Kinda like saying you don't HAVE the gift until you actually RECEIVE the gift! That's true of every real gift. If you have to work for it, it ceases to BE a gift.
Many times gifts come with conditions. The gift of salvation has ALWAYS been conditional in both the OT and NT. Meeting the conditions placed upon the gift does not earn it.
I gave the example in an earlier post of Naaman. God offered him the free gift of healing but God put the condition of dipping in the Jordan river 7 times. Naaman’s dipping was an obedient work but it was necessary to receive the free gift and meeting the condition did not take away the freeness of the gift at all.
Since God offered Naaman this gift for free then there was nothing he could do to earn it...all he could do was choose to reject or accept the free gift. If Naaman choose to reject it then all he had to do was nothing and he would have gone on living with the disease. Had he choose to accept the gift he would meet the conditions God place upon on it.
He did not receive the free gift FIRST and THEN go and dip 7 times. He had to FIRST OBEY by meeting the conditions THEN receive the free gift. This is why there is no example in the Bible of disobedient people rejecting to obey God yet receiving God’s free gift anyway.
Again, as I pointed out in previous post in all the many. many examples in the Bible of men/women obeying God NOT THE FIRST time is ever said their obedience earned God’s free gift, that is, their obeying made the gift no longer free.
Somewhere in my fuzzy memory, I think I saw an SNL skit on this subject; way back when...