Why aren't good deeds deserving of a reward?

[mortify]

Peace in Christ,

Concerning the belief of Justification: that it's a gratuitious gift from God and not merited by any of our deeds.

Why can't someone's good deeds and personal effort towards goodness motivate God to reward them with grace/justification?

Why are we undeserving of justification/grace? Why are good deeds undeserving of it?



Peace,
mort

[Myles Domini]

The key to this question is self-knowledge: What is man? Human beings are essentially limited its impossible for us to do anything that transcends limits. The opposite, of course, is true of God. The Creator in and of Himself contains the perfect form of all goods found within the world. As St John of the Cross remarks early on 'the Ascent' this means that even the good things of the world are darkness compared to the Divine Light. Whatever we offer to God, God already has in surpassing measure. There is nothing we can give to God a) that God doesnt already have and b) that we dont already owe Him because the very act of creation itself is gratitutous and orders us towards a certain ends. Good deeds thus are not deserving of a reward because good deeds are nothing more than what we should be doing and in essence nothing to God.

When we sin this is accentuated in that because of our finiteness and God's lack of the aforesaid we incur an infinite penalty against the LORD almighty, this of course is impossible to pay back because we are incapable of making an infinite offering to God. Only a God-Man was/is capable of that. Hence the need for Christ's mediation as the eternal High Priest in the sacraments most particularly the Sacred Liturgy of the Holy Mass.