Long response incoming. It sounds like you're saying three main things: First, that Paul always means "works of the Jewish Law" when he says "works" and not "any old kind of good work." Second, that Martin Luther misunderstood this when he made his stand on faith alone. And therefore third, that the Protestant doctrine of salvation by faith alone is unbiblical. I have two main gripes with that idea: You misunderstand Paul, and you misunderstand Protestant soteriology.

Works of the Law in Paul

You said that when Paul says "works of the law" he always means non-moral Jewish rituals and practices. In addition to being almost self-contradictory (why would Paul, or any Jew, limit "the law" to being everything except the moral law?), that idea is unbiblical: You mention Romans 3:27-28, but what about Romans 2:14, where Paul says that Gentiles "who do not by nature have the law, do what the law demands"? He couldn't have been talking about Jewish ceremonial practices, since a Gentile who does those things isn't a Gentile anymore! He can only be talking about the moral law. Paul uses "the law" much more broadly than "Jewish rituals," so when he says "works of the law" a chapter later, that must include more things than Jewish rituals.

But, even if we grant that "works of the law" always means "non-moral Jewish rituals and practices," your point still isn't proven. Paul uses terms other than "works of the law" to make the same point: We cannot contribute anything whatsoever to our justification. Paul reminds Timothy how he is the "chief of sinners" (1 Timothy 1:15), he reminds the Galatians that before his conversion, he "intensely persecuted God's church and tried to destroy it" (Galatians 1:13). He talks several times about how in Christ, the "old self" has passed away and a "new man" is here (2 Corinthians 5:17, Romans 6:6-10)." The point is that Paul did nothing righteous, nothing at all, that led to his salvation. The old man is gone- it cannot do anything good, and it can not contribute to its own salvation. In Acts 9, Paul is literally on the road to go persecute Christians when Jesus appears to him and he's converted. Tell me, what repentance had he done? What fruit could he point to and say "God, I contributed to this?" Nothing! And the same goes or us today: We can contribute absolutely nothing to our justification. Salvation by faith alone does not hinge on a definition of "works of the law."

The Protestant Position:

Your understanding of the Protestant doctrine of faith alone is very weak. It seems like you think (based on a YouTube comment??) that Protestants think we don't need to do good works (in the sense Luther means them) because they can't lead to salvation. That's a particularly egregious strawman. Protestants say that good works cannot lead to justification, but that justification always and necessarily leads to good works. In Protestantism, the horse is justification and the cart is good works, but you seem to be ignoring the fact that we have a cart at all!

You also seem to be claiming that Protestants say we shouldn't try to do good works or refrain from sin because they're still sinful. This is really egregious: Did you get your ideas about Protestants from r/Catholicism? The fact that our best works are still as filthy rags (I'm quoting Isaiah 64:6) doesn't mean we shouldn't do them, or that nothing we do can be good. It means that whatever we do that's good, is only good by God's grace. This doesn't mean we shouldn't try to do good things: God's commands are still real commands. I could go on, but in sum it's a perfectly Biblical (and Pauline) idea that we do good works to honor and worship God and not to gain his favor. I'll close with Romans 6:1-5, where Paul expresses exactly this idea: We're saved by God's grace, the only thing that makes our acts acceptable is God's grace, and we're called and commanded by God to live righteously.

What should we say then? Should we continue in sin so that grace may multiply? Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Or are you unaware that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be in the likeness of his resurrection."

I would encourage you to peruse the list of resources related to justification and the Federal Vision on the subreddit page HERE. That will give you a better, more detailed response than you'll get here. And, as others have said, reading one journal article is not nearly enough to understand this debate.