He who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit to eternal life; that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.
This is so far from overturning justification by faith that it rather confirms it. For, in the first place, how comes it that God finds in us any thing to reward, but because He has bestowed it upon us by his Spirit? Now we know that the Spirit is the earnest and pledge of adoption, (Ephesians 1:14.) Secondly, how comes it that God confers so great honor on imperfect and sinful works but because, after having by free grace reconciled us to himself, He accepts our works without any regard to merit, by not imputing the sins which cleave to them? The amount of this passage is, that the labor which the Apostlesbestow on teaching ought not to be reckoned by them hard and unpleasant, since they know that it is so useful and so advantageous to Christ and to the Church. 