We believe that, through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God offers salvation from sin and a new way of life to all people. We receive God’s salvation when we repent of sin and accept Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. In Christ, we are reconciled with God and brought into the reconciling community of God’s people. We place our faith in God that, by the same power that raised Christ from the dead, we may be saved from sin to follow Christ in this life and to know the fullness of salvation in the age to come.
From the beginning, God has acted with grace and mercy to bring about salvation–through signs and wonders, by delivering God’s people, and by making a covenant with Israel.1 God so loved the world that, in the fullness of time, God sent his Son, whose faithfulness unto death on the cross has provided the way of salvation for all people.2 By his blood shed for us, Christ inaugurated the new covenant.3 He heals us, forgives our sins, and delivers us from the bondage of evil and from those who do evil against us.4 By his death and resurrection, he breaks the powers of sin and death,5 cancels our debt of sin,6 and opens the way to new life.7 We are saved by God’s grace, not by our own merits.8
When we hear the good news of the love of God, the Holy Spirit moves us to accept the gift of salvation. God brings us into right relationship without coercion. Our response includes yielding to God’s grace, placing full trust in God alone, repenting of sin, turning from evil, joining the fellowship of the redeemed, and showing forth the obedience of faith in word and deed.9 When we who once were God’s enemies are reconciled with God through Christ, we also experience reconciliation with others, especially within the church.10 In baptism we publicly testify to our salvation and pledge allegiance to the one true God and to the people of God, the church. As we experience grace and the new birth, we are adopted into the family of God and become more and more transformed into the image of Christ.11 We thus respond in faith to Christ and seek to walk faithfully in the way of Christ.
We believe that the salvation we already experience is but a foretaste of the salvation yet to come, when Christ will vanquish sin and death, and the redeemed will live in eternal communion with God.
