If you will recall EG, you and I had this discussion off and on for about...two years?
I would keep saying: you make faith to be a work by saying if I have to KEEP believing, then it is earned.
And I would keep saying: you were saved through faith, so how can we then drop the faith part?
We went over and over it and I think I appeared very odd to you because you saw my love and I saw yours but we frustratingly could not hear each other on the matter.
You did not change in your perception, but I changed in mine when I realized that it was sort of a moot point to me. It didn't matter to me, as long as you continued in faith, whether or not you believed it was possible to ever have your heart become evil and unbelieving. Because you WERE trusting Him to see that it didn't happen. And so was I.
In fact, my faith grew stronger and I saw that He was not going to let me be lost. He had never done a single thing that I should fear He would let my heart become evil and unbelieving. He had only ever GROWN my faith, not decreased it, so I looked back on all of the struggles of believing FULLY and without wavering that He had brought me through, perfecting my trust, never decreasing it, and I said, I don't even HAVE this fear that I could become evil and unbelieving because He hasn't let it happen. So I trusted Him MORE in the end, not less.
And so the argument became moot for me. If a man is trusting, that's all that is necessary. I don't need to try to convince him that he might become evil and unbelieving. If God brought me through my struggles to trust more firmly, He will bring other men through them. Yes, I had a mighty struggle to stop believing that not saving up money on earth would be my downfall and I'd be eating catfood in my old age, but the fact is that He DID bring me through it, even though it took years before I was unwavering in it. So He will do the same for any who trust Him. He will bring them through. He will keep pointing out the areas where they are being a hypocrite and are not fully trusting Him. He will bring them to the struggle just as He did me.