Psalms 56:7

For he was delivered up for our sins, and raised for our justification. Your justification, your circumcision, is not from you. By grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not from you, but it is the gift of God; not from works. Lest perhaps you should say: I have deserved, and therefore I have received. Do not think you have received by deserving, who would not have deserved, unless you had received. Grace preceded your merit; not grace from merit, but merit from grace. For if grace is from merit; you have bought, not received it freely. For nothing, he says, you will save them. What does it mean: For nothing, you will save them? You find nothing in them from which you save, and yet you save. You give freely, you save freely. You precede all merits, so that your gifts may achieve my merits. You give completely freely, you save freely, who find nothing from which you might save, and find much from which you might condemn.

"For nothing Thou shalt save them" [Psalm 56:7]. He hath taught us even for these very men to pray. However "they shall sojourn and hide," however deceitful they be, however dissemblers and liers in wait they be; do thou pray for them, and do not say, Shall God amend even such a man, so evil, so perverse? Do not despair: give heed to Him whom thou askest, not him for whom thou askest. The greatness of the disease seest thou, the might of the Physician seest thou not? "They shall sojourn and hide: as my soul hath undergone." Undergo, pray: and there is done what? "For nothing Thou shalt save them." Thou shalt make them safe so as that nothing to Thee it may be, that is, so that no labour to Thee it may be. With men they are despaired of, but Thou with a word dost heal; Thou wilt not toil in healing, though we are astounded in looking on. There is another sense in this verse, "For nothing Thou shalt save them:" with not any merits of their going before Thou shall save them. ...They shall not bring to Thee he-goats, rams, bulls, not gifts and spices shall they bring Thee in Thy temple, not anything of the drink-offering of a good conscience do they pour thereon; all in them is rough, all foul, all to be detested: and though they to Thee bring nothing whereby they may be saved; "For nothing Thou shall save them," that is, with the free gift of Thy Grace. ...

For God has made our days short, and our substance is as nothing in his sight. "All things are vanity, everyone living," whether living in the body or living in virtues, and yet all things are vanity. His condition is one of fluctuation and uncertainty, and, while he does not fear, he suffers a storm in fair weather. For when he was in honor, he did not understand; he has been compared with senseless beasts and is created similar to them. "For nothing," he says, "shall he save them" (a reference, undoubtedly, to the just who are saved not through their own merit but through the mercy of God), "and my offenses are not hidden from you." These words are spoken in the person of Christ. If he, who did not sin nor was guile found in his mouth, suffered for us and bore our sins, how much more ought we to confess our faults? "My soul," he says, "refused to be comforted," considering the sins that I had committed. "I remembered God and was delighted," knowing that I was to be saved by his mercy. "I meditated in the night with my own heart, and I swept my soul. And I said, 'Now I have begun, this is the change of the right hand of the Most High.' " These are the words of a just person who, after meditating in his sleep and feeling pangs of conscience, says in the end, "Now I have begun," either to do penance or to enter the threshold of knowledge; and this very change from good to better is a change not of my own strength but of the right hand and power of God.