Jesus and Salvation

Salvation is God’s gift through Jesus Christ.

We teach that mankind is unable, through any efforts of their own, to reconcile themselves to God.

For this reason, God sent His only begotten Son into the world to redeem us from sin, death, and the devil. We believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is the Lord, who has redeemed us, lost and condemned creatures, purchased and won us from all sins, death, and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death, so that we may be His own, and live under Him in His kingdom, and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, even as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity (Galatians 4:4, 5; 3:13; 2 Corinthians 5:18, 9; John 3:16-18). The purpose of this miraculous incarnation of the Son of God was that He might become the Mediator between God and men, fulfilling the divine Law and suffering and dying in the place of mankind. In this manner, God reconciled the whole sinful world unto Himself. The Holy Ghost testifies through St. Paul: "There is no difference; for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus," Romans 3:23, 24. And again: "Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the Law," Romans 3:28.

Through this doctrine alone, Christ is given the honor due Him, namely, that He is our Savior through His holy life and innocent suffering and death. Through this doctrine alone, poor sinners can have the abiding comfort that God is assuredly gracious to them. We reject as apostasy from the Christian religion all doctrines whereby man's works and merit are mingled into the article of justification before God. For the Christian religion is the faith that we have forgiveness of sins and salvation through faith in Christ Jesus, Acts 10:43.

This Gospel is preached to all men, to the end that they may believe it (2 Corinthians 5:18, 19; Romans 1:5). Therefore, faith in Christ is the only way for us to obtain reconciliation with God, that is, the forgiveness of sins, as both the Old and the New Testament Scriptures testify (Acts 10:43; John 3:16-18). This faith in Christ, through which we obtain the forgiveness of sins, is without any human effort to fulfill the Law of God after the example of Christ, but faith in the Gospel, that is, in the forgiveness of sins won by Christ and offered to us by the Gospel. This faith justifies but as laying hold of the grace given in Christ (Romans 4:16).

We reject as apostasy from the Christian religion not only the doctrine of the Unitarians, who promise the grace of God to men based on their moral efforts, not only the gross work-doctrine of the papists, who expressly teach that good works are necessary to obtain justification; but also the doctrine of the synergists, who indeed use the terminology of the Christian Church and say that man is justified "by faith," "by faith alone," but again mix human works into the article of justification by ascribing to man a co-operation with God in the kindling of faith and thus stray into papistic territory.