What was the Old Testament way of salvation?

The only way of salvation is most plainly set before us in various parts of the Old Testament Scriptures. Let us look at some of them. We are told that Abel obtained witness that he was righteous, by coming before God with the sacrifice of a lamb; while Cain, with all his efforts to bring the fruit of his own toil, was rejected. Noah and his family were saved by being inside the ark which God had commanded to be built, while every person outside the ark perished. Lot's mocking sons-in-law died under God's fiery judgment of Sodom, because they remained in the place which God had said he would destroy, and refused to escape for their lives. The Israelites in Egypt were saved from the vengeance of the destroying angel, because they took shelter in God's only remedy — the blood of the lamb. The man-slayer escaped the forfeit of his life by fleeing to the city of refuge. The loathsome leper was at once cleansed by being sprinkled with blood. Rahab was saved in the destruction of Jericho, because the scarlet line was in her window. The serpent of brass set upon a pole was another testimony to the simple way of eternal salvation, which God provided for sinful men.

Seeing God’s different dispensational dealings with mankind helps us appreciate that each of us was, by nature, hopeless and without hope, and hence undeserving of anything other than God’s judgment, and that this was and is the case for every human being in each way in which God has regulated His dealings with mankind. It also magnifies God’s patience with mankind, and proves that the way of salvation has always been by grace on God’s part and through faith on the part of individuals. Godly men in Old Testament times knew this (see e.g. Ps. 51:16–17). God passed over their sins because, when the fulness of the time was come (as explained in earlier articles), the Lord Jesus would come and His work at the cross would atone for those sins (Rom. 3:25). Their faith may have been different from ours in that they could only trust in what God had revealed about Himself prior to or in their dispensation. However, in every dispensation the just live by faith (Hab. 2:4; Rom. 1:17; 3:26–28; Gal. 3:11).

To you I need hardly say, that all doubtless who have been saved in all ages have been saved by grace through faith; but there is a wide difference between the testimony and dealings of God before the crucifixion of Christ, and since that event. Until that event took place God's dealings with mankind were one continued trial, so to speak, of whether there be in man anything whereby he can, under any circumstances, retrieve himself. Not that such trial was needed for God. He knew from the beginning, yea, from before the foundation of the world, what man's course would be, and how he would demonstrate the utter hopelessness of his condition, if left to his own will, with every possible inducement to act aright. But this was to be demonstrated to man himself, and hence the trial. I would not at present dwell upon man's trial in Eden. He was then tried as to whether he could maintain his innocence, by withstanding temptation from without. There was then no tendency to evil within. But when man had fallen — when the great deceiver had succeeded in poisoning all the springs of moral action in man's nature — God neither summarily cut off the offender, nor at once sent the Saviour. Wrapping up a promise of a Saviour in the curse pronounced upon the enemy, he left man, now driven out of Eden, to multiply and fill the earth, and make manifest, without the restraint of an express law such as Adam had been under, what the bent of his will was, the promise all the while affording a resting-place for faith, wherever there was a heart, (such as Abel's, Enoch's, or Noah's,) opened to receive it.

We read in the Gospel by John that "the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ;" and while it is blessed to contemplate the glorious testimony of divine grace coming in, after man had proved himself so helpless and guilty under the law, yet we must not suppose that the gospel was not preached before Christ came. It was preached to Adam, after he had fallen beneath the power of sin and Satan, in the promise that the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. It was also preached to Abraham four hundred years before the law was given, when God said, "In thee shall all nations be blessed." (Gal. 3:8.) It is important to see this, and to consider how God's grace abounded to man, as a sinner, long before the law came. In fact, the Scriptures everywhere teach, that it has only been in the way of grace that God has ever established man in blessing since the fall. When, therefore, the apostle Paul, in the New Testament, treats of the subject of justification, he usually takes us back to Abraham, as having lived long before the law was given, to show that a sinner is reckoned righteous before God only in the way of faith. This is very important, as it clears from the mind all questions of law-fulfilling as a ground of justification, it leads the soul away from the common thought of creature-fitness to come up to God's standard, and prepares the anxious enquirer to receive the peace-speaking fact, that God has come down to man while a sinner, with present forgiveness and eternal redemption, in the death of His beloved Son.

How plain it is! How easy it is! Abram was not a righteous man himself. Abram was a sinner like you and me. But just because he believed God's word, God counted him righteous. As if God said, "Abram, you are a sinner, but because you believe Me, I count you a righteous man." God had not told him to act as a righteous man, nor to do something, or keep the commandments and the law, or to be a good man. He just simply and plainly said that Abram BELIEVED GOD, AND GOD COUNTED IT TO HIM FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS. (see Rom. 4:3) God counts sinners righteous when they believe God's word, not because of works they may do.

This leads the Apostle to his next great subject. Just as the Galatians had heard a message and believed it, had been justified by faith, and received the Spirit by faith, so Abraham had heard a message from God. He had believed it, and God reckoned it to Abraham as righteousness. You remember the story — one of the most beautiful in the Bible, to make plain how a sinner is justified. It was a clear, starry night. The Lord brought Abraham forth out of his tent, and He said to him, "Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them," and He said unto him, "So shall thy seed be." Abraham believed the Lord's word, though he was then an old man, and his wife an old woman. In the eyes of man this promise was impossible; but Abraham believed God, and God counted, or reckoned, this faith to him as righteousness. So the record goes in Genesis 15:5 and 6. Nothing could be more clear and more simple. It was by simple faith in a simple statement. Abraham did not look at the impossibility of the promise, but he looked at the almighty power of the One who made it. And he said, "Yes, Lord, I believe you." And God said, "Abraham, I count you to be a righteous man." Even so does God count me a righteous man, wretched sinner though I am by nature. God says, "Christ died for the ungodly." I say, "That is myself; I believe it: I thank Thee." And God says, "I count you a righteous man." Reader, does God account you righteous? He waits to do so: He waits till you, by simple faith in His Word, trust only to the death of Christ for your sins. Then He says, I count, I reckon, you are righteous. Remember that this happened 430 years before the law was given. Abraham had never heard of the law when God reckoned him righteous. It was all by grace. It was all by faith. "Justified freely by His grace." Rom. 3:24. "Who was raised again for our justification." Rom. 4:25. "Justified by faith." Rom. 5:1. "Justified by His blood." Rom. 5:9.

What, then, is the true inference from the history of Abraham? If justified by works, certainly the credit would be his; but this is never found before God. And with this the scripture accords; for it speaks not of his goodness before his call or acceptance, but expressly of his faith in God's word as that which he exercised, and which was accounted as righteousness. (Gen. 15:6.) No Jew who bowed to the divine authority of the Pentateuch could dispute this. Was it, then, consistent or at issue with the gospel? If a man work, the reward is not viewed as a gratuity, but as the wages due to him; but if, instead of working, he believes on Him that justifies the ungodly, what a magnificent proof and conclusion that his faith is reckoned for righteousness! This is free grace, and the very reverse of a debt according to law; and such was the principle of God's dealings with their great forefather according to the inspired account of Moses.

This verb "reckon" carries us back to the fourth chapter of this Epistle, where we read of God reckoning Abraham righteous because of his faith. The patriarch believed God in a matter which seemed in itself most improbable. For in the ordinary course of nature it seemed an incredible thing that blessing should flow to the earth through the unborn seed of an old man and woman. But Abraham believed the LORD and His promises, and this was counted to him for righteousness (Gen. 15:6). God looking down from heaven regarded Abraham as a righteous man. His faith was in connection with the seed which was to come, that is, Christ; and indeed this confidence was true also of all the Old Testament saints. There might be and was failure, as there were faults; but wheresoever there was faith it) the Coming One it was reckoned for righteousness.

There are two verses in Romans 3:25-26, which set forth in a very striking way how blessing came to Old Testament believers, and how it comes to New Testament believers. “God has set forth [Christ] to be a propitiation [that is, a mercy seat] through faith in His blood for the remission of sins that are past [that is of sins committed before Christ died, in short, the sins of Old Testament believers], through the forbearance of God.” It was much like discounting a bill, saying the assurance that it would be fully met on maturity. God, who knew that full atonement for sin would be made, forgave the sins of Old Testament believers on the ground of their faith in God, who would provide the Lamb sufficient for the Sacrifice.

Thus far I have spoken of the righteous title. We will now consider God's exercise of it. In the scripture before us we learn something about it. In times before the cross, we are told that God used it anticipatively. In forbearance He passed over sins in anticipation of the atoning sacrifice He had foreordained. He gratuitously pretermitted sins. The Old Testament believers were released from the necessity of having to stand before the judgment-bar of God to be judged for their sins. It was grace in God, but grace in forbearance in anticipation of a sacrifice that would be a complete vindication of the grace.

It was not from any merit in themselves that the Old Testament believers were released from the eternal due of their sins. They were children of wrath as truly as ourselves, but they will not come into judgment any more than we, because it was a righteous thing for God to act in grace in view of a substitutionary propitiation that would be an unanswerable defence of it.