The Church teaches that grace is unmerited, because God requires nothing but a willingness to believe that we may be healed. We are not asked to work for it, we are not asked to desire it, we are not even asked to be a good person and thereby deserving of it. Religious people are not necessarily virtuous: they simply have humbled themselves enough to believe that God can perform miracles in their lives: that they can have good lives and feel close to God, even if they are not exceptional people.
The first century Christians were no different than the twenty-first century Christians: they argued ceaselessly over who was saved and who wasn't, who was good and who wasn't, who was right and who wasn't, ad infinitum. Fortunately for us, the hardest working apostle, straight from the stock of Christ, set the record straight on how to receive the love of God. Hear it!
"You stupid people in Galatia! After you have had a clear picture of Jesus Christ crucified, right in front of your eyes, who has put a spell on you? There is only one thing I should like you to tell me: How was it that you received the Spirit - was it by practice of the Law, or by believing in the message you heard? Having begun in the Spirit, can you be so stupid as to end in the flesh? Can all the favours you have received have had no effect at all - if there really has been no effect? Would you say, then, that he who so lavishly sends Spirit to you, and causes the miracles among you, is doing this through your practice of the Law or because you believed the message you heard?"
Galatians 3.1-5, The New Jerusalem Bible
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