The Apostles’ Creed: The Churchنموونە

Salvation in the Visible Church: Luke 22:20

As we have said, the living members of the invisible church are ordinarily contained within the visible church. For this reason, many theologians have made the point that salvation is not ordinarily possible for those outside the visible church. That is to say, if a person is not part of the visible church, that person has no ordinary opportunity to be saved. 

The early church father Cyprian, who lived from A.D. 200 to 258, put it this way in his treatise On the Unity of the Church:

Whoever is separated from the Church and is joined to an adulteress, is separated from the promises of the Church; nor can he who forsakes the Church of Christ attain to the rewards of Christ. He is a stranger; he is profane; he is an enemy. He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother.

Here, Cyprian was arguing against those who had left the visible church. And his point was that you cannot enter the invisible church to receive the rewards of Christ unless you are also part of the visible church. This argument is consistent with what we have said about the visible church being in covenant with God. 

The fact of the matter is that salvation itself is a blessing of God’s covenant. We see this in Jeremiah 31:31-34, Luke 1:69-75, Romans 11:27, Hebrews 7:22-25, and many other places. As just one example, consider Jesus’ words in Luke 22:20, as he instituted the Lord’s Supper:

This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you (Luke 22:20).

On the night of his arrest, Jesus said that the blood he would shed in atonement for our sins would be a covenant. In other words, salvation in Christ’s blood comes only through his covenant.

Since God’s covenant is made with the visible church, salvation ordinarily comes through the visible church. This happens when people within the visible church come to faith, or when the visible church gains converts through evangelism. Of course, sometimes people also get saved apart from any interaction with the church. But when this happens, it’s important to recognize that something unusual is taking place — something extraordinary. 

Because the invisible church is universal, only those who are faithful to God’s covenant can be saved. There is no hope that people in other religions will make it to heaven by being good by the standards of their own religions. We must evangelize. We must tell people about the only Savior. We must bring them into the only covenant community, the earthly kingdom of God, and teach them to love and obey its Lord and King. The catholicity of the invisible church is a great encouragement to all of us who are saved — it is our solidarity in Christ. But it’s also a terrible warning to everyone who has not yet come to Christ.