I’m a miserable sinner who is a practicing Catholic with a fairly good understanding of the Catholic faith. Christ’s death and resurrection opened the gates of Paradise to every human being...potentially. So, now that the gates of Paradise are open, how does anyone get that hand-stamp to get admitted? Well, if faith in Jesus Christ gets you the hand stamp, then do all Christians who believe in Jesus get into Heaven, regardless of the sins they commit, even if they are not sorry for their sins? What about Jews who love God, but we’re taught that Jesus was a; fraud? Have they no hope for Heaven? It is very complicated. I believe that Catholicism teaches that Jesus opened the gates of Paradise; that God grants to everyone in the world the grace sufficient to be saved; that we as humans cannot know how faith and works act to enable us to accept the grace we need to accept to be saved.
Luther and other classic Protestants insisted salvation began with faith, and that works bloomed from it.
It has to do with motivations, the inner springs of what we do.
People WILL do works of some kind or another. To not do that is not to be lazy — it is to be dead, as in pushing up daisies.
It is the beliefs that underpin the works which are the question here.
24“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. John 5:24 NASB
If we have come to believe Him we are going to be doing those things He wants us to do.
We will be producing fruit for His kingdom.