So now you concede that water baptism isn't required for someone to be saved? Dude...make up your mind!
You are right there but DEAD wrong about faith being absent in a person's salvation. God says it is IMPOSSIBLE to please Him without it and whoever comes to Him must believe. There is NO OTHER NAME by which we are saved but Jesus Christ. Some native in deepest darkest Africa must still have faith to be saved. His good works don't save him anymore than ours do. I don't limit the work of the Holy Spirit in rewarding those who diligently seek the truth. Do you?
No, I don’t limit the Holy Spirit. How do you read Revelation 7:9? It says every tribe and tongue. So if a tribe in deepest Africa spoke a language in 500ad and no Christian missionary ever was sent to preach the gospel to them, can one or more of them be saved? They could not have faith and their good works are like filthy rags. Suppose that language died in 600ad, again before ever seeing a missionary.
Please take off the 16th century blinders and stop saying “ water baptism”. There is only baptism. Jesus commanded the Church to baptize, so if one hears the Gospel, comes to faith in Jesus as the Messiah who died for their sins, that person must be baptized by the Church to have their sins remitted, receive the Holy Spirit and be placed in Christ. This is normative for the believer since 33ad. But it does not limit the Holy Spirit baptizing the African who lived in 500ad never hearing of Jesus nor the Gospel.
No one is recorded as being saved in the NT without the Holy Spirit sending the Church to them to make a disciple and baptize them.
We all deserve hell for our sins and it is only out of God’s love and mercy that He has decided to extend saving grace made possible from the sacrificial death of His perfect Son. As Jesus said in John 8, unless you believe He is the one, you will die in your sins. Obviously this can’t apply to someone who never heard of Jesus.