“If righteousness is “of faith” would you also say you earn your own righteousness? Since all Christians should say that salvation is not by works then we must also say that faith is not by our works lest we should boast.”
Again, read the scriptures. There is only one time that faith is described as a ‘work’, and then it is commanded by Jesus for us to do:
26 Jesus answered them and said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. 27 Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal.”
28 Therefore they said to Him, “What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?” 29 Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.” - John 6
If you want to say faith is a ‘work’, then it is the ‘work’ required of us.
“Verse 29. This is the work of God. This is the thing that will be acceptable to God, or which you are to do in order to be saved. Jesus did not tell them they had nothing to do, or that they were to sit down and wait, but that there was a work to perform, and that was a duty that was imperative. It was to believe on the Messiah. This is the work which sinners are to do; and doing this they will be saved, for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth, Romans 10:4.”
http://www.studylight.org/com/bnn/view.cgi?book=joh&chapter=006
“29. The work of God is this. They had spoken of works Christ reminds them of one work, that is, faith; by which he means that all that men undertake without faith is vain and useless, but that faith alone is sufficient, because this alone does God require from us, that we believe For there is here an implied contrast between faith and the works and efforts of men; as if he had said, Men toil to no purpose, when they endeavor to please God without faith, because, by running, as it were, out of the course, they do not advance towards the goal. This is a remarkable passage, showing that, though men torment themselves wretchedly throughout their whole life, still they lose their pains, if they have not faith in Christ as the rule of their life. Those who infer from this passage that faith is the gift of God are mistaken; for Christ does not now show what God produces in us, but what he wishes and requires from us...
...It is idle sophistry, under the pretext of this passage, to maintain that we are justified by works, if faith justifies, because it is likewise called a work First, it is plain enough that Christ does not speak with strict accuracy, when he calls faith a work, just as Paul makes a comparison between the law of faith and the law of works, (Romans 3:27.) Secondly, when we affirm that men are not justified by works, we mean works by the merit of which men may obtain favor with God. Now faith brings nothing to God, but, on the contrary, places man before God as empty and poor, that he may be filled with Christ and with his grace. It is, therefore, if we may be allowed the expression, a passive work, to which no reward can be paid, and it bestows on man no other righteousness than that which he receives from Christ.”
John Calvin
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom34.xii.iv.html
Once upon a time, before anything was created, when God in three persons dwelt happily in and of themselves, God the Father said, “Hey, I’ve got a great idea. We’re going to create a universe by and through you, God the Son, and I am, before you create anything at all, going to determine how every single bit of it, from start to finish, from the beginning to the end, from the least quark to the biggest bang, is going to go."
"We will create an entire human race from an original male and female whom I will cause to be tempted and sin and, because of that, subject the rest of the human race to untold millennia of misery and suffering and death (all for my greater glory because it seemed good to me), all the while promising them a means of salvation from that misery I’ve imposed on them as a result of their sin against me that I will have preordained."
"And a really cool thing is that we will tell them that if they listen to what they are told and follow it faithfully, we will hear them and answer them and heal their land but they won’t know that in actuality they won’t be able even to try unless we make a few of them do it and the vast majority we will keep in the bondage of sin and degradation and then hold them responsible for not doing what we created them to be unable to do."
"And the best thing of all, God the Son, is that because I will say that the sin that I will ordain and set into motion (to the very degree and extent that is my good pleasure according to the unfathomable counsel of my will) cannot be forgiven without a sacrifice and since no human will be capable or even willing to provide that sacrifice, because I will have made them incapable and unwilling, YOU are going to have lay aside your glory and the fellowship we currently enjoy to enter the human race and grow up among those (but for the few I will have made to act to the contrary) who won’t listen because I will have made them unable to hear, who won’t see because I will have blinded them to the truth, and who won’t ask for forgiveness for something they were hopeless to avoid doing because I will have made them incapable of doing so and then have the ever-loving crap beaten out of you, scourged to within an inch of your life, before being made to carry the instrument of your torture and death before jeering crowds, because I will have made them do that, to the place where others, because of my decree before the foundations of the earth according to my own good counsel, will drive spikes through your wrists and hoist you up to hang between criminals—and the best part of all, at that moment you are about to die, I’ll turn my back on you!"
"But it will all be okay, right, because in three days, I’ll raise you from the dead so that we can say that this proves you are who we already know you are without ever the necessity of our creating a universe or even a human race to begin with and can then declare faith in that as the ostensible means by which we confer saving grace on the humans but without telling them, until John Calvin comes along, that what they think is turning to us in faith to freely receive the gift of forgiveness and salvation is every bit as programmed and inevitable as the fate of the majority of the human race on their way to burn and suffer eternally in the lake of fire for refusing to believe that which I will have made them unable to believe since before I will have ever created anything at all, and this all for my praise and glory. How does that sound?”
And does God the Son say, “Wait a second, you’re going to create a universe with a world of conscious beings made in our image, screw them over in the most horrendous ways imaginable, hold them responsible for what you’re going to compel them to do, and then, near the end of the whole shebang, make ME suffer for every sin they ever committed without their ever having had the capacity to decide otherwise and die so that those who don’t even have the capacity to make anything but a faux choice will be “saved”? And that will make the relationship that you and I and the Holy Spirit are sharing right now better how?”
Or does he say, “Hey, that sounds great and we’ll call it the GOOD NEWS!”