Jimmy Akin – Catholic Answers –

(The term “works” is) used in different senses in different passages of the Bible. A lot of the time when St. Paul uses it, he’s not referring to good works, which is how the term is commonly taken in the history of Protestant theology, and to some extent in the history of Catholic theology as well—”good works” being works of a morally good nature. Very frequently when Paul is using the term works he means works of the Mosaic law, or things you do because you believe you need to fulfill the Mosaic law in order to be saved. And that’s why he talks so much about circumcision in Romans and Galatians, because the point he’s making there is you don’t need to be a Jew in order to be a Christian and be saved. And so when he’s talking about works, much of the time St. Paul means works of the Mosaic law.

Now suppose, though, that we use the historical definition that has been contentious between Protestants and Catholics, which is “morally good works.” Well, there’s sort of two kinds of morally good works. There are good works that are done by human nature, and then there are good works that are done by God’s grace. Prior to the point of justification, it is not possible for us to do supernaturally good works, or works done by God’s grace, because God’s grace isn’t yet acting in our souls. We haven’t yet been justified, we haven’t yet received his grace, and so it is impossible for us to do supernaturally good works prior to the point in our lives where we convert and we’re justified. And as a result of that, nothing that we do prior to justification merits the grace of justification. So the first thing that happens—I mean, we come to God, we believe, we repent, we get baptized—that’s the point at which, in the ordinary course of affairs, he justifies us and gives us his grace.

Then, over the course of the Christian life, we grow in his grace. And because we have his grace working in our souls now, it’s now possible for us to do supernaturally good works…

And this is the kind of justification that James is talking about. In James chapter 2, James is not talking about the beginning of the Christian life. The example he cites is Abraham and his willingness to do whatever God wanted, and that’s something that—Abraham had already been justified for years by this point. So James is not talking about how to get into a state of justification, he’s talking about growing in Christlike-ness in that state of justification. And then at the end, when we stand before God, we’ll also be justified there.

So there are these different aspects to justification; there’s past justification at the beginning of the Christian life, there’s ongoing justification during the course of the Christian life, and then there’s final justification when we stand before God. And when we stand before God, he will pronounce us righteous on the basis of Christ and what he did in our lives, and he will reward the good works that we have done. This is something St. Paul stresses both in Romans and in Galatians. He says “God will reward every man according to his works,” and among the rewards that Paul says God will give, in both places, is eternal life. This is in Romans 2 and it’s also in Galatians.

The source of this information and full transcript is available here on catholic.com