If you are looking to your covenant faithfulness, your performance or to your obedience for your acceptance before God, then by the grace of God, repent and believe the gospel of Jesus Christ, whose covenant faithfulness, performance and obedience FOR US is our only acceptance before God.
Visitor Response: "You are saved [by Christ's covenant faithfulness], if you hold fast the Word [i.e. are faithful to the covenant]" (1 Cor. 15:2) There is always a requirement on our part of the covenant, and that is: Faith. To say that Christ fulfills our whole side of the covenant and that we don't need to also have faith is an error. God still has a requirement we are to live up to, and it is "faith", and now by the Holy Spirit "we fulfill the righteous requirements of the law" (Rom. 8:4). Whereas before, in our flesh, we could not keep faith, now by the Spirit we can. Take away faith as a necessary requirement for salvation and you've created a cult. Now, you must ask yourself, what is the definition of true and saving faith? Is it mental assent? No, it can't be since even the demons believe and tremble. What then is faith? It is partly what the protestant reformers coined, "Fiducia", which means commitment. So then, if faith is our part of the covenant which we must fulfill in order to obtain salvation (and no one would argue that you can be saved without faith), and if "Faith" is partly "commitment", then it follows that if we will not be faithful/committed (i.e. have faith) towards Christ then we cannot be saved. His perfect covenant faithfulness makes up for, or redeems the shortcomings of, those who uphold their own end of covenant faithfulness, as it is written: "He redeems THOSE WHO SERVE HIM" (Psalm 34:22).
Response: I believe you have made a critical error. The covenant of grace is unilateral which is why God Himself walked through the cut animals himself when Abraham went to sleep. We love God because he loved us first. You make is sound as if you are ascribing your repenting and believing to your own wisdom, humility, sound judgment or good sense and not to Christ alone, who provides EVERYTHING we need for salvation including a new heart to believe (Deut 29:4, 30:6, Ezek 36:26; John 6:63, 65). "The saving power of the cross of Jesus Christ does not depend on faith being added to it; its saving power is such that faith flows from it... Sinners cannot obey the gospel, any more than the law, without renewal of heart." (J.I. Packer) So it sounds to me like you are making our faithfulness into a new law. It appears that your idea of Jesus and his cross is that it provides everything we need for salvation except for faith and perseverance... things we need to come up with on our own apart from grace. In such a view Jesus is not enough and you are (at least partly) declaring God's love for his own is a conditional love.. that grace is a reward for faith not the cause of it. Fact is, the command to believe is an imperative which needs an indicative to fulfill it. Faith is indeed a requirement (an imperative), but thank God for His mercy, the Bible reveals that faith is among the redemptive blessings secured by the righteousness of Christ (2 Peter 1:1, an indicative). When we hear imperatives in the Bible, including the imperative to believe the gospel and the imperative to maintain our faith in him, we do not look to ourselves, but, by the grace of God, look to Christ, or there would never be hope for any of us.
Grace is not earned by meeting a condition. We meet the condition because of grace..."It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus ... Therefore, as it is written, let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord." (1 Cor 1:29-31). We can neither attain nor maintain our just standing before God. That is Jesus work alone. Forgetting this is a major part of the error of the New Perspective on Paul. Of course we MUST BE committed. But that is an imperative which can only spring from a renewed heart. All glory to Jesus Christ. It is the inevitable result of our salvation, not the cause of it. And likewise we persevere but only because Jesus PRESERVES us.
Which side of the cross does faith come from? Is it something we , as natural men, add to the cross to make it effectual?... or does the crosswork of Jesus Christ infallibly and effectually secure it FOR US? IE does Jesus, in his crosswork, provide for us what we were unable to provide for ourselves? Is faith a product of the new birth or the cause of it? The Bible declares that it is part of the price of our redemption (see 1 Peter 1:3 and 2 Peter 1:1) You cannot separate the gift from the giver the benefit from the benefactor... which is what it seems you are doing. Again, securing our faith was part of the price of our redemption. The imperative passages you provide declare what God commands us to do not what we are able to do apart from Christ. If grace causes faith as you admit then where does that grace come from? From Christ or somewhere else? Some generic gift of the Father apart from the Son?
When God gave us eyes or ears at birth it does not mean he does the seeing or hearing FOR US. Likewise no one will believe the gospel apart from the new heart which Jesus grants us THAT WE MAY BELIEVE. It does not mean that God does the believing for us but provides everything we need to infallibly do so. Which means it flows FROM the cross. All glory to him for any good thought I have. Our new heart doesn't exist apart from what Christ did on the cross and resurrection. And the command to exercise faith and persevere with our renewed heart is something we do... by grace alone
What I affirm here is what Protestants have historically affirmed ever since the 16th century. This is nothing novel. Augustine affirmed the same.
Fact, God calls all men to repent and believe the gospel ... and a call to repentance and belief was even part of my original post image. So your long answer makes no sense. The original post includes the call to belief. Perhaps you need to think it over more.