Peter Riedemann was an Anabaptist leader of the sixteenth century. Pay close attention to how he describes what it means to be saved by Jesus.
We believe in Jesus Christ, that all our salvation and redemption is in Him. We believe He has stilled the Father’s wrath, and that God should reconcile the world through Him (1 Jn. 2), like Paul says: God was in Christ and reconciled the world to himself and counted not their sins to them (2 Co. 5). We are also reconciled with God, and there is no other name in which we might be saved, but the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. (Acts 4)
First, we believe that in Christ we have releasing [redemption], or we could say that Christ has loosened us from the authority and ropes with which the devil had held us (He. 2). He has subdued and overcame the devil and taken his authority from him. The cords with which the devil held us are the sins in which we lay bound. We served him by practicing these very sins, (Ep. 3) until that Christ came into us through faith, to live there. Through His strength and working, He has weakened, quelled, killed, and carried away the sin in us, (1 Jo. 3; 1 Pe. 2) so that we should be freed from sin and live out righteousness. But He himself works and makes this righteousness come to pass in us, because we are not able to do anything without Him. (Jo. 15)
He himself, the Lord, propels the work within us and takes away the sin that we otherwise were not able to loosen ourselves from, but now though Him we are so free! The sins (which we long had served) should not lord it over us as before, (Ro. 6) even if they vigorously stir themselves up in our members. So, He is truly our Releaser! Read the rest of this entry »

For the death of Christ is nothing else than a dying to sin, and we are admonished to become like Him in His death: “For you have died and your life is hid with Christ in God.” Yes, Jacob’s hip has dried up, death is swallowed in victory; for if we have died to sin (which is a power of death), we have become God-fearing and righteous through the resurrection of Christ, for we are also walking in a new life; that is, we are found in the spiritual resurrection.
For on the cross He bore our sins in His body that we may be released from sin and live unto righteousness. It is therefore no trifle to boast of Christ’s death; for how can one who is still in sin say that Christ has died for him?
Since Christ died once for all to sin, the life he [the Christian] lives, he lives to God; and the life of Christ, which alone is righteousness, is completely reflected in him. I therefore faithfully admonish that we always keep the Lord Jesus in mind and adapt ourselves according to the example of the healing words that came from His mouth; for His word is eternal life. And we should put to death our old self.

-Thomas von Imbroich, taken from one of the letters to his wife, which he wrote to her in prison- mid 1500s. (From the book, Golden Apples in Silver Bowls)