How were people in the Old Testament saved?
Question 7083
The question sounds simple, but it touches on something of real theological importance. Did the rules change somewhere between Genesis and Acts? Were Old Testament believers saved by keeping the law, by performing sacrifices, or by some arrangement that no longer applies? The way this is answered has profound implications not just for understanding the Old Testament but for understanding the nature of salvation itself.
Abraham Is the Test Case
If we want to understand how Old Testament believers were saved, Paul directs us in Romans 4 to look at Abraham, and the reason is straightforward: Abraham predates the Mosaic law by four centuries. Any argument that Old Testament salvation was achieved through law-keeping collapses immediately on Abraham.
Genesis 15:6 provides the answer in a single sentence: “And he believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Paul quotes this in both Romans 4 and Galatians 3 precisely because it establishes that righteousness before God came through faith, not through circumcision or the keeping of commandments. The circumcision came later, as a sign of the righteousness Abraham had already received through faith (Romans 4:11). The order matters enormously: faith came before the sign, not the other way around.
Paul’s argument in Romans 4 is that Abraham is therefore the father of all who believe, whether circumcised or not, because the principle by which he was justified is the same principle by which anyone is justified: faith in God’s promise. The mechanism of salvation has not changed across the ages.
What the Law Was Actually For
If the law was not the means of salvation, what was it doing? Paul answers in Galatians 3:24: the law was a guardian (the Greek word is paidagogos, a household servant tasked with keeping children in line) to lead Israel to Christ. Its function was diagnostic: “through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20). The sacrificial system within the Mosaic law was not achieving atonement in its own right; it was pointing forward. Hebrews 10:4 is explicit that “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” The entire sacrificial apparatus was anticipatory, foreshadowing the one sacrifice that would accomplish what animal sacrifices could only symbolise.
An Israelite who brought a sin offering to the tabernacle was not earning forgiveness by the act itself. They were exercising faith in the God who had promised to deal with sin, in the form He had prescribed, looking forward to an ultimate provision they did not yet see clearly. This is why the writer to the Hebrews describes the faith of the patriarchs in terms of “greeting” the promises from a distance (Hebrews 11:13), dying without receiving what was promised but trusting God completely.
The Witness of Hebrews 11
Hebrews 11 makes the continuity unmistakable. Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, David: the entire chapter is a demonstration that throughout the Old Testament, those who were approved by God were approved on the basis of faith. “By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice” (Hebrews 11:4). Not by works; not by religious performance. By faith.
What these individuals believed was not identical in its specific content to what a believer understands today. They did not have the completed New Testament. They did not know the name of Jesus or the details of the incarnation, the crucifixion, or the resurrection. But they trusted the God who had made promises, and those promises all converged on the one who would fulfil them. Their faith looked forward to what believers today look back on.
Different Administration, Same Salvation
God has dealt with humanity through different administrative arrangements at different points in redemptive history: different responsibilities, different aspects of His purposes being revealed progressively. But through all of these varying arrangements, there has been one way of salvation: by grace, through faith, in God’s promised Redeemer.
The Old Testament saint had less revealed content to believe. The post-Pentecost believer has the full picture. But the instrument of salvation, faith, and the ground of salvation, God’s grace extended through the work of Christ, are the same across every age. God did not change His mind about how to save people between Malachi and Matthew. He brought the promises made across centuries to their fulfilment in His Son.
So, now what?
Understanding this matters for how we read the Old Testament and how we understand the cross. The cross was not a revision to a plan that wasn’t working; it was the fulfilment of what the entire sacrificial system was pointing toward. When we read the stories of Genesis, Exodus, and the Psalms, we are not reading about a different religion at an earlier stage of development. We are reading about the same family of faith, trusting the same Saviour, at an earlier point in the unfolding of His promise.
“For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.'” Romans 1:17