ABSTRACT
As its title suggests, this chapter is about salvation, the new life in and through Jesus Christ, promised and announced in the gospel, which it is the church’s singular responsibility to make known in word and deed in all times and places. Strictly speaking, salvation is experienced in the form of anticipation, but as such it is experienced in the reality of worldly existence. The fullness of salvation is an eschatological affair: it occurs when the reign or kingdom of God comes in its fullness at the end of the age.1 The shape and content of the new life ‘in Christ’ or ‘in the Spirit’ are characterized in the New Testament in many different ways, among these through metaphors of justification, reconciliation and redemption. It is always assumed that this life will be ecclesial, though this in no way suggests that it is not in the space and history of this world. There is a sense, then, in which the church is ‘salvation’s setting’, inasmuch as the concrete practices of this community give expression to the meaning and implications of the gift of salvation, and the church gives praise to God for this gift.
