Faith is not saying yes. Saying yes must be from faith, because why would anyone choose to say yes without it - it would be meaningless. But even if having to say yes is true (which it is not), then just in having to say it alone makes it into a work and a law.
However, that was not my point. My point was that should it be of us, then the saving is taken away from Christ the Saviour and places it into our hands - thus making of us our own saviour - or not (depending).
True faith is only as a gift from God. Anything that we perceive as being our requirement for it, means that it can't be a gift, making it
a work - our work.
If salvation is a gift as you say by quoting Eph 2:8 above, then everything that brings that salvation must also be a gif or salvation couldn't/wouldn't be a gift.
[Gal 2:20 KJV]
20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me:
and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
[
1Pe 1:21 KJV]
21
Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory;
that your faith and hope might be in God.
[Jhn 6:29 KJV] 29 Jesus answered and said unto them,
This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.
[Eph 2:8 KJV] 8 For by grace are ye saved
through faith;
and that not of yourselves: [it is] the gift of God:
[Phl 1:6 KJV] 6 Being confident of this very thing, that
he which hath
begun a good work in you will perform [it] until the day of Jesus
Christ:
[
Gal 2:16 KJV]
16 Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law,
but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.