Hi, I was just wondering what is the Catholic position on this issue. I am non-denominational, but some of my evangelical friends say that Catholics think they earn their way to heaven. I know that is not true, but my friend made a point. If you have to do good works with your faith, then you are earning you way to heaven which is against the Bible (Ephesians 2:8-9). What I am asking what is the diference between “earning” salvation and doing good works?
Without the the grace of God, there is neither faith nor works. Nor anything else, but God alone. To create the universe was itself an utterly gratuitous thing.
Once grace is received so that saving faith comes into operation, good works are possible. Before justification, our best works are of no religious value at all; after it, they acquire value, as a result of our union with Christ, whose works are done through us, so that it is not we who live, but Christ Who lives in us, through the Spirit Whom He has given us. Even so, our works done through the grace of Christ in us, insofar as they are ours, are very faulty - so, yet again, there is no reason for us to boast, & always ample reason for us to confess our sins.
The whole thing is much profounder than that - how profound, one really discovers only by living in Christ; because what we are talking about is not a philosophy or an ideology, both of which are from this world & thus, are limited by it; but, about living, as creatures, the Uncreated Life of God Himself; that is what the life of grace is: a sharing by sin-prone & defective creatures in the Life of the Blessed Trinity. This is something very dynamic indeed, & no dead theory.
One cannot really talk about the life of grace properly, without tracing it back to very obscure yet exceedingly important matters such as the eternal counsel of God - so you’ve really touched on something that takes in the whole body of God’s revelation in Christ
St.Paul is not issuing a prohibition, so much as pointing out that something is impossible: salvation founded on works is not forbidden - it is something that is not possible; its impossibility comes from the disparity between God the Holy One, & man the sinner. There is nothing in us which we can plead as giving us a title to God’s Friendship, because our state is one of enmity to God; the very thing we need, is the very thing our state as unjustified sinners makes us incapable of wanting or of accepting, yet we still need it, because that, & nothing less, is what we are made for. Lack of justification by the Blood of Christ the Saviour is a sort of existential rabies
- it is so desperate a disease, that only God can heal us.
So God must justify us freely - or not at all. And this He has done. He has gone further - much further: He has given us His own dearly-Beloved Son, as the propitiation & expiation for our sins; & by giving us Him, He has givesn us all things with Him; He has witheld nothing from us. The odd thing is, that in the NT God justifies the unrighteous - the very thing that in the OT is He is said not to do. Which is a great paradox - so because He is of purer eyes than to behold evil, He becomes one of us, in Jesus, that He may see in us only what is pleasing to Him And all this is entirely from God’s grace, from beginning to end.
