Salvation starts off by being regenerated by God, with God taking out our old heart of stone, and replacing it with a God-loving heart of flesh. Salvation is not simply "obeying commandments", nor is it nothing but a "decision" someone makes. It is God quickening us to a new life in Christ.
I think this is excellent. Salvation is God quickening us to new life in Christ, starting off with replacing our heart of stone with a God-loving heart of flesh.
I wonder if you would unfold it in this way:
The quickening with new life is the salvation itself. Our being saved from a condition of death (spiritual death).
This life changes your very being, as for example changing your heart from being of stone to a compassionate and loving heart
We can see this reflected in Romans 5:5: "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us"
We can call this change in your being as a rebirth - regenerated
This new life is then responsible for many actions that are new to us: to believe with faith, to have hope, to do loving deeds.
We can call all these actions as being fruits of the Spirit.
Faith, hope and love are all fruits of the life that God has poured into us.
A dead tree produces no fruit. No faith, no hope, no loving deeds. But a living tree produces all three fruits.
God took a dead tree and gave it life, out of sheer love for the tree, which was dead, and had no fruit to show for itself, with nothing to make it worthy of the gift of this life.
God, as the vinekeeper, will at some point decide which trees will remain in His orchard.
God will do so by a common standard, without favoritism for rich or poor or for Jew or Gentile nation status.
The common standard: God will choose the trees that are alive, and remove the ones which are dead.
So you are saved from spiritual death by the life God quickens you with...you are saved from the world and the power of evil by the same life that God has quickened you and continues to quicken you with...and you are saved on the last day from the 'wrath of God' by the same life which God has placed within you.
In short, you are saved by God's grace - by the life He gives you, out of sheer unconditional love for you.
Would you agree with these things?
(I think you agree with the Reformation? And I'm speaking from the Catholic tradition)