“‘What must I do to be saved?’ the jailer of Phillipi asked his inmates Paul the Apostle and Silas (Acts 16: 30). “‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,’” Paul and Silas answered, “‘and you and your whole household will be saved.’ And they spoke to him and to all in his house the word of the Lord, and the same hour of the night the jailer washed the wounds of Paul's and Silas' scourging. And immediately he and all his household were baptized.”

Paul's Definition of Salvation

Paul's take on what salvation means is deliverance from sin, both from the consequences, or the “wages of sin,” which is death (Romans 6:23), and from the power or attraction of sin over the person saved. Salvation from sin was the most holy act in the Jewish calendar, when people asked forgiveness of God at Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. As Charles Haddon Spurgeon, probably the most highly esteemed Baptist preacher in history, said, salvation includes “the delivery of our soul from all those propensities to evil which now so strongly predominate in us.”

Not an Evangelical Franchise

“Being saved” is well known to be a priority in the evangelical churches like Spurgeon's Baptists, the Wesleyans (evangelical Methodists, Holiness, and Pentecostal denominations), and many other denominations and nondenominational churches, but many Protestants are unaware of the high priority the need for salvation also has in Catholic, Orthodox, traditional Anglo-Catholic (Church of England), and Lutheran teaching, prayers, Scripture readings, and liturgies. Catholics are taught to pray the prayer of contrition every day. It says:

O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell; but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, Who are all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. Amen.

The Orthodox ask salvation from their sins in the Trisagion (thrice holy) prayers that are part of both the morning and evening prayers all faithful make, and which also are part of every Orthodox worship service (as excerpted here):

Glory to you O Lord, glory to you. O heavenly King, O Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, who are in all places and fill all things, Treasury of good things and the Giver of life, come and abide in us, cleanse us from every stain, and save our souls, O Good One.

There are differences in the interpretations by various Christian communions of how salvation is effected, but the goal of salvation, and salvation's being a consequence of faith through grace are generally agreed on.

Teachings on salvation are complicated by questions like these: