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Mithras is setting a condition for salvation, essentially salvation by works. Jesus is not; he is offering himself as a gift to be received without condition other than acceptance of said gift.
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lmp's point here is a fair one
davem. The difference is small but important. The pagan religion is akin to the Old Testament view of religion, in that followers must meet demands and conditions in order to ensure their salvation, whereas the New Testament view is that salvation will occur via love and grace. The seemingly nit-picky difference in words, whether the phrase is said negatively or positively, is also important. A negative phrasing relates to a vengeful God, whereas a positive phrasing relates to a loving one.
To go back to Legolas' original question, yes you can see parallel's between Christianity and Tolkien's created world and myths but, as davem said, it is more based on the myths of old than the Bible, if it is accepted that the myths came first and the writers of the Bible (and here the fundamnetalist view must be ignored) twisted them to fit their own uses. Also, the parallel's may be drawn in order that a reader can find something they recognise within the stories. A tale is subject to the interpretation of it's readers, so that whether Tolkien intended his tale to be Christian or not, even if he had fundamentally and categorically stated with no previous or later contradictions that it was or was not, either way there would still be people who read different things into it.