Salvation is not a math equation. It is grace and a gift.
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My entire premise is that Jesus did all of the work for my salvation and nothing I can do adds to it. His work is completely sufficient to save. I can trust in Him or I can trust in myself. I cannot do both. Once I trust Him, I should follow Him in obedience motivated by love not for the purpose of earning my salvation or adding to His work.
Again, literally no one is saying anything about earning salvation through works separate from Christ Jesus. And, likewise, no one is saying that we accomplish or complete the redemptive work of Christ Jesus.
The scriptures say to take hold of your eternal life, to work out your salvation, and that even we fill up what is lacking in ourselves in Christ's afflictions, because we are saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved. It literally uses past, present, future tense. Pushing salvation into a single moment is flatly unscriptural. The whole question you propose here is a false dichotomy, that working in love is fundamentally unfaithful to Christ Jesus. It isn't true, it is nonsense, and it contradicts the scripture in so many places.
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Actually people have been trying to add requirements to the finished work of Jesus/God since the law was written (and probably before). This is seen in the books of Galatians (circumcision), works (Romans, Titus, Ephesians), the gospels.
Wrong. Just abjectly, completely wrong. The question of works in all of these cases is not about salvation per se, it is about unity to God through Israel and how that works. It is completely incorrect to read "works" and think "good deeds" in these. These are about works of the
Torah, which is everywhere and always about
being Jewish, begin a Judaean. Always the question is about - if He is the God of Israel and the Jewish Messiah (and He is) then how do those of the other nations relate to Him? Do they become Jewish, as one reading of the Torah suggests (i.e., to take the Passover you must become Jewish) and therefore do you need to be Jewish to be saved? And the answer is no - you don't need to become Jewish, you become a faithful non-circumcised person, like Abraham was before he was circumcised, before the Torah was given. Therefore faithfulness is not contingent upon following the Torah, that is, being Jewish. And, that this is in fact how it has always worked - that there have always been people who were faithful outside of being a part of Israel, and that merely keeping the Torah (i.e., being Jewish even in a faithful, external way) did not make you faithful to God.
This is why when St Paul writes the verse - "the only thing that matters is faithfulness working through love" it is not preceded by "doing good works or not" but "neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value" - that is to say, being Jewish or not being Jewish. What matters is faithfulness to the Messiah, and explicitly not faith alone but faithfulness working through love. Or, in another place he doesn't say "working and not working is nothing" but instead "circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing" but what matters is - what, belief? No!
Keeping the commandments of God.
The right question in response to this is not to start asking about what works are required, but what does it mean to be a faithful uncircumcised follower of the Lord? What does faithfulness look like? How can we be faithful to the Messiah? This is what the "second half" of all of St Paul's letters are about. He's teaching about how to be faithful. Frok's observation that we need to understand "exactly what faith is" nails it. Fortunately much of the NT is descriptive about what faithfulness is. St Paul tells us - obedience is what comes from faithfulness, and that is what we non-Jews of the nations are called to. He says that is what his apostolic call was for - to call us to obedience.
You cannot be obedient and do nothing. You cannot be faithful and do nothing. The only thing that has value is faith working through love.
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Yes, we are commanded to repent, be baptized, be faithful, not look at women in lust, love our enemies, share the gospel with all nations, love our wives as Christ loved the church, respect our husbands, be perfect as God is perfect, honor the kind, love God with all of our heart, sole, mind and strength, walk by the Spirit, love our neighbors as our selves, do all of our work motivated by His glory, not be given to much wine, and about 1000 other commands in the NT....
AND not one of these for the purpose of earning God's favor or entering a relationship with God.
This is just as frankly dumb as saying "yeah you vowed to have and to hold, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, loving and cherishing, forsaking all others and not one of those are for the purpose of earning your spouse's favor or entering a relationship with them." Does not follow. You want a right relationship with God? Be obedient.
You cannot be disobedient and faithful. You are either obedient and faithful, or disobedient and faithless. What's more the opposite of a faithful servant is a wicked and lazy one. The Lord Himself says it clearly: "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments." And St John tells us - "If anyone says, 'I know Him,' but does not keep His commandments, he is a liar."
Your entire approach is anachronistic and foreign to the mind of the Apostles. It is only a 'debate' due to theological issues in the west that did not arise until centuries later!
