Dr.E Good works, like repentance and obedience and understanding and all good fruits of faith, are from God.
Of course, that doesn't answer the question. Just because good works are "from God" does not explain why, if we already have salvation, we need anything else.
And we "already have salvation" because Christ "already" paid for our sins, every one of them, by His death and resurrection.
Again, this does not explain why, given that we have salvation, we nevertheless need something else in addition to salvation, i.e. sanctification. Apparently, salvation is insufficient.
I think the disagreement here is that you are using the term 'salvation' in a narrow sense to refer only to the forgiveness of our sins, and I am using the term 'salvation' in a broader sense to refer to all that is necessary for us to have eternal life. That includes the forgiveness of our sins, but it also includes our sanctification as well.
-A8
"Need" has nothing to do with it.
We do good works because God instructs us to preach the Gospel, help our fellow man, raise strong children who kneel to none but Christ, and to remain "confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ" (Phil. 1:6).
The race has been run. Christ is victorious over sin and death. We are redeemed.
I am using the term 'salvation' in a broader sense to refer to all that is necessary for us to have eternal life.
I agree that Protestants and Roman Catholics speak of sanctification and justification in different terms. But the ONLY thing "necessary for us to have eternal life" has been accomplished by Christ's death and resurrection. This is the linchpin of all Scripture, regardless of how much postscript men insist on adding.
More important than a correct understanding of our sanctification (which is the direct and definite work of the Holy Spirit within us) is a correct understanding of Christ's justification of His sheep which was the cornerstone of the Reformation and the heart of Rome's error.
"Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because, “The righteous will live by faith.” GALATIANS 3:11 The doctrine of justification, the storm center of the Reformation, was a major concern of the apostle Paul. For him it was the heart of the gospel (Rom. 1:17; 3:21-5:21; Gal. 2:15-5:1) shaping both his message (Acts 13:38-39) and his devotion and spiritual life (2 Cor. 5:13-21; Phil. 3:4-14). Though other New Testament writers affirm the same doctrine in substance, the terms in which Protestants have affirmed and defended it for almost five centuries are drawn primarily from Paul. Justification is a judicial act of God pardoning sinners (wicked and ungodly persons, Rom. 4:5; 3:9-24), accepting them as just, and so putting permanently right their previously estranged relationship with himself. This justifying sentence is God’s gift of righteousness (Rom. 5:15-17), his bestowal of a status of acceptance for Jesus’ sake (2 Cor. 5:21). God’s justifying judgment seems strange, for pronouncing sinners righteous may appear to be precisely the unjust action on the judge’s part that God’s own law forbade (Deut. 25:1; Prov. 17:15). Yet it is in fact a just judgment, for its basis is the righteousness of Jesus Christ who as “the last Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45), our representative head acting on our behalf, obeyed the law that bound us and endured the retribution for lawlessness that was our due and so (to use a medieval technical term) “merited” our justification. So we are justified justly, on the basis of justice done (Rom. 3:25-26) and Christ’s righteousness reckoned to our account (Rom. 5:18-19). God’s justifying decision is the judgment of the Last Day, declaring where we shall spend eternity, brought forward into the present and pronounced here and now. It is the last judgment that will ever be passed on our destiny; God will never go back on it, however much Satan may appeal against God’s verdict (Zech. 3:1; Rev. 12:10; Rom. 8:33-34). To be justified is to be eternally secure (Rom. 5:1-5; 8:30). The necessary means, or instrumental cause, of justification is personal faith in Jesus Christ as crucified Savior and risen Lord (Rom. 4:23-25; 10:8-13). This is because the meritorious ground of our justification is entirely in Christ. As we give ourselves in faith to Jesus, Jesus gives us his gift of righteousness, so that in the very act of “closing with Christ,” as older Reformed teachers put it, we receive divine pardon and acceptance which we could not otherwise have (Gal. 2:15-16; 3:24). Official Roman Catholic theology includes sanctification in the definition of justification, which it sees as a process rather than a single decisive event, and affirms that while faith contributes to our acceptance with God, our works of satisfaction and merit contribute too. Rome sees baptism, viewed as a channel of sanctifying grace, as the primary instrumental cause of justification, and the sacrament of penance, whereby congruous merit is achieved through works of satisfaction, as the supplementary restorative cause whenever the grace of God’s initial acceptance is lost through mortal sin. Congruous, as distinct from condign, merit means merit that it is fitting, though not absolutely necessary, for God to reward by a fresh flow of sanctifying grace. On the Roman Catholic view, therefore, believers save themselves with the help of the grace that flows from Christ through the church’s sacramental system, and in this life no sense of confidence in God’s grace can ordinarily be had. Such teaching is a far cry from that of Paul." -- (From: Concise Theology: A Guide To Historic Christian Beliefs)
SALVATION IS BY GRACE THROUGH FAITH
by J.I. Packer