Visitor: Faith + Works [heresy?] = Faith + Sanctification [works is essential !] = Justification, Sanctification, Glorification = Salvation?
To me, it just points to why so much division is in Christianity. No sooner than a work is done, someone will claim heresy. Another will claim it as their testimony of faith.
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Response: Salvation by Christ alone vs. salvation by Christ plus works are two entirely different visions of Christianity, not just a simple division over whether we should have red or green carpet in our local church building. To think that "Christ alone" does not matter or is not important enough to fight for is more worrisome to me. Indifference or thinking that church unity is somehow more important than preaching Christ alone ... i.e.. that we can (at least partly) maintain our own just standing before God -- is not a matter simple division among otherwise well-meaning brothers... this is critical as to whether we are honoring God or dishonoring Him (Gal 3:3; Phil 3:3). This is where the rubber meets the road.
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Visitor: You're kidding, right? The "Christ alone" view keeps insisting that it includes works that is evidence ..
but the works gets interpreted as heresy vs. evidence of faith in "Christ alone".
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Response: are you, then, affirming, that Jesus Christ is not sufficient to save you? That you yourself must MAINTAIN your just standing before God? That Jesus isn't enough? I am talking about your justification here - your right standing before God. To believe that your flesh contributes one bit of righteousness to your standing before God is the heresy Paul refers to in Galatians 3:3.
As for our obedience and works that we do as a result of our new birth ... in light of God's perfection, they fall so woefully short of God's righteous requirement that they add nothing to our perfect standing before God. Anything actually good that we do springs OUT OF our redemption in Christ - it does not add to Christ's work as if He got us most of the way there but needs something more from us to get us across the finish line. No He has saved us to the uttermost and perfected us for all time (Heb 10) So we do not do good works in order to be saved but because we are, as the Bible itself distinctly teaches. For example:
"No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s SEED abides in him, and he CANNOT keep on sinning because he has been BORN OF GOD." 1 John 3:9
"...this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone BORN OF GOD overcomes the world." 1 John 5:3, 4
So it appears that the "your kidding" remark is directed squarely at the Spirit-inspired Apostles. Your works do not add to Jesus' finished work, as if there were something deficient about what He did for sinners. He is a Savior, not someone who came to show us how to save ourselves. Those who are indifferent to God's commands demonstrate that they are not born again, but it does not, in any way, make us more right before God than Jesus already has.
The definition of a Christian is that he is one who has no confidence in the flesh and glories in Christ Jesus alone (Phil 3:3) To somehow trust, even partly, in your flesh to be right with God, is a damnable heresy, according to Scripture. So perhaps it is even more biblically/theologically accurate to say that both faith and works are evidence of grace.