We are saved by grace. We are undeserving of it, yet recipients of God’s benevolent love all the same.
In Ephesians, Paul also includes the prepositional phrase, “by faith” as a component to the process of salvation. That is, faith is not the cause of our salvation — grace through the work of Christ is — but faith is the mechanism by which grace is received. Faith is not a work, but it is reliance upon (Spurgeon uses the Puritan word “recumbency”) the work of another.
Still, that might leave the question, how much faith must I have to be saved? Are there varying degrees of salvation? More faith = more salvation? Or, growing faith = growing salvation? A. H. Strong answers that question this way:
A better doctrine is that of the Puritan divine: “It is not the quantity of thy faith that shall save thee. A drop of water is as true water as the whole ocean. So a little faith is as true faith as the greatest. It is not the measure of thy faith that saves thee, — it is the blood that it grips to that saves thee. The weak hand of the child, that lends the spoon to the mouth, will feed as well as the strong arm of a man; for it is not the hand that feeds, but the meat. So, If thou canst grip Christ ever so weakly, he will not let thee perish.”…
A child may be heir to a vast estate, even while he does not know it; and a child of God may be an heir of glory, even while, through the weakness of his faith, he is oppressed with painful doubts and fears. No man is lost simply because of the greatness of his sins; however ill-deserving he may be, faith in Christ will save him. Luther’s climbing the steps of St. John Lateran, and the voice of thunder: “The Just shall live by faith,” are not certain as historical facts; but they express the substance of Luther’s experience. Not obeying, but receiving, is the substance of the gospel. A man cannot merit salvation; he cannot buy it; but one thing he must do — he must take it. And the least faith makes salvation ours, because it makes Christ ours.
Words of Grace 