How Old Testament Saints Were Saved
Don Carson, president of TGC, provides a simple explanation of how people were saved in the Old Testament. God has always required that his people exercise faith, even when that faith lacked the clear connections to Jesus that we can see today. Old Testament believers were saved by grace through faith, by the grace of God whom they trusted according to His own promises. In that broad sense, there really is no difference between the way the Old Testament saints were saved and the way New Testament saints are saved. But nevertheless, the obedience of faith that was required under the Mosaic covenant, for example, demanded that people worship at the Tabernacle then later at the Temple. God commanded them to participate in the sacrifices of the Day of Atonement, in Passover, and so on. And very few of these people saw clearly how some of these sacrifices pointed forward to the ultimate sacrifice. Nevertheless, they took God at his Word. Just as in the original Passover, if the Israelites ...