The requirements for salvation are simple: Love God and love your neighbour.
"You shall love the Lord your God... and your neighbour as yourself" (Mt 22). The Lord called these the Two Great Commandments. To live in them is to be in heaven, to be saved.
How do we come to love God and our neighbour? Faith gets us started. But faith must go beyond our "head" and touch our lives. Love is as love does! The Lord said follow Me. It is as we live our faith that the Lord gives us the power and light to love unselfishly. It’s as we actually make efforts that He is able to show us attitudes and behaviours that stand in the way. It’s as we actively work to resist evil and to live rightly, that we discover His love with us, accomplishing what we could not otherwise accomplish, bringing greater and greater security and peace!
Spiritual rebirth is a process
Faith and salvation do not come in an instant. Our faith grows and matures as we learn and come into new states of life. Our ability to see and respond to the Lord increases as we acquire certain fundamental concepts and life-experiences over time. The New Church offers a detailed, developmental understanding of how the Lord leads us through a process of spiritual rebirth, from infancy through old age.
People of all religions can be saved
The church, in broadest terms, consists of all people who lead a life that’s faithful to their concept of God — when they do this out of unselfish love. This love is the Lord’s love. It calls and gathers all sincere people into a One, into a universal church. After death people who have been in this church are easily led to recognise the Lord as the One whom they had worshiped!
Specific churches and religions in this world are to be honoured when they foster, among people of different backgrounds and mindsets, knowledge of God, of how to love and serve Him and the neighbour. Still, there are more and less clear ways of understanding God. If you saw a man working with inadequate tools, and it was in your power to give him better ones, wouldn’t you share them?
The New Church offers some new tools and brings to light some old tools i.e. new and old ideas — ideas that are sensible, “useable” and effective at preparing us for the Lord’s kingdom.