A Summary Statement on Salvation

In the Spring of 2022 the congregation of First Mennonite Church studied the question, “What is salvation, and how are we saved?” As Anabaptists, we believe in studying the Bible together for discernment and direction. Through months of examination of both the Bible and interpretations by the early church, we found ourselves spiritually enriched and often surprised. No statement can encapsulate all that we discovered together or do justice to the myriad facets of salvation in the Bible. Nonetheless, the following statement represents our consensus summary.

Because our God is a God of mercy, grace, and love, God is working to bring humankind into a right relationship with God and establish God’s kingdom in the present and in the future, both on earth and in heaven. God’s salvation includes rescue from poverty, violence, injustice, disease, death, as well as our despair, alienation, and selfishness. We are saved from our separation from God, humanity, and creation through our faith in and loyalty to God’s self-giving love embodied in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. As followers of Christ, we are called to make disciples and join God in this ministry of reconciliation and restoration.

We believe that the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus is the clearest revelation of who God is and the strongest testimony to God’s mercy, grace, and love. God, through Christ, has done what we could not—break the power of sin and death. Yet we know that our understanding of God’s mercy, grace, and love and God’s work of salvation is incomplete in this life. We joyously anticipate the day when, in God’s holy presence, joined by a host of others seeking after God’s love, the fulness of God’s saving work will be revealed to us.