Not Because of Works

DEFENSE

This passage does not disagree with Catholic teaching.

Catholics agree we are saved through faith and by grace: “Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God” (CCC 1996).

Neither salvation nor faith is our own doing. Both are products of God’s grace: “The divine initiative in the work of grace precedes, prepares, and elicits the free response of man” (CCC 2022). “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” (CCC 2010).

The statement that our salvation “is not of works, lest any man should boast” has often been taken to mean we can’t earn our salvation. This is true, as the Church acknowledges: “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” (CCC 2007).

Although we can’t earn salvation, this probably isn’t what Paul is asserting here. Normally when he refers to “works” in a context like this, he means a specific kind of works: those done to obey the Jewish Law (circumcision, keeping kosher, and so on). His repeated statements that salvation isn’t by these kind of works was meant to counter the belief of some first-century Christians that you needed to be a Jew in order to be saved (see Day 63).

That is probably what Paul means here. Thus in the next verse he praises “good works” as part of the Christian life, in preference to the “works” he says do not save us (Eph. 2:10). He then discusses how Gentiles are saved together with Jews, in spite of their uncircumcision (Eph. 2:11–12), and how Jesus has abolished the Law and its commandments so both Jews and Gentiles might be united in one body (Eph. 2:13–16).

TIP

See also the answer for Day 278.