A common charge leveled against the Catholic Church is that it wrongfully teaches that Christians can “earn” grace. They say that this conflicts with the teaching that grace is a gift from God, which we can never earn. In this article, I will show why grace is indeed a gift from God that we do not “earn.” Rather, we cooperate with this gift to remain in it and further dispose ourselves to an increase of it. This is what the Catholic Church correctly calls merit.
The Catechism on Merit
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in its section on merit, states,
Since the initiative belongs to God in the order of grace, no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification, at the beginning of conversion. Moved by the Holy Spirit and by charity, we can then merit for ourselves and for others the graces needed for our sanctification, for the increase of grace and charity, and for the attainment of eternal life. Even temporal goods like health and friendship can be merited in accordance with God’s wisdom. These graces and goods are the object of Christian prayer. Prayer attends to the grace we need for meritorious actions.
With regard to God, there is no strict right to any merit on the part of man. Between God and us there is an immeasurable inequality, for we have received everything from Him, our Creator.
The merit of man before God in the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his grace. The fatherly action of God is first on his own initiative, and then follows man’s free acting through his collaboration, so that the merit of good works is to be attributed in the first place to the grace of God, then to the faithful. Man’s merit, moreover, itself is due to God, for his good actions proceed in Christ, from the predispositions and assistance given by the Holy Spirit.
The first sentence quoted provides context for the rest of the quote. Any time we convert from sin to grace, God initiates the conversion with His grace. If He did not initiate our conversion, we would have to reach God without His assistance. This would be an impossible task because the natural cannot reach the supernatural without the supernatural first reaching down to us. For more on how God moves us without destroying or diminishing our free wills, please click here.
When God justifies us with His grace, meaning that He puts us in a filial (Father/son, Father/daughter) relationship with Him, His grace makes us more like Him. He who is grace gives us grace. God, therefore, bridges the infinite gap between us and Him with grace.
Consequently, He expects us to imitate Him by living in truth and living out love. Through this gift, He gives us power to merit additional graces needed for our sanctification, and we can help others move toward their own sanctification; we can pray for and evangelize others with the aid of grace. The grace God gives us precedes all our meritorious actions. For more on sanctifying and actual graces, please click here.
So, we merit by way of God’s promises, grace, and our cooperation with grace. God promises eternal life to those who faithfully respond to His call. Obviously, if one does not to respond to His call (i.e., sloth) after God justifies him, one refuses eternal life. For more on the false protestant doctrine of eternal security and the true Catholic doctrine of conditional security, please click here.
Scripture on Merit
God promises more grace and other gifts if we cooperate with grace after justification. This is why St. Peter, whom the Holy Spirit guided when he wrote his epistles, wrote, “…grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18).
Further, Jesus tells us to lay up for ourselves treasures in Heaven (Matthew 6:19-21), and in Luke 12, He adds, “Sell your possessions, give alms; provide yourselves with purses that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that do not fail…” (v. 33).
1 Corinthians 3:1-8, St. Paul writes that the servants of God who plant and water “shall receive his wages according to his labor” (see also 1 Corinthians 15:58). These servants build up the kingdom by spreading the good news and helping those who receive this news to understand it better. By doing these things faithfully, these servants receive rewards for their good works.
Similarly, in Romans 2:6-7, St. Paul writes, “For He will render to every man according to his works: to those who by patience and well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, He will give eternal life” (see also Matthew 25:31-46). Here, Paul teaches that those who do good works will inherit eternal life. He says this because God gives us the grace to faithfully do good works out of love for Him first and then our neighbors as ourselves.
Jesus provides us with an even clearer example of merit in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30). Here, two men work to double their talents. To each of these men, the master says, “Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much; enter into the joy of your master.”
Notice that to be a good and faithful servant, one must do good with the talents God gives him. As a result, God will set this servant over much because the servant merited a place in Heaven – “enter into the joy of your master.”
Briefly, 2 Corinthians 9:6 tells us that those who sow bountifully will reap bountifully. Similarly, Galatians 6:8 states that those who sow to the flesh will reap corruption, but those who sow to the Spirit will reap eternal life. And St. John writes that we love by following Jesus’s commandments and to “look to yourselves, that you may not lose what you have worked for but may win a full reward” (2 John 1:4-11).
All of these verses and many others tell us about the importance of faithfully and lovingly working in grace. They also tell us that this kind of work merits rewards, helps others, and keeps us in grace.
How We Merit
From the above, we should clearly see that we merit by cooperating with the grace God gives us while living in a state of grace. By cooperating with grace, we further dispose our souls to more grace. This happens because our cooperation with grace creates a greater desire and receptivity for more grace (see Summa Theologiae, q. 8 answer and the reply to objection 3).
Analogously, when we study, we not only learn the thing we study, but we also dispose our minds to more knowledge through the habit of studying. In other words, learning becomes easier the more we do it. And the more we do it, the more we prepare ourselves to receive more knowledge. As a subject becomes easier to understand, we move from trying to understand the subject to building upon it with more knowledge.
Our growth in grace is similar. As we cooperate with it, we move from initial justification to cutting out sinful behaviors and inclinations to sin, and to doing good works that build upon grace. So, God helps us to grow in grace by grace and our cooperation with it.
Essentially, if God loves and does good, and grace makes us more like Him, then one whom God has given grace must reflect Him by loving and doing good. Whereas the word earn implies payment for a task performed, merit, in the context of salvation, means reward for cooperating with grace to function as God made us.
We can conclude from this that the more we cooperate with grace, the more grace God will give us. And since grace puts us in right relationship with God, then more grace will put us in an increasingly fuller relationship with Him.
A Soul Growing in Grace
As a soul cooperates with grace, it opens itself to more grace, and God will continuously provide it abundantly. This is what the Catholic Church means by meriting grace. The cycle of meriting and growing in grace is this: God initiates -> We cooperate -> Our souls become better disposed and more receptive to grace -> God continues to fill our souls with more grace -> We continue to cooperate -> Our souls become even better disposed -> God continues to give more grace -> We become more and more like God -> -> ->
As you can see, this process is not transactional – we do, God pays. That is a works-based salvation. Rather, it is cooperative – God gives, we respond with His help, and He continues to give as we grow and to help us grow more in love with Him. We reflect His creative power by doing the good works to which He calls us (Ephesians 2:10), and we further dispose ourselves to more grace by doing so. This is grace-based salvation and sanctification.
If a person holds the position that one cannot merit more grace, then that person believes that growth in grace is impossible. This is because growth in grace requires us to use grace to further dispose ourselves to more grace.
The person who receives sanctifying grace and then does nothing to grow in it commits spiritual suicide. St. James makes this clear. He writes, “For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead” (James 2:26). Therefore, a working faith is necessary for spiritual growth and meriting more grace.
So, go out and do the good works God has created and called you to do. By doing this, you will dispose yourselves to more grace, and you will grow in it. Consequently, you will increase in supernatural faith, hope, and love, and you will enter into your Master’s joy.
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