The apparent tension between "saved by grace through faith" and judgment "according to works" has occupied Christian theologians from the medieval schoolmen to the Reformers. Calvin resolved it by insisting that the kingdom of heaven is an inheritance of sons, not the hire of servants — "reward" names compensation for suffering, not the merit of works. Luther sharpened the distinction: works of the Law cannot justify, since justification is a present forensic verdict received by faith alone. Peter Lombard and Hugh of St. Victor carried the scholastic tradition's attempt to integrate grace and merit, while Puritan writers like John Owen and George Whitefield pressed the Reformation insistence that faith alone closes with Christ for righteousness.
"There is nothing in the term reward to justify the inference that our works are the cause of salvation. First, let it be a fixed principle in our hearts, that the kingdom of heaven is not the hire of servants, but the inheritance of sons; an inheritance obtained by those only whom the Lord has adopted as sons, and obtained for no other cause than this adoption." — Calvin's resolution of the works/grace tension.
"A person simply is not justified by the works of the Law. The works of the Law, according to Paul, include the whole Law, judicial, ceremonial, moral" — Luther's categorical rejection of works as the ground of justification, with works of any kind excluded from the verdict.
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