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Questions of Faith
Comment
Father Joshua Rodrigue, S.T.L.
Are we saved by good works?
I heard people talking the other day about how we are saved. I always thought we could only be saved by Jesus, but some of them said we could be saved by good works. What’s the right answer?
Currently celebrating the 50 days of the Easter season, we are reminded of Christ’s saving action through the great Paschal Mystery—his suffering, death and resurrection—and this alone is sufficient for our reconciliation with the Father, redemption and salvation.
On Easter Sunday in the sequence Victimae paschali laudes (“To the Paschal Victim Offer Praise”), which is sung or proclaimed before the Gospel, we hear of the effects of Jesus’ victory over sin and death, “The Lamb has redeemed the sheep: The innocent Christ has reconciled sinners to the Father.” Our salvation was from no merit of ours but from God’s great love for us and the desire to show that love through the gift of mercy.
The Catholic Church has never taught a doctrine believing that we could be saved by our good works and, in fact, has constantly condemned the notion that we can earn or merit salvation. In soteriology (the theological study of salvation), sacred Scripture and Catholic tradition declare that salvation is only by God’s grace and unmerited by our own good works. St. Paul insists, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).
Sometimes the confusion can come from hearing St. Paul say, “So then, my beloved, obedient as you have always been, not only when I am present but all the more now when I am absent, work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12). “Working out our salvation” might incline us to believe that the more good works we do, the more reason God has to let us into heaven, which can encourage a false belief in meriting or earning our salvation.
Nevertheless, our good works do play a role in our salvation, but are not the cause of our salvation, which again is Christ’s death and resurrection. Our good works are evidence of our faith in Christ lived out, and they go with us before the Lord upon our day of judgement. When blessing the body of a deceased Christian, the priest, tracing the sign of the cross on the forehead, reminds us by using words from the book of Revelation 14:13, “Blessed are those who have died in the Lord; let them rest from their labors for their good deeds go with them. ”
St. Paul in his letter to the Romans explains the role our works, our actions, play in God’s judgment upon us. He writes that God “will repay everyone according to his works: Eternal life to those who seek glory, honor and immortality through perseverance in good works, but wrath and fury to those who selfishly disobey the truth and obey wickedness” (2:6-8).
This is where the gift of salvation and our works come together. St. Paul further explains, “For God is the one who, for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work” (Philippians 2:13). The work of the Lord is the cause for our salvation, and our disposition or openness, allows us to receive from the Lord the grace, or power, to live out, to “work out” our salvation through the virtue of charity.
“The charity of Christ is the source in us of all our merits before God. Grace, by uniting us to Christ in active love, ensures the supernatural quality of our acts and consequently their merit before God and before men. The saints have always had a lively awareness that their merits were pure grace” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2011).
It is God who works in us to allow us to do good works, to continue Christ’s mission, especially in the corporal and spiritual works of mercy—feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, sheltering the homeless, burying the dead, admonishing the sinner, instructing the ignorant, counseling the doubtful, comforting the sorrowful, bearing wrongs patiently, forgiving all injuries, and praying for the living and dead.
Actually, the only work we can truly do on our own is sin; everything else is done by God’s grace in us. Through our baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection, we have been recreated to fulfill our mission doing the good works of Christ. St. Paul declares, “For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them” (Ephesians 2:10). Through the good works, we take part in fulfilling God’s plan for the salvation of the whole world.
It takes our cooperation with God’s grace in doing God’s will, and that is hard work. But when we are justified, when we are in right relationship with God, our hearts are disposed to receive the assistance we need to complete the work involved in living out the Christian life, working out our salvation given to us by Christ. “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6) BC
