God’s Will Is Our Work
In his article (“Justification Sola Fide: Catholic After All?,” September-October 2009) Christopher Malloy unduly restricts the meaning of the word “work” when he says: “But I might not have opportunity to perform a work, to ‘realize’ this living faith.” Every justified person has the opportunity and the obligation to do good work.
Healed and empowered by God through the sacraments, we do good work when we do what God would have us do. Good work is nothing other than obedience to the will of God. Put another way, if God would not have us do anything other than what we are doing in a particular circumstance, then we are doing good work. In fact, we know from Scripture that good work can be something as simple as peaceful sleep. Jesus said, “My Father is working still, and I am working” (Jn 5:17). That is, every moment of his life, Jesus was doing good work. But Jesus was fully human. He slept. If Jesus was always doing good work, even while he slept, we must conclude that sleep can be good work, if that is God’s will for us at the time. And this is obvious when we recall the story of Jesus and his disciples in the storm (Mt 8, Mk 4, Lk 8). As the storm raged, Jesus slept peacefully in the boat, which enabled his disciples to learn a tough lesson about God’s faithfulness and omnipotence. Jesus was clearly doing good work by sleeping.
Let us consider a baby girl who dies just after baptism. Given her circumstance, God would not have her do anything other that what she actually does, and so she does good work, even as she dies. This is why the Church honors the holy innocents who were slaughtered for their association with Jesus (Mt 2:16). These babies did good work—God expected nothing more from them.
Why does this matter? Most Protestants object to this statement: “Good work is necessary for salvation.” But many Protestants agree with this statement: “Obedience to God’s will is necessary for salvation.” For Protestants who agree with the second statement, objections on the issue of justification are rooted in their misunderstanding of the term “good work.” For example, a Protestant might say, “The good thief was saved, yet he did no good work.” They say this because they think that “good work” necessarily means something akin to “serving meals at a homeless shelter.” But in reality, the good thief probably did only good work from the moment of his conversion to his death. This would be so, if he did all that God wanted him to do. As Bl. Teresa of Calcutta says, “Don’t think that sitting, standing, coming and going, and all that you do is not important to God.”
So, Pope Benedict XVI does not err when he says that sola fide is true, if faith is not opposed to charity, because in fact, we do good work whenever we are not opposed to charity. This is no different than saying, “sola fide is true, so long as faith incorporates obedience.” And this is what the Catholic Church has taught since her conception.
http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/god%E2%80%99s-will-is-our-work
“Good work is nothing other than obedience to the will of God.” Obedience is obedience. It is fidelity. Good works are the raising up function of the Holy Spirit in you. It is not obedience. Obedience to the law (and that is honestly what you allude to) places you under the law’s condemnation. THAT is not for the family of Jesus in this New Covenant.
This statement, by itself, would be perfectly fine and even Reformed. However, this is slight of hand. the Romanist religion does not believe that a person is justified and that good works follow justification. The Romanist believes that his justification is continual and maintained through good works or "faithfulness"-- that is, continued obedience.
But as already demonstrated in my last post, there can be no way that justification can be maintained by works, because even Paul is a 'wretched man" in the sight of God.
Justification can stand only on one thing: faith. Why? Because by the instrument of faith we receive the imputed righteousness of the only perfect person in the world, which is Christ. With our own goodness, we cannot get into heaven. We can only do so with the righteousness of another.