home radio shows music contact videos humour search |
How Were Old Testament People Saved?
By John MacArthur Jr
Everyone is saved through
Christ. He died for the sins of the world. For old testament
folks, it was
future. For us, it is past, but it was still through Christ. It
was His death, His sacrifice. It atoned for the sins of the OT
saints as well as the NT saints. And, every time they sacrificed
a lamb, and every time they sacrificed a ram, and every time
they sacrificed a turtle dove or a pigeon, every time they
sacrificed any animal, it was the picture of Christ, the picture
of Christ, the picture of Christ. So, they had to know that
there was coming one who would pay the penalty for their sins,
one ultimate sacrifice. Christ, alone, can save.
Now, the means for salvation has always been the same: Faith.
And, at any given point in the unfolding revelation of the Word
of God, salvation came through faith, believing God. Abraham
believed God. It was counted him for righteousness. What did he
believe? He believed as much as God had revealed. And, God had
revealed even by that time that he was sinner and that the only
Saviour was God, and that God would pay the penalty for his sin.
Now, he didn't understand all there was to know about Jesus
Christ, but he understood enough to know that he was a sinner
and needed a Saviour and God would provide a Saviour. That is why
it says in Hebrews 12, that Moses could foresee Christ, even
Moses.
So, I believe, the OT people were saved by faith in God. They
believed God’s word as much as was revealed to them, and knew
their own sinfulness. In fact, the reason they would carry out
the sacrifices, and the reason they would do all the things God
told them to do was an outworking of an inward faith. It was not
to earn salvation. It was to demonstrate the reality of it. They
were saved by faith in Christ. They didn't know who Christ was.
And, they didn't know specifically when and how and all of that,
but they believed God. They were sinful, and God would have to
provide a sacrifice for them.
How were Old Testament People Saved?
....( take 2 )
By Dr. Andrew Fountain
Many Christians are a little confused about how Old Testament
believers were saved. The first problem we have is that in Old
Testament times they didn’t know about Jesus’ death on the
cross. Yet Acts 4:12, says of Jesus, “Nor is there salvation in
any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among
men by which we must be saved.” How could people living in Old
Testament times be saved if they didn’t know the name of Jesus?
The second problem is the place of animal sacrifices. Did those
sacrifices take away sin? Were people saved by sacrificing
sheep, bulls, and goats?
We will try to deal with these two
problems, and the errors we can fall into when trying to
understand salvation in the Old Testament. One extreme position
says, “In the Old Testament people were saved in a completely
different way. Now we are saved by faith in Jesus Christ, but
then, they were saved by the sacrifices.” The other extreme,
which we will talk about later, is a failure to distinguish
between the outward and the inward in the Old Testament
covenants. One view sees no similarity between Old Testament and
New Testament ways of salvation, the other view sees no
difference between them.
Abraham: “the father of all those who
believe”
We are going to look at the example of
Abraham as a picture of all Old Testament believers. In Romans
4:11 he is called the father of all those who believe.
We read about two covenants that God made
with Abraham. There are some very important differences between
them. The first covenant was when he was seventy-five years old
and the second covenant was twenty-four years later when he was
ninety-nine. Genesis 15:1-8 describes the first covenant.
1 After these things the word of the Lord
came to Abram in a vision, saying, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I
am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.”
2 But Abram said, “Lord God, what will You
give me, seeing I go childless, and the heir of my house is
Eliezer of Damascus?”
3 Then Abram said, “Look, You have given
me no offspring; indeed one born in my house is my heir!”
4 And behold, the word of the Lord came to
him, saying, “This one shall not be your heir, but one who will
come from your own body shall be your heir.”
5 Then he brought him outside and said,
“Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to
number them.” And he said to him, “So shall your descendants
be.”
6 And he believed in the Lord, and he
accounted it to him for righteousness.
7 Then he said to him, “I am the Lord, who
brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to
inherit it.”
8 And he said, “Lord God, how shall I know
that I will inherit it?”
The account continues in an extraordinary
way: God made a formal covenant with Abraham. In ancient times,
one of the common ways of making a covenant was to cut an animal
or several animals in two pieces. These pieces would be laid on
the ground opposite each other and the two parties would walk
between them. The language of the symbol is very, very strong.
It is saying, “If I break this covenant then I am willing to be
cut in pieces like this animal.” It is not something you do if
you intend to break the covenant, because you are really saying
“I am willing to be killed if I break it.”
God told Abraham to take a three-year-old
heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a
turtledove, and a young pigeon, and to cut these five creatures
in two and put them out on the ground. Then a deep sleep fell on
him and in a vision he saw God, pictured as a smoking torch,
passing between the pieces.
There are two astonishing things about
this covenant.
First: that God would bind himself in a covenant
to a human being and that he would make that kind of promise. In
effect God is saying, “May I cease to be God, may I cease to
exist just as these animals cease to exist, if I should break
this promise with Abraham.” Just as it is impossible for God to
cease to exist, so it is impossible for God to break his
promises. But the incredible thing is that God should actually
say this.
Second: usually in this type of covenant
both the parties in the agreement walk between the pieces. If
one of them breaks the agreement, then theoretically the other
one is given the right to kill them. But in this case only one
person, only God symbolized by the smoking torch, goes between
the pieces.
The terminology that theologians use for
this kind of covenant is “unilateral covenant;” it is one-sided.
God had taken the responsibility of keeping this covenant
completely on himself; Abraham didn’t have to make any promises
to keep the covenant. There was no way that Abraham could
actually break the covenant. God was the only one who was
required to do anything. In New Testament terms we would say
that it was all of grace. All Abraham had to do was believe,
and, at this point, he had already believed. Believing, of
course, is not a meritorious work, but rather it is trusting
God. Using the expression from Romans 4, we will call this the
“Covenant of Promise”.
The covenant of circumcision
Twenty-four years later God appeared to
Abraham again and made another covenant (Genesis 17.) In Acts
7:8 this is called the “Covenant of Circumcision.” There is a
lot of similarity between these two covenants, but the main
difference is that the second covenant is not only promised to
Abraham, it is also extended to his descendants. However the
promise to his descendants has a condition that they had to
fulfill in order to remain in the covenant.
Abraham’s descendants had to be
circumcised. In v. 14 it says, “The uncircumcised male child who
is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person
shall be cut off from his people. He has broken my covenant.” So
it was possible to break at least this aspect of the covenant.
Many people would like to lump together
both covenants with Abraham, saying that they were the same
thing. However, Romans 4 makes a big distinction between them:
the first is a free and unconditional promise only requiring
faith; the second contains the ceremonial requirement of
circumcision which is actually a foreshadowing of the law of
Moses that came to its fullness later at Mt. Sinai.
Let us consider what the second covenant,
made in Genesis 17:7-8, really means:
7 “And I will establish My covenant
between Me and you and your descendants after you in their
generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and
your descendants after you.
8 “Also I give to you and your descendants
after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of
Canaan, as an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.”
Here a promise was made, and the only
condition was circumcision. We therefore have a problem because
the Jewish nation have pretty well kept that condition right
through to the present day. They may not have kept most of the
conditions of the later covenant at Mt. Sinai, but they have
kept the command to be circumcised. Yet, they have not always
had the land of Canaan for their possession. In fact, even now
that some of them are back in the land, it is only a small part
of what God promised Abraham. Certainly throughout history,
there has been nothing like the eternal possession of the land
of Canaan that God promised him. Has God’s promise failed?
To understand this we have to see that
there were two aspects to this covenant. As in the later
covenant that God gave to the Israelites in the wilderness at
Mount Sinai, there was an outward aspect and a spiritual
reality. Of course, the outward was to be obeyed; they really
were to be circumcised. This outward aspect was designed to
point to the spiritual reality of the covenant, which was
inward.
It is like a picture. Suppose you are
trying to find your way to Riverdale Farm. You may see a sign
saying “Riverdale Farm this way,” and stop at the sign saying,
“Look, here is the sign. I must be there.” But you aren’t. All
you have found is the sign pointing to the farm. You are not
there until you actually follow the sign to where it is
pointing. It is the same with circumcision and with the covenant
with Abraham. There were signs, but you were not there until you
followed to where the sign was pointing.
The meaning of circumcision
Outward circumcision was intended to be a
picture of circumcision of the heart. Circumcision of the heart
is quite simply a willing obedience that trusts in God. The
uncircumcised heart is a heart of stone which does not want to
obey God, or believe his promises. In contrast, the circumcised
heart, sometimes called a “heart of flesh,” is ready and willing
to believe and obey. Stephen, in Acts 7, described the
Israelites as “you stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and
ears”.
“Stiffnecked” is a picture from an
agricultural society where animals such as horses, or donkeys,
or oxen were used for plowing and pulling things. A horse has a
bridle and a bit in its mouth. When you want it to turn you turn
its head by pulling on the reins. The horse should then turn its
head and go in the direction you want it to. A stiff-necked
animal is the one who will not turn, goes its own way, and keeps
its neck stiff. This is a picture of a stubborn person who wants
to go their own way and is not willing to submit to God. The
uncircumcised person is someone who is stiff-necked and stubborn
and wants to go his own way. On the other hand, someone who has
a circumcised heart is obedient. They are submissive and
willing, they trust the Lord like an obedient animal, trusting
its master.
This is spelled out many times in the Old
Testament . They did not have to guess what circumcision
symbolized because God told them many times. For example, in
Ezekiel 36:26, God says to them “I will give you a new heart and
put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of
stone and give you a heart of flesh.” He goes on to explain in
v. 27: “I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in
my statutes, and you will keep my judgments and do them.”
So Ezekiel equates this circumcised heart
to having the Spirit within us. God will put his Spirit within
us. This idea of an obedient, regenerated heart is even clearer
when we look at Romans 2:25. Paul explains: “For circumcision is
indeed profitable if you keep the law; but if you are a breaker
of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision.”
Here you can see that if you are
disobedient, it is the same as being uncircumcised. Therefore if
an uncircumcised man keeps the righteous requirements of the
law, his un-circumcision will be counted as if he were
circumcised! So the important thing is not whether you are
physically circumcised or not, but the inward act, which is
obedience.
Paul goes on in v. 27: “And will not the
physically uncircumcised, if he fulfils the law, judge you who,
even with your written code and circumcision, are a transgressor
of the law?” And here is the climax in vv. 28-29: “For he is not
a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is
outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and
circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the
letter; whose praise is not from men but from God.”
This circumcision of the heart is
performed by the Spirit who gives us a new heart. There is
another more familiar name for this: “born again.” Being born
again of the Spirit is the same thing as having a circumcised
heart, a new heart of flesh. Real circumcision is the same thing
as being born again.
Returning to the promise to Abraham, we
can ask, “Who does this promise apply to?” It applies to all
those who are born again. Everybody who has a new heart, a
circumcised heart, fulfils this covenant and is part of the
offspring promised to Abraham. It is not the Jewish nation, but
everyone who is born again, both Jew and gentile, who inherit
this promise. The result of the outward aspect of the promise
may have been a physical nation, but the fulfilment of the
inward aspect of the promise is a spiritual nation: those who
are born again, who have a new heart given to them by the Holy
Spirit.
We can see exactly the same idea in
Galatians 5:6. “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor
un-circumcision avails anything, but faith working through love.”
What was it that Abraham had that God counted for righteousness?
It was faith. Here Paul is saying “Circumcision is merely a
picture of faith, the faith that works itself out in producing a
loving and obedient heart.” Then in chapter 6:15 he says, “For
in Christ Jesus neither circumcision or un-circumcision avails
anything, but a new creation.” What is the new creation? We know
there will be new heavens and a new earth one day, but the new
creation has started now; it has begun in our hearts. Everyone
who is a Christian is a new creature in Christ Jesus because the
new birth has occurred in our hearts.
Nicodemus should have known about this. In
John 3 Jesus says to Nicodemus, “You must be born again.” When
Nicodemus doesn’t understand, Jesus says, “Are you a teacher in
Israel and you don’t know these things? You have never read
Jeremiah and Ezekiel? Don’t you know the difference between an
uncircumcised and a circumcised heart? Don’t you know about this
new birth through the Spirit?” Nicodemus should have understood
these things because they are taught in the Old Testament.
Although they were in picture language to start with, they were
explained. It wasn’t long before God was explaining very clearly
what he meant by their hearts being circumcised or
uncircumcised.
God made a covenant with Abraham together
with all those after him who are his spiritual children. These
are the ones who believe in the way that he believed, who have
been given a new heart. That is why Abraham can be called the
father of all who believe.
How much did these Old Testament saints
really understand? They must have had some difficulty in coming
to a full understanding of what was entailed in their salvation.
Our understanding of Old Testament teaching is enlightened by
the commentary of New Testament writers. Abraham clearly knew
that there was more than the physical reality. We know he looked
beyond the literal promises because Hebrews 11:9 says of him,
“By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign
country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with
him of the same promise; for he waited for the city which has
foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” He knew that there
was a coming city, a new Jerusalem. The land in which he dwelt
physically, the land of Canaan, was not the fulfilment of the
promise—there was something more in the future. Abraham knew
that he should look beyond the sign, to the future.
To summarize, there were two aspects to
the promise to Abraham: the outward and the inward. The outward
was temporary; it lasted until the time of Christ and then fell
away. The inward aspect of the promise is everlasting.
I don’t want to offend any non-Baptist
readers, but those who believe in infant baptism have a problem
here. They confuse the sign with the reality. They look at the
promise in the time of Moses, which says “This promise is to you
and your children and your children’s children,” and they say
“Well, if we are Christians the promise must be to us and to our
children.” What they don’t understand is that the external
promise to the external children was a picture of a spiritual
promise to spiritual children. When Paul talks about his
children, who is he talking about? Those he had led to the Lord
are his spiritual children, and, in the same way, all who
believe can be described as the spiritual children of Abraham.
What did Old Testament believers actually
have to do to be saved?
If Old Testament believers didn’t know the
Name of Jesus, what was required of them to be saved? What
Abraham did was to cast himself totally on the Lord and trust
him. He did not know how God was going to save him, but he
trusted that God would find a way. We know now that the way that
God found to save Abraham was through Jesus Christ and His death
and resurrection. However, Abraham did not know that, he just
trusted blindly that God would find a way. The important thing
is that the faith he had is the same faith as ours. We may have
more knowledge now about how faith works, but still the core of
our faith today is coming to God as our only hope and looking to
him for shelter.
In Isaiah 32:2, God is described as a
hiding place from the wind and a cover from the tempest, as
rivers of water in a dry place, as a shadow of a great rock in a
weary land. Those are wonderful words, and they perfectly
describe the faith of an Old Testament believer. God was for
them a hiding place from the wind, a cover from the tempest, and
a refuge. Their faith is the same as our faith. We now know it
is Christ who provides that shelter. Nevertheless, at that time
they were looking for a shelter in the same way. Anyone who
cried out to God for shelter and came to him in Old Testament
times would be saved. When we come to him for shelter from the
storm, he will never turn us away. He has made provision through
his Son Jesus. They didn’t know the details then, but all they
had to know was that God was merciful and if they cast
themselves on him then he would show mercy. Jesus says, “Come to
Me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you
rest.” That is what Abraham did. He came to God and demonstrated
his faith by following God’s commands, and God gave him rest.
How did it work after Moses gave the law?
After Moses had given the law, the
Israelite nation had the sacrificial system to follow. Did the
sacrifices really save them? Did killing all of those bulls and
sheep really wash their sins away? In Hebrews 10:4 we read, “For
it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take
away sins.”
That is pretty clear, isn’t it! All the
blood that was shed didn’t take away a single sin! It was only a
picture of salvation in Jesus Christ. So could a true believer
in the time of Moses ignore the sacrifices? No they could not
because they were commanded to sacrifice, and because it was
part of what God commanded them they had to do it in obedience.
They might not have understood exactly what was going on, but in
Hebrews 4 we are told that their obedience had to be mixed with
faith for it to be effective. If they just killed the animal and
said “Well, that’s done with,” then it would not have done any
good. But if, when the animal was killed, they trusted that
somehow God would provide a way, not because of anything that
they had done but because they were casting themselves on Him,
then they would be saved.
Unfortunately though, this wasn’t the case
with most of the Israelites. They came out of Egypt and when it
was time to go into the promised land they didn’t trust in God
and his promises. They said “The giants of the land are too
great for us,” and so virtually every one of them died in the
wilderness. Were their sins forgiven? No, because they didn’t
have faith. In fact, the vast majority of Israel from their
inception through to the time of Christ were not saved; only a
small remnant were ever saved because they were the only ones
who had true faith. Sacrifices divorced from faith couldn’t save
them because they were only a picture or a pointer to God.
The application to us
Do you have an Abraham-type faith? Paul
gives a beautiful description in Romans 4 of what Abraham’s
faith was like. In Romans 4:19-21 he says about Abraham, “Not
being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body, already
dead (since he was about a hundred years old), and the deadness
of Sarah’s womb. He did not waver at the promise of God through
unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God,
and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also
able to perform.”
So Abraham’s faith was taking God at his
word and believing he could make the dead alive. It was not a
person who was “dead” but he and his wife’s childbearing
capability. His wife, Sarah, was barren and had never had
children. Yet Abraham believed that God could somehow bring life
out of that deadness. He simply trusted God and took Him at his
word.
What Paul does next is to draw a straight
line from Abraham’s belief to our belief. He says that when we
believe in the death and resurrection of Christ, that God made
Jesus alive and can make us alive, we have the same faith as
Abraham. Do you see the picture? We are also believing that God
can make the dead alive. In Romans 4:22-25, Paul writes, “And
therefore ‘it was accounted to him for righteousness.’ Now it
was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him,
but also for us. It shall be imputed to us who believe in him
who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up
because of our offenses, and was raised because of our
justification.”
Paul’s argument is that we who believe
that Jesus was raised from the dead, that he died for our sins
and was raised for our justification, have the same belief that
Abraham had. Now, of course, Abraham did not know about Jesus,
but we have to have the same trust in God and cast ourselves on
him believing that he will raise us up. If you are not a
Christian, there is no great, marvellous, incredible thing that
you have to do to become one. All you have to do is trust God
and say to him, “I can’t do anything myself. I just want to
trust that you will be my shelter, and you will provide a way
for me. You will deal with my sins. I don’t understand all the
theological details of the atonement, exactly how Jesus Christ
redeemed me, but I just know that you provided for me. I am
trusting in you and not in myself, because you are the one who
can do the impossible. You did the impossible with Abraham. You
did the impossible by raising Jesus from the dead.” God never
turns away any who come to him asking him to forgive them and
casting themselves on his mercy. Jesus says, “Come to me all you
who labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”
The opposite of having faith in Christ is
being stiff-necked and not wanting Christ’s lordship. It is
saying, “God, I want to live my own life. I want to go my own
way. I want to be master of my own destiny.”
How does this salvation teaching affect
those of us who are believers? It is the most wonderful news
that we could hear because our salvation is secure in what God
has done for us! He has paid the price. We don’t have to earn
anything. We Christians can sometimes slip back into trying to
earn our salvation. We somehow think that God is not pleased
with us anymore, and that we are not doing enough to please Him.
We forget that we don’t have to earn favour with him; we have
favour with God through Jesus Christ. Every time we come to him
in prayer his smile is upon us because of what Jesus has done
for us. Every time we sin, it is forgiven. Isn’t that wonderful?
Forgiveness. Isn’t that a beautiful word? Our sin is gone, it is
forgiven, it is cleansed, it is washed away in Jesus Christ.
You may ask, “Don’t I have to bring forth
fruit?” You are right, you do, but that is the other side of the
coin. When you are born again and have a circumcised heart and
the Spirit living in you, the Spirit will bring forth fruit. The
sign that someone has a new heart is the fruit of obedience and
the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, and rest. Fruit is
not something that you have to try to work up but is something
that the new life in you will produce. The fruit doesn’t save
you, but it shows that you are saved and that you are a new
creation in Christ.
The only time we have to worry is if there
is no fruit in our lives. Then we have to question whether we
are saved in the first place because lack of fruit might be a
sign that our hearts are uncircumcised and made of stone. We are
stiff necked if we don’t have willing, submissive obedience to
Jesus as our Lord. But even when we do have fruit, it is the
Holy Spirit himself who produces it in us, so it cannot give us
merit. So fruit does not in any way earn our salvation, or even
favour with God. Even the smile that God has for us when we come
to him in prayer is because of what he has done for us in Jesus.
It is a promise that can never be broken
without God destroying himself. We have the same covenant that
God made with Abraham. God cannot break it without destroying
himself because he has promised and he will never break his
word. There is nothing to fear. The law has no power over us
because Jesus has satisfied its every requirement. Is not this
the loveliest thing we could ever think about, that we are
forgiven and that it is all by grace? May we never forget it.
May we never slip into trying to earn our way with God, but may
we bring forth the fruit of a new life, a new creation which the
Spirit has made in us, through Jesus Christ.
How were Old Testament People Saved?
....( take 3 )
By Matt Slick
The OT saints were saved the same way the New Testament saints
were/are saved, by faith.
For what does the Scripture say? "And
Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as
righteousness." 4Now to the one who works, his wage is not
reckoned as a favour, but as what is due. 5But to the one who
does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly,
his faith is reckoned as righteousness, 6just as David also
speaks of the blessing upon the man to whom God reckons
righteousness apart from works: 7"Blessed are those whose
lawless deeds have been forgiven, and whose sins have been
covered. 8"Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take
into account" (Rom. 4:3-8).
As you can see, the Bible tells us that
Abraham was justified by faith (see Rom. 5:1 and Eph. 2:8-9).
That is, his faith is reckoned as righteousness, v. 4 above.
They were saved by faith in the Messiah in whom they were
trusting. Only, for them it was a trust in the future Messiah.
They knew He was coming as had been prophesied.
Also, the Holy Spirit was there in the OT
times the same as the NT times. Consider Psalm 51:11, "Do not
cast me away from Thy presence, And do not take Thy Holy Spirit
from me."
God did not change how He saved people in
the New Testament. It has always been by faith. In the case of
the OT people, they looked ahead in time to the Messiah. We look
back to Him and see the cross.
share this page |