Our Efforts Cannot Be Weighed Against God’s Grace

So the grace of God always works together with our will for its good, and in all things helps, protects and defends it. It does this in such a way that it sometimes even asks for and looks for some efforts of good will from it, so that it may not seem to confer its gifts on someone asleep or slack in lazy ease. It looks for occasions to show that, once the dullness of human laziness is shaken off, its generosity is not unreasonable when it gives on account of some desire and effort to gain it. And God’s grace remains no less free grace, when in return for some small and trivial efforts it gives, with priceless generosity, such glory of immortality and such gifts of eternal blessedness. For because the faith of the thief on the cross came first, no one would say that the blessed dwelling of paradise was therefore not promised to him as a free gift. Nor could we hold that it was the repentance in King David’s single word, “I have sinned against the Lord,” and not rather the mercy of God, that took away those two grievous sins of his, so that he was granted to hear from the prophet Nathan, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you will not die.” That he added murder to adultery was certainly due to free will; but that he was rebuked by the prophet was the grace of God’s compassion. Again, it was his own doing that he humbled himself and acknowledged his guilt; but that in a very short space of time he was granted pardon for such sins was the gift of the merciful Lord. [a]

And what shall we say of this brief confession, and of the incomparable, endless greatness of God’s reward? It is easy to see what the blessed apostle declared about his countless persecutions as he fixed his gaze on the greatness of the reward to come. “For,” he says, “our light affliction, which is only for a moment, works in us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” Elsewhere too he firmly affirms it, saying that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory to come that will be revealed in us.” However much human weakness may strive, then, it cannot come up to the future reward, nor by its efforts take so much from God’s grace that grace does not always remain a free gift. And so the teacher of the Gentiles we have mentioned, though he bears witness that he had obtained the rank of apostle by the grace of God, saying, “By the grace of God I am what I am,” also declares that he himself had answered to God’s grace: “And his grace in me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all; yet not I, but the grace of God with me.” When he says, “I labored,” he shows the effort of his own will. When he says, “yet not I, but the grace of God,” he points out the worth of God’s protection. When he says, “with me,” he affirms that grace worked together with him while he was not idle or careless, but working and making an effort.