tradition carries that knowledge and the Living Magisterium is there to make sure we properly apply Jesus timeless teachings to the very different world we face today.

 

[LegoGE1947]

Part of the problem with trying to understand scripture is not knowing first century context. And the context for each of the Gospels is different. That is because the Gospels themselves were originally written to evangelize the faith to different audiences. Sometimes this means that minor details are changed to make them more familiar (a roof changes from thatch to tile), sometimes the changes are more substantial. For example, look at Luke 19:12-27, it is the same basic lesson, but with a substantially different context to convey it.

The version you refer to, Matt 25:14-30 was originally intended for a Jewish audience. In the first century, Judea was largely a sharecropper economy, and the audience was familiar with various lessons and examples from what we call the Old Testament. Let’s face it, God as depicted in the Old Testament is pretty scary. And “Fear of God” was already held as a virtue in the Jewish faith.

Jesus did not change this, Fear of God is still a gift of the Holy Spirit in Catholic faith (CCC 1831). What Jesus did was correct our understanding of how to use and view this gift.

Ultra devout Jewish sects in the first century, like the Pharisees and some splinters of the Essenes were fairly extreme xenophobes. They feared contact with people outside their closed group. Jesus’ response to this was to explain that our fear of God is a gift, in part, because it frees us from having any fear of our fellow man (Luke 12:4-5 is a good example).

Another way in which Fear of God was missunderstood was that people were often (and still are!) literalist rule followers, who focussed on avoiding God’s wrath by strict rule following to the point where they lost sight of the foundations of the very ‘rules’ they were trying to uphold.

Case in point, many people assume that the Levi and the Priest in the parable of the Good Samaritan are just heartless jerks (Luke 10:29-37). But they were probably both just very strictly following Mosaic cleanliness laws - and following the rules specifically to avoid incurring God’s wrath. The choice of a Samaritan as the person who truly reflects the spirit of the law is very pointed. The Samaritan wasn’t just a foreigner, he was an untrusted and generally feared foreigner. The Samaritans had their own Torah, and were seen as representing precisely the sort of corrupting influence that Pharisees, etc. saw as a major threat to their faith.

So, in this parable, Jesus is telling us a lot of things, including that our “neighbour” in Leviticus 19:18 (the context of the attempted ‘trick’ question) includes even our feared enemies, that the foundation of the moral law is always what is most important (the two commandments of love again), and that God is best served by what we do for others, not the religious constraints we place on ourselves.

Now return to the parable that troubles you. Try to put yourself in a position that this is a parable, a familiar situation. Your boss gives you some money to invest on his behalf. You are so paralized by fear of your boss and concerns about what might go wrong, you do something stupid. You bury the money in the ground. Of course the boss is displeased! He gave you the money to *serve his purposes *and you were so confused and consumed by fear that you tried to serve him by effectively doing nothing!

But this is a parable. God is not interested in earthly money. He gives us each individual gifts with instructions to use them as best we can to serve Him. Even though it may appear that some people are given more gifts, what gifts we each have are there so that we can *serve his purposes *and we do not please Him by keeping our gifts burried, or hidden, and doing nothing.

Now, relate this to your original question. If I strictly follow our doctrines and dogma, basically our New Covanent version of Mosaic Law, will God be pleased? The answer in scripture, including the parable that troubles you, appear to be, following the rules is great, but that can’t be at the expense of the true foundation of the law, the two commandments of love, and if you truly want to please God, you need to do your best to put the gifts He has given you to use serving Him.

The above is not meant to be a definitive explanation. When I normally teach this portion of Holy Scripture, we approach it a very different way. The most important point I am trying to convey is that there is a reason that we Catholics are not ‘sola scriptura’, we have Tradition and a Living Magisterium because it is all to easy to make comparisons like ‘that doesn’t sound like a loving father’, when even things like our modern concept of family structure and ‘loving father’ would be completely alien to the Gospels’ original audience. Jesus taught for all ages, but the writings recording his lessons often have to be seen through 1st century eyes to be properly understood. Church tradition carries that knowledge and the Living Magisterium is there to make sure we properly apply Jesus timeless teachings to the very different world we face today.

Not being more than 10 years in the Faith, I’m not sure about good works or alot of stuff relative to Catholicism. Today, for example, we couldn’t get to church because of icy weather. Did we sin by not going to Mass today? Also I could not give an offering to my parish because my pay has been reduced and my pay doesn’t fit my needs any more.

 

[JRKH]

Not being more than 10 years in the Faith, I’m not sure about good works or alot of stuff relative to Catholicism. Today, for example, we couldn’t get to church because of icy weather. Did we sin by not going to Mass today? Also I could not give an offering to my parish because my pay has been reduced and my pay doesn’t fit my needs any more.

You did not sin by missing mass today - you would have gone if you had been able to safely.

As for offerings to the parish…each must make that determination for themselves. The Church makes no requirement on this. Hopefully at some point, before too long, things will change and you will be able to resume your contribution.

Peace
James

 

[OxygenMan]

Good works are helpful for our brothers and sisters, so we should do them. And God commanded that we do them, so we should obey.

 

[yellowbird]

The theif on the cross did not have “good works” yet Jesus assured him he would be in paradise.

We are saved by the grace of God, not by our own merits.

However, as Christians we are called by God to do certaint things… Love Him with our whole heart, and love our neighbors as ourselves. Love requires action… so until He calls us home, we have work to do.