No More Can We Merit Salvation

No more can we merit salvation than we can merit creation. Doing, on our part, cannot generate being, for ourselves, whether in creation or in salvation. For us, being ontologically precedes doing, in creation and in re-creation. Grace preceded, grounded, and stamped created being in once-pristine existence; afterward, in now-sullied existence, grace again precedes, grounds, and stamps re-created being. We receive both first being in creation and second being in re-creation. Hence, engendered in and by grace, which we accept and take up by faith, when first made and then re-made by God, in living well or doing good we act in and from thanks and praise. Living well or doing good was always, is now, and ever will be that which proceeds from and expresses our being and "re-being" in God, never that which has any virtue to achieve either existence. We live because God first "lived" us. Then, we love because God first loved us.