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Perhaps the best way to address the issue is by focusing on their thinking, the object of their thinking, and the meanings of the words used in Scripture.

A study of PISTIS/PISTEO used in various passages might help to glean the meaning used when we speak of faith and believing.

Lots of people say they believe in Jesus and then struggle to perform good works or to avoid immorality, satiating their soulish perspective of living the Christian life, but such a perspective is soulish, not spiritual.

When we say ‘believe in Me and Thou shalt be saved’, it is the same word used as in, ‘we are saved by faith, not works, lest any man should boast’. Faith and belief as used in Scripture are not two different meanings, but have their object in the same person of Christ.

The next element, which might help to emphasize, is the definition of sin. While most people associate violation of the Law with sin, and indeed, immorality is sinful, not all sin is immorality.

Sin is simply missing the mark or missing the target as Greek archers would use the term in target practice when they failed to strike their aimed target.

In our situation, God provides a target for each of us in His Plan. If we are not in the right place, at the right time, to perform the right thing in the right way, we have missed the mark He has planned for us from eternity past.

When we hit the mark, there may be rewards at the bema seat when Christ evaluates our performance in completing the race He has set before us.

Now in regards to salvation, as in eternal life with a regenerated human spirit, once God imputes that life into us, when we are justified, by the very same criterion as Christ was justified, it is an eternal gift, because Christ had all personal sins imputed to Him at the Cross. Sin is no longer the issue for salvation. Forgiveness is the issue. The Cross was all Judgment. Forgiveness occurs now, in split second, whenever an unbeliever faces God and confesses his past sin by a smidgeon more faith in Christ’s work on the Cross, than no faith whatsoever, thereby becoming a believer.

Once they have received that gift, then they have eternal life. This doesn’t mean their soul has been completely cleansed. Our souls, namely our mind and hearts, still are scarred from our Old Sin Nature and our many years of living in a worldly fashion, without the spirit, independent of Christ.

Likewise, we have bad habits which have scarred our memory and thinking processes, where we very easily slip back into thinking independently from faith in Christ. As soon as we slip out of fellowship with God, (again anything outside His Plan for us), then similar to an unbeliever, we must now use 1stJohn 1:9 to return to fellowship with Him.

Believers out of fellowship can be the most heinous and perform the most anti-Christian acts and thoughts possible, as well as make God a debtor by performing good works independent of faith in Him, resulting in their own accounts being placed in arrears.

An interesting aside, regards the Garden of Eden, where man was not to partake from the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. All humans have the ability to now know good and evil, but too easily confuse evil with legal disobedience, because when we violate the law, we only sense or anticipate His fiery indignation in response. More importantly, we are to remain in fellowship with Him first, prior to any consideration or discerning of good and evil.

Believers are not kept out of heaven because they sinned, because all of us are sinners and Christ had all personal sin imputed to Him on the Cross, but we might lose crowns because we are not in the right place at the right time to perform His Will by His Plan in the right fashion through faith in Christ.

There do exist counterarguments regarding the consequences of sin, but rather than arguing them, it is more doctrinal simply to remain in faith in Christ, keep short accounts, then it really isn’t an issue....IMHO Thru faith in Him, so I believe it.