There is Salvation in No One Else

On Peter's intentionally incorrect sentence

Acts 4.5-12

The assigned Old Testament(?!) lectionary passage for the Fourth Sunday of Easter is from Luke’s Book of Acts:

The next day their rulers, elders, and scribes assembled in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. When they had made the prisoners stand in their midst, they inquired, "By what power or by what name did you do this?" Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, "Rulers of the people and elders, if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. This Jesus is 'the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.' There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved."

John Wesley said an Almost Christian is someone who believes the scriptures and creeds of the faith are true, someone who generally loves God and serves their neighbor while an Altogether Christian, Wesley says, possesses “sure trust and confidence” in God’s saving love for them “through the merits of Jesus Christ.”

According to Peter— or rather, according to the deus dixit, the word the Holy Spirit places on Peter’s lips— the grace of God, the entire remission of your sins and the reckoning of Christ’s perfect righteousness as your own personal possession to take before a Holy God, salvation is not a possibility for which we hope. Salvation is an assurance to which we cling.

Salvation is not an outcome about which we speculate.

Salvation is a certainty we anticipate.

When it comes to the matter of God saving sinners— in their sins— it’s not a maybe.