Christians believe that Jesus is the savior of the world. That thought is captured in the epistle of St. John: Whoever acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him and he in God. Getting people on the “Jesus team” has been a powerful motivation for mission. You didn’t want all those people who didn’t acknowledge Jesus to be lost. However, in the same epistle St. John also says, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us. In other words, those who love have the same possibility to remain in God as believers! Does that mean it is not necessary to acknowledge Jesus to remain in God? St. John describes why belief is important when he says that because of Jesus “we have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.” Jesus embodies that love is the heart of a genuinely human life so he is the absolute savior of the world. But we are not privy to how Jesus saves non-believers but we can be sure that love lies at the heart of salvation.
