Doesn't a life with no good works show a person was never saved?

The short answer Settled

No. A believer can live like an unbeliever and still be saved. He loses reward, and God disciplines him, but his lack of works does not prove he never believed.

Babes in Christ

"And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ" (1 Corinthians 3:1). Carnal means fleshly: living like ordinary people rather than by the Spirit. Paul says why he calls them that: "For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men?" (1 Corinthians 3:3). Their lives showed envy and strife. Still they were "brethren," and "in Christ." Paul faults their growth, not their salvation.

Saved, with nothing to show

"If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire" (1 Corinthians 3:15). A believer can reach that Day with nothing of his work left standing and still be saved.

Even the man at Corinth living in open sin, who "has his father's wife" (1 Corinthians 5:1), Paul treats as one of the church. He hands him over to discipline "that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus" (1 Corinthians 5:5). He never says the man was never saved.

The usual objection

Saving faith always produces good works, so a person whose life shows none never truly believed. Works do not save, but their absence proves there was never any salvation.

Paul writes to believers whose lives showed little, and calls them brethren. The passages read the other way say something else, and each has its own page: James on dead faith, John on the one born of God, and John on those who went out.

The words behind it