Understanding the relationship between faith, works, and salvation is…

Understanding the relationship between faith, works, and salvation is essential for true peace in Christ. There is a subtle but critical line between human effort and what the Gospel actually teaches. Works are the fruit of salvation, never the fuel that maintains it.
It is true that God is sovereign and forgives whomever He will forgive, but praise God, He hasn't left us guessing! He has revealed in His Word exactly who He promises to forgive. First John 1:9 promises that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. God is not a liar; His word is a guaranteed promise.
Yes, believers must continue to have a heart of confession and repentance, but that naturally happens to someone who is saved by grace through faith. It is simply part of their new reality as a child of God. They confess, repent, and strive because they love and genuinely want to obey and please the Father.
When Jesus says, "Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness, I never knew you," look closely at His answer. He exposes the core issue: "I never knew you." Notice that Jesus calls them those who practice lawlessness, not believers who stumble. Their entire life was characterized by lawlessness because there was never a true, saving relationship there. If they truly knew Him, that relationship of love, trust, and faith would have naturally resulted in righteousness. But it is not working toward righteousness that saves anyone; that would be relying on human righteousness, which Scripture calls filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). It is Christ's righteousness alone imputed to us that saves us.
Claiming that believers must continually strive so that Jesus will not disown them shifts the weight of salvation off of Christ’s finished work and onto human effort. That turns grace into a transaction driven by terror. This is not to say that fear is without value. Scripture tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but it is not the end of wisdom. The fear of God brings us to awe, reverence, and the start of truth, leading to a posture where the wise person loves correction. However, as maturity in Christ grows, love takes over the room. Scripture makes it clear that love and fear are ultimately incompatible as a driving motivation for the believer, for perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18).
Scripture makes it very clear that God gets all the credit for salvation, so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:8–9). Anyone depending upon their own performance to sustain their salvation will fail. Works do not save us, nor do they sustain us. The desire for righteousness is both produced and sustained by grace through faith, the exact same grace through faith that grants eternal life.
Here is the sober warning: anyone who believes their ongoing performance or striving is what keeps Christ as their advocate is no longer resting in His grace, but trusting in their own flesh. Galatians 3:3 asks, "Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?" Trying to maintain salvation through self-reliance puts a person back under a heavy yoke, forgetting that mature faith moves beyond slaves driven by fear to sons and daughters led by love.
If faith in God feels like it is not enough and fear seems necessary to keep working, then what is truly needed is growth in clarity and faith in God. Why would anyone not obey a perfect counselor who knows exactly what should be done, wants to order our steps, and loves us completely?
Believers repent and obey not out of fear to keep themselves saved, but out of love and gratitude because they are saved. Christians continue to strive to be like Him because they hunger and thirst after righteousness, because they want to follow their King, and because they store up treasure in heaven, not to hold onto eternal life. Christ bears 100% of the weight of our redemption. Rest completely in His finished work rather than the stability of human performance.