Chapter 18. Faith Without Good Works Is Not Sufficient For Salvation (continued)
CHAPTER 19.
HOW IS ETERNAL LIFE BOTH A REWARD FOR SERVICE,
AND A FREE GIFT OF GRACE?
And hence there arises no small question which must be solved by the Lord’s gift. Eternal life is rendered for good works, as the Scripture most openly declares: “Then He shall reward every man according to his works:”Mat 16.27 If so, then how can eternal life be a matter of grace, seeing that grace is not rendered for works, but is given gratuitously, as the apostle himself tells us: “To him that works, the reward is not reckoned of grace, but of debt;”Rom 4.4 and again: “There is a remnant saved according to the election of grace,” with these words immediately subjoined: “And if of grace, then is it no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace.”Rom 11.5-6 How then is eternal life by grace, when it is received from works? Does the apostle perhaps not say that eternal life is a grace? No, he has so called it, with a clearness which none can possibly dispute. It requires no acute intellect but only an attentive reader to discover this. For after saying, “The wages of sin is death,” he at once added, “but the grace [or gift] of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”Rom 6.23