Who Got Saved in the Old Testament
When Abraham was justified, the cross was still two thousand years away. There was no temple or priesthood. There were no sacrifices written down. Abraham believed God, and that faith was counted to him for righteousness. The question is, what was he believing?
A lot Christians have a fuzzy answer for how anybody was saved before Christ came. Some think the Old Testament saint was saved by keeping the law. Some think he was saved by his sacrifices. Both ideas are wrong, and both ideas leave a man without a Saviour. The Bible is clear that no man, in any age, has ever been saved by anything other than the blood of Jesus Christ. The Old Testament saint was saved the same way the New Testament saint is saved. The only difference is the New Testament saint looks back at the cross. The Old Testament saint looked forward to it.
The Blood of Bulls and Goats Never Saved Anyone
The temple sacrifices were real, and God commanded them, but they were never the thing that actually took sin away. They were a picture, not the payment. Every lamb that was killed at the altar was pointing forward to the Lamb of God who would one day take away the sin of the world.
Hebrews 10:4, “For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.”
That is one of the clearest verses in the New Testament on the question. The blood of an animal could not pay for a man’s soul. It was never designed to.
Hebrews 10:11, “And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.”
The priest had to do it every day because the work was never finished. The picture had to be repeated until the substance showed up.
The Sacrifices Were a Schoolmaster
The whole sacrificial system was a teaching tool. Every time a man dragged a lamb up to the altar and watched it die for his sin, he was being taught three things.
Sin demands blood.
- A substitute can stand in his place.
- And one day a final substitute would come.
Galatians 3:24, “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.”
The law and the sacrifices were the schoolmaster. They were not the cure. They were the lesson book pointing the student to the Cure that was coming.
Hebrews 10:1, “For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.”
A shadow is not the thing itself. A shadow tells you something real is casting it. The whole Old Testament was a shadow, and the substance casting it was Jesus Christ.
The Old Testament Saint Was Saved By Looking Forward
When Abraham believed God, what was he believing? He was believing the promise that a Seed would come through him by whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. That Seed was Christ. Abraham was looking forward to the Messiah, and his faith was counted to him for righteousness.
Genesis 15:6, “And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness.”
Romans 4:3, “For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.”
Paul quotes this in the New Testament to prove that justification has always been by faith, never by works.
Abraham was saved by faith in the promise. The promise was the coming Messiah.
Jesus said it Himself.
John 8:56, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad.”
Abraham saw Christ’s day from a distance and rejoiced. He believed in the coming Saviour and was saved by that faith.
David did the same. He looked forward to a Messiah who would not be left in the grave, and he wrote about Him in the psalms hundreds of years before the cross.
Acts 2:30-31, “Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne; He seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption.”
David was saved looking forward to the same Christ we look back to.
Hebrews 11:13, “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”
Every Old Testament saint listed in Hebrews 11 died in faith. They saw the promise from a long way off and believed in it. They embraced it. They never saw the cross with their own eyes, but they saw the Promise standing behind every lamb, every drop of blood, every Passover, and every tabernacle, and they trusted Him.
One Saviour, One Way of Salvation, Two Directions
There has only ever been one Saviour, and there has only ever been one way to be saved by Him.
Acts 4:12, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”
That name is Jesus and it’s not just for what we would call Christians today. For every saved man in human history. Adam, Abel, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Daniel, and every Gentile saint were all saved by the same name.
They just did not know all the syllables yet. They knew Him as the Promised Seed, the Lamb, the Branch, the Redeemer, the Son of David, and the Suffering Servant. We know Him as Jesus.
John 14:6, “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”
No man. No man at all, in any age, ever, comes to the Father except by Christ.
Hebrews 9:12, “Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.”
Hebrews 9:15, “And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance.”
When Christ died, His death paid for the transgressions that were under the first testament. The Old Testament saints were saved on credit, looking forward to a payment that would be made at Calvary. The New Testament saint is saved on the same payment, looking back to a transaction that has already been settled. Same blood, name, and Saviour.
What This Opens Up
If salvation has always been by faith in the coming Messiah, then the line of saved people was never just Israel. It never has been. There were Gentiles in the Old Testament who believed in the same Promise Abraham believed in, and who were saved by it.
Some of them showed more faith than the Israelites around them. Some of them were used by God in ways no one would have predicted. And the patterns running through their lives are some of the clearest pictures of saving faith you will find anywhere in scripture.
We will meet nine of them in Part 2.
