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Reward is not Earned but Received

To further explain why a person can not gain reward in the world to come on his deeds alone is that we have no way of repaying H'shem for all the boundless generosity He does for us every moment of every day.  As Rabbenu Bachya so elegantly writes"Even if a human being's good deed were as numerous as the sands of the sea, they still would not be equal to even one of the favors bestowed upon him by the Creator...all the more so if he committed a sin."  If H'shem would ask for any repayment for all He does for us we would be left with absolutely no reward for our good deeds. And so anything that H'shem does for us is not on account of our good deeds it is by GD's grace alone. This is not so for punishment.  Each punishment on this world and the world to come is exacting and deserved according to the sin, and this too "GD's grace overcomes it"
pg 439/441


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