What does it mean that outside the church there is no salvation?

But, faith being necessary, as they hold, "The child stands on the warm bosom of the faith of the church, which, through its parents or sponsors, is pledged in its behalf." "Neither can we say that the word is the specific means of grace, whereby men are ingrafted into Christ. The word, as preached by the apostles, was a call to Christ. This was its object, to turn the attention of men to Him, as the true Messiah, the Son of God, the Saviour of the world. When they were ready to receive Him, they were baptised into Him, and thus made members of Him." "Christian baptism then, we think the Scriptures teach, is the sacrament of our incorporation into Christ." "The word has to do with truth; the sacrament with life. The one operates upon the intellect and affections; the other upon the centre of the being. By the word men are brought mentally and morally into contact with Christ; by the sacrament into actual life contact." "The theology then we speak of is churchly. It believes in the church … in the bosom of which only, not on the outside of it, the gospel can be expected to work, as the wisdom of God and the power of God unto salvation. So far as this goes, of course, it owns and confesses that the church is a medium of communication between Christ and His people." (His people, then, are not the church!) "They must be in the order of His grace, in the sphere where this objective working of His grace is actually going forward, and not in the order of nature, where it is not going forward at all (but where Satan reigns and has his own way), if the work of redemption and sanctification is to be carried forward in them with full effect. In this sense, most assuredly, salvation is of the church, and not of the world," etc. Now that, as a general truth, sanctification is to be looked for in the church, not in the world, is all true enough. But the gospel, they say, cannot work outside of it; the poor heathen are in a bad way, and redemption is carrying on, and that only inside it. Salvation is not of the world, assuredly, but it is to the world, and could never have been, had it not come to it as such; nor could the church otherwise have existed. The grace of God brings salvation — where? to those already within, or to men without to bring them in?

"But to appeal, in ecclesiastical questions, to the authority of scripture, to expect from scripture light upon these questions in the name of its dignity as the sole rule for Christians, is to comprise matters of form and organization among things necessary for salvation. Now, is not this the Catholic principle? Outside the Church, that is, of a particular form of the Church, no salvation? These so deeply anti-evangelical notions are much more widely spread than is generally believed."

Some of us tried all sorts of things to get salvation — religion, reformation, good works, etc., — but one day we discovered the fact that God's Word is true when it says, "Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved (Acts 4:12). I heard of a man teaching that salvation is in the Church. There may be preservation in some measure for those already saved, but salvation is in none other than Jesus, as this Scripture tells us. Paul said, "Salvation is in Christ Jesus" (2 Timothy 2:10).

Some of us tried all sorts of things to get salvation—religion, reformation, good works, etc,—but one day we discovered the fact that God’s Word is true when it says, “Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). I heard of a man teaching that salvation is in the Church. There may be preservation in some measure for those already saved, but salvation is in none other than Jesus, as this Scripture tells us. Paul said, “Salvation is in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 2:10).

And, first, then, as to the material of which God's assembly is composed; it is, in one word, those possessing salvation, or eternal life. We do not enter the assembly in order to be saved, but as those who are saved. The word is, "On this rock I will build my church." He does not say, "On my church I will build the salvation of souls." One of Rome's boasted dogmas is this — "There is no salvation out of the true church." Yes, but we can go deeper still, and say, "Off the true Rock there is no church." Take away the Rock, and you have nothing but a baseless fabric of error and corruption. What a miserable delusion, to think of being saved by that! Thank God, it is not so. We do not get to Christ through the church, but to the church through Christ. To reverse this order is to displace Christ altogether, and thus have neither Rock, nor church, nor salvation. We meet Christ as a life-giving Saviour, before we have anything to say to the assembly at all; and hence we could possess eternal life, and enjoy fall salvation, though there were no such thing as an assembly of God on the earth.

Then, in the second place, the Person of Christ and His finished work are the only channel through which salvation can possibly flow to the lost and guilty sinner. It is not the Church and her sacraments, religion and its rites and ceremonies — man or his doings in any shape or form. It is the death and resurrection of Christ. "He died for our sins, was buried, and rose again the third day." This was the gospel which Paul preached, by which the Corinthians were saved, and the apostle declares, with solemn emphasis, "If any man preach any other gospel, let him be accursed." Tremendous words for our day!

It is Christianity in contrast with Judaism or any other earthly religion. To enter through the door is to believe on Jesus the Son of God. He that does is on His word assured of salvation; "he shall be saved." This, mark it well, is given to him that enters through Christ. No such assurance attends another than the Son of God. He is the Saviour, and none else. The church consists of the saved, but cannot save: only Christ can and does. A false church may set up to save; the true church repudiates such a pretension as a lie and a blasphemy. She is but the body, He is the Head; she is the bride, He the Bridegroom. She, being true, is jealous of His honour; she rejects with horror all thought of setting herself in His place as of Satan. She has the Spirit now, as He had when here; but the Spirit does not glorify her but Him. All her privileges are in virtue of Him, and are rightly turned but to His praise.

Salvation then, as it is of God's grace, is through Christ. "Through me if any one enter, he shall be saved." It is not for the Jew only but for the Gentile also; it is for "any one." But he must enter through Christ. Through Me if any one enter, he shall be saved. He may be baptised and be lost; he may take the Lord's Supper, and be lost. If any one enter through Christ, he shall be saved. This He declares; and His words shall endure when heaven and earth pass away.

But there are other points connected with this subject as to which a great deal of the evangelical teaching seems to me unsustained by scripture, and not according to its teaching on all material practical points. And first, as to the essential oneness of the Church in all ages and under all dispensations. That a sinner, at all times since the fall, is saved in the same way, no Christian can doubt for a moment. But salvation is not the Church, nor the Church salvation. If it be said, Must not a man belong to the Church of God now to be saved? I say, Surely. That is, if he is saved, he does belong to it, because this is God's divine order; but — what saves him is Christ, not the Church. Christ saved a Jew who was saved; but he belonged to Israel as the order of God at that time, not to the Church; and the Jewish church (as men speak) is an utterly unscriptural idea. So far as an individual was saved, he was always saved by Christ; but that did not constitute the assembly.

There never was a Jewish church. There was a Jewish nation, and to that the man, called by grace as a Jew, belonged by birth, and was bound to adhere. Now he is not, because in the Church there is neither Jew nor Greek. A man was a Jew by birth, and a Jew in orderly fellowship when circumcised. The Church, even in its outward profession, stands by faith, is never composed of natural branches. The Jews were natural branches. They did not, in their divinely ordained place as Jews, stand by faith. A Jewish church is an unscriptural fallacy. Christ gave Himself for the nation, but not for that nation only, but to gather together in one the children of God that are scattered abroad. That formed the Church. The Church or assembly is the gathering together of "such as should be saved." This was never done in Judaism. The unity was a national unity, and no other. They were a holy people in their calling. When Christianity was founded, the Lord added to the Church such as should be saved. He never did this before. That was the Church — God's assembly in the world. If before that a Jew came to believe, he was added to nothing. He was a godly Jew instead of an ungodly one; he belonged to what he belonged before — there was nothing to be added to. "By one Spirit we are all baptized into one body." But the baptism of the Holy Ghost is positively asserted to be after Christ's ascension; in a word, the day of Pentecost. The church invisible is no scriptural nor tangible idea. It is an invention, particularly of St. Augustine, to conciliate the awful iniquity of the professing church with the truth and godliness necessary to the true Christian. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Ye are the light of the world. What is the value of an invisible light? A church under a bushel? There is no community in the invisible church. That the Church is become invisible, I admit fully; but I admit it as the fruit of man's sin. But this has no application to Judaism. There the nation — the children of Jacob — were the public visible body, and meant by God to be so; and individual saints were never otherwise gathered. In Christianity they were. He gave Himself, to gather into one the children of God who were scattered abroad. If they were gathered before as a church, an assembly, how could He gather what was scattered abroad? Christ gave Himself to gather together the children of God which were scattered. They were children of God, but were not a church, an assembly. They were scattered, and Christ came to introduce another state of things. If they were a church gathered before, how did Christ come to gather the scattered? If it means that He was to save in one body, at the end of time, all the redeemed, they were never scattered.

This is a very important lesson, and full of weighty results. It proves that the church does not mean merely people that are saved, or in process of being saved. Salvation was true before the assembly. The Lord took such as should be saved, and brought them into the church. If there had been no assembly to bring them into, this would not have negatived the fact that they were "such as should be saved."

This is a very important lesson, and full of weighty results. It proves that the church does not mean merely people that are saved, or in process of being saved. Salvation was true before the assembly. The Lord took such as should be saved, and brought them into the church. If there had been no assembly to bring them into, this would not have negatived the fact that they were "such as should be saved."