The Hebrew writer mentions
another man of great faith, namely, Noah (Hb 11:7): “By faith, Noah, when
warned about the things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his
family. By faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness
that comes by faith.” Genesis 6:8-9 reads: “But Noah found grace in the eyes of
the Lord...Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time,
and he walked with God.” In Es 44:17 it states: “Noah was found perfect and
righteous; in the time of wrath he kept the race alive...” We notice here even
more pertinent language regarding gracious merit. The context indicates that
God, who was about to destroy the whole world because of its unrepentant wickedness,
views Noah as “a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time.”
Genesis 7:1 is even more direct: the sacred author quotes God directly as
saying, “because I have found you righteous in this generation.” It is God who
claims to be making the judgment about Noah’s righteousness, and it is clear
that it was for Noah’s righteousness that God saved him and his family. Noah
pleased God sufficiently that God, by his grace, saved Noah and his family.
Within the strict limits of law and perfection, Noah could never have merited God’s
favor. He, like everyone else in the human race, was born in sin. But in
anticipation of his setting aside of the strict demands of the law through the
atonement of Christ, God could look at Noah differently. The system of grace
through which God can look favorably upon Noah, as it was with Abel, is implied
in the phrasing “in the eyes of the Lord,” which, again, is a literal
translation of the Hebrew text. Noah could please God by his faith and works to
the point that God, under the auspices of his grace, could reward Noah with
salvation.
A Protestant may object at
this point that though he sees no problem with Noah’s meriting of God’s grace,
Noah was already “saved” and thus everything he did was just part of his
sanctification, not of his justification. First, this form of argumentation
merely begs the question, since one must first prove that justification and sanctification
are not simultaneous and continuous events. . . . Second, we can certainly
agree that the context of the Genesis passage connotes that Noah’s life prior
to this incident was one of holiness and faith. Thus, we can assume that Noah had
received justification prior to the Flood. This fact, however, only proves our
point that much more powerfully. It is the entire righteous life of Noah that
God is viewing through the eyes of grace, not just one incident in which to
impute him with so-called alien righteousness. It is the whole life of Noah
that is pleasing to God, which, in turn, motivates God to give Noah the
continued grace of salvation rather than cast him off with the wicked (cf.
2Pt 2:5; Ez 14:14). If Noah had become a wicked man some years or months prior
to the incident in Genesis 6, the Scriptures teach that such a person would not
have been counted as righteous (cf. Ez 18:24). In receiving
God’s grace, the contrast set up is between those that live righteous lives in
the sight of God and those who do not. The former receive the continued grace
of God, the latter do not. . . . God’s saving of Noah and his family from the
Flood is just another instance of the continuing justification in his life and
the lives of all the Patriarchs. (Robert A. Sungenis, Not By Faith Alone:
The Biblical Evidence for the Catholic Doctrine of Justification [2d ed.;
State Line, Pa.: Catholic Apologetics International Publishing Inc., 2009],
77-78)
Further Reading
More biblical evidence of "gracious merit"
Response to a Recent Attempt to Defend Imputed Righteousness