Acts 16:31 says, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved" Romans 10:9: "If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."The Church affirms the teaching of these texts. They are calling us to decisive trust in Christ. Trust in Christ is essential to salvation.
Trust in Christ is Essential? But not enough?
Trust in Christ is essential, yet scripture also tells us to repent and be saved, to hear the word of God and be saved, that love is also essential. We need all of these things — it is not “only”, yet remember, I repeat, without Christ’s sacrifice, the essential component, all of our hearing, repenting, love would be useless, worse than useless. Christ’s sacrifice is what saved us.
Try this, since what you say is clearly unsatisfactory (to me, anyway.)
Trust (faith) is dynamic in some respects. It doesn't just sit there on your chest like a competency badge: Marksmanship, First Aid, Faithfulness. If one is just sitting there vegging, faith is probably not what's going on.
We had a wonderful Epiphany (three kings day -- but that's not the half of it) sermon. The friar said that the faith of the wisemen caused them to travel after what was strange and foreign -- even unattainable. It was a star, for crying out loud!
And the star led them to a strange king and then to what has to be one of the world's strangest gatherings - the traditional (but see Isaiah 1:3a) ox and ass, some shepherds, a carpenter and his young wife, and a baby -- all in some kind of stable.
And then they have to go home by another way -- not even the pleasure of retracing one's steps and saying, "Oh, yes, I remember this."
Even we, who say such extravagant things about Mary, say she sought her Son anxiously.
So I would offer that, in and through 'trust in Christ,' we are called and enabled to journey, to move, to leave things behind, to go home another way, to travel light, and to follow strange things, things utterly outside our world yet revealed in it.
So in some sense the opposition between 'trust in Christ' and other stuff is as bogus as the opposition between opening one's mouth to receive food and swallowing that food. If we just ate a carrot seed, we'd starve. But when it grows, it's good food.
Just a thought.