We're almost there, but there are two more "salvation passages" we need to consider.
The first is the famous Bread of Life teaching in the sixth chapter of John:
35 Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. 36 But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. 37 All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. 38 For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. 40 For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day."
41 At this the Jews there began to grumble about him because he said, "I am the bread that came down from heaven." 42 They said, "Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, 'I came down from heaven'?"
43 "Stop grumbling among yourselves," Jesus answered. 44 "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. 45 It is written in the Prophets: 'They will all be taught by God.' Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me. 46 No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. 47 Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. 50 But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."
52 Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"
53 Jesus said to them, "Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. [emphasis added] 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever." 59 He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
How do we eat the flesh of Christ and drink His blood?
Jesus answers that at the Last Supper when he breaks the bread and pours the wine for his disciples and says, "This is my body, this is my blood." It's simple (but also not). To be saved we have to receive communion, and not the symbols of grape juice and crackers either, but the Eucharist, "the body and blood of Christ" or the "height and summit of our faith," in the words of Pope Benedict.
You might reply, "It's not that I don't believe that the words of a priest convert bread and wine to the Body and Blood of Christ; I can't believe it!"
So, what do you do?
You interpret Scripture to fit what you can believe.
Don't feel bad: That is what all Christians do!
More on that later.
Finally, at least for this already too long essay, St. Paul writes in Romans that "…the word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, that is, the message concerning faith that we proclaim: If you declare with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved."
So, there you have it: Bob's your uncle. We now know what we must do to be saved: We must believe that God raised Jesus from the dead. And we have to say, "Jesus is Lord."
Quite frankly, I don't know what it means to say "Jesus is Lord." I mean, I can say the words, but there are a lot of terrible things happening around the world: people crying out to God because they suffer agonizing pains from cancer and strokes and heart disease; people who are confused with dementia and have to wear diapers; people who are hungry, thirsty, and don't have clothes to wear; people who suffer horrible and unjust violence in Gaza, Ukraine, Venezuela, Nigeria, Somalia, and on and on. In this hellscape we call a cosmos, domination is still theos.
What does the Lordship of Christ mean in a world like that?
I don't know, and you don't know either.
But I do know that, according to Paul, saying Jesus is Lord and believing in the resurrection are necessary for salvation.
So, where does that leave us?
We have to trust in the "only begotten" Son of God.
- Which means we have to be baptized;
- Whereupon we receive the Holy Spirit;
- Whereby we "change our minds" to embrace the values of the Kingdom of God:
- Which means we take care of others, particularly the poor,
- And forgive those who trespass against us;
- We have to partake of the Eucharist;
- We have to say Jesus is Lord (which we do when we recite the historic creeds);
- And we have to believe in the resurrection.
I think that covers everything. Any theological claims contrary to this synopsis are wrong, at least according to Scripture.
Of course, a lot of good people believe all or part of the above, and I think they'll be "saved," too. They'll shoehorn Scripture however they have to in order to believe. And that's okay.
It's okay because God is not a monster who condemns folks to hell who get it wrong or who get some of it right and some of it wrong or who simply can't believe any of it. As I said above, if God created hell for people who get it wrong, he is a monster, and we are all screwed.
I believe that God is not a monster, and he wants to save us from the hell we create everyday by embracing envy, rivalry, and the desire to dominate others. Jesus was so convinced of the Father's loving kingdom that he suffered to the death on the cross to show us what happens when we choose domination over love. Jesus didn't sacrifice himself to appease an angry God; he sacrificed himself to an angry humanity to show us the inevitable end of our disordered cosmos, namely, the torture and death of the innocent.
When we live according to the true revelation of Christ's crucifixion, we are "resurrected" to live in the peaceable Kingdom of God.
And that's how we're saved.