What gets rewarded is God’s gracious work in and through us as faithful (yet imperfect) stewards of His grace (Philippians 2:12–13; Hebrews 13:20–21). In that sense, Augustine was right: “God crowns His own gifts.” May He give us grace to be wise stewards until we receive Him as our blessed reward (WCF 7.1).

Perhaps you balked when you read the title of this article. “Reward? What are we talking about here?” Protestants, especially in the Reformed tradition, sometimes have an allergic reaction to the language of “reward,” and rightly so. Medieval and modern Roman Catholicism conflates “reward” with “merit,” deeming them synonymous, although the latter is usually distinguished between two kinds of merit: condign merit (Latin meritum de condigno) and congruent merit (meritum de congruo). Think of purchasing a home. If you pay the full amount of the home, you have condignly merited your home. If you have most of the money but get a little help from someone else to pay the rest, then you have congruently merited your home. The Roman Catholic Catechism assumes the notion of congruent merit to depict the necessity of good works to attain or merit salvation, with Christ providing most of the help.

For instance, the Roman Catholic Catechism acknowledges “no strict right to any merit [read: condign merit] on the part of man,” because “we have received everything” from God. But it goes on to say that man can merit something before God after God first acts in grace toward man, even appealing to Augustine: “Our merits are God’s gifts.” It continues: although “no one can merit [read: condignly merit] the initial grace of forgiveness and justification, at the beginning of conversion,” believers can be “moved by the Holy Spirit and by charity [or love]” to “merit [read: congruently 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” (last italics added).

Notice how salvation comes in two stages: initially by grace and then finally by Spirit-wrought good works. The grace of God helps a person “merit [congruently] . . . eternal life” rather than granting salvation entirely as a gift from first to last. All believers must persevere “with the grace of God” to “obtain the joy of heaven, as God’s eternal reward for the good works accomplished with the grace of Christ” (emphasis added). Note how quickly “merit” becomes synonymous with “reward.” Even the glossary in the back of the Roman Catholic Catechism defines “merit” as “the reward which God promises and gives to those who love him and by his grace perform good works” (emphasis added). No wonder the Reformed tradition rejects both condign and congruent merit and why so many balk at the sound of “reward.”

Grace and merit are polar opposites. Grace is a gift—a free, voluntary, unconditional gift of God in Christ Jesus given to the unworthy (Rom. 5:6–8). We receive a gift, and the only way to receive it is through the instrumental gift of faith (Eph. 2:8; Phil. 1:29). Merit, however, connotes proving one’s worth, meeting conditions, and so deserving a wage. We earn a wage or reward. My wife and I are thrilled whenever we discover that our airline credit card has earned us a free domestic flight (especially as a family of six) or when our cash-back credit card has earned us a refund (which immediately goes into the grocery budget). But these are not gifts. We needed to do something to merit those rewards. Paul shows us the difference between grace and merit in Romans 4:4–5: “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift [literally “grace”] but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.” Grace and merit oppose one another.

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