Conceptually, the New Testament draws a clear distinction between faith and works. Most believers understand that, in relation to pleasing God and receiving anything from Him, faith and works are opposites. However, in a practical sense, the way Christianity—and particularly Catholicism—often defines faith turns it into a work.
This happens when faith is presented as something a person must choose by their own “free will” and must continue choosing. If faith is something a person must do and is personally responsible to maintain, then it becomes impossible to explain how it is not a work.
The reason we know faith is not a work is that the Word of God describes it as a fruit of the Spirit, a gift of God, and something authored and completed by Jesus. The common denominator in all three descriptions is that God is the sole cause, not us. By contrast, defining faith as something we must choose and sustain by our own free will makes us the cause of faith rather than God, which effectively turns faith into a work.
For this reason, Christianity and Catholicism lead people astray when they claim that a person’s responsibility to choose faith, and to keep choosing it, is not a work. By any reasonable standard, such choosing is a work because it is something we must do. That is the most basic definition of a work: an action performed by the person rather than something caused and completed by God.
Therefore, if someone does not have faith, it is because God has not yet authored it in them, not because they have failed to choose belief by their own will, and no one suffers forever for lacking something that only God can give them.
Romans 9:16 - So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.