How People Were Saved Before Jesus and the Apostle's

On Sunday morning in the student ministry we looked at Luke 10:38-42 on the one thing that is necessary to the Christian life - to sit at Jesus' feet and listen to Him. In response to this I challenged the students to begin a 100 day reading plan through the whole New Testament as a way to listen to Jesus. Last night I received a question from one of our students who had read the first 4 chapters of Matthew. She wrote, "What happened before there was Jesus and the Apostle's? How were people saved?" What an awesome question! I hope other student pastor's are being challenged with these types of questions as well.

Yesterday I began reading a book that I think helps us with this answer. It's called The Promise-Plan of God written by Walter Kaiser. The goal of the book is to show the unifying theme of the Bible. Kaiser defends the promise God gave in Genesis 3:15 and Genesis 12:1-3 as the overall unifying theme of Scripture. Both verses are divine promises of what God would ultimately accomplish through Jesus Christ and help us understand how people were saved before Jesus and the Apostle's.

The first promise in the Promise-Plan of God is Genesis 3:15. It is referred to by some (smart people) as the Proto-evangelium. Let me help you with that. Proto means first and evangelium means gospel or good news. Put them together and you have the first gospel message. Genesis 3:15 says, "And I (LORD God) will put enmity between you (serpent) and the woman (Eve), and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel." This is the first promise recorded in Scripture that the seed of the woman, one of her descendants, would one day destroy the serpent. We know from the New Testament that the seed (offspring) of the woman who would one day crush the serpent's head is Jesus Christ (Colossians 2:15) and the serpent He destroys in His death is Satan (Revelation 12:9).

The Lord God said that the one who would crush the serpent's head would come through Eve's offspring (One of her descendants). The motif of offspring is picked up again one chapter later. In Genesis 4:25 Eve gives birth to Seth. The rest of Genesis traces a single line of Seth's descendants, observing that it will eventually produce a king through whom all the nations of the earth will be blessed in accordance with God's promise in Genesis 3:15.

Genesis 12:1-3 shows us how the promise God made in Genesis 3:15, that Jesus Christ would crush Satan's head, would affect all of humanity. Through a descendant of Eve and Seth God appears to a man named Abram and tells him, "Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father's house, to the land which I will show you; and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed." Abram is a descendant through whom God's promise in Genesis 3:15 will be fulfilled.

Genesis 12:4 reveals Abram's response to God's promise. "So Abram went forth as the Lord had spoken to him." Abram responded to God's promise in obedience. The ESV study Bible says it this way, "God's invitation to Abram challenges him to abandon the normal sources of personal identity and security: his family and country. To obey, Abram must trust God implicitly; all human support is largely removed."

God had promised to bless Abram and all the families of the earth through him, but as we keep reading in Genesis 15 many years have past and Abram begins to question the reality of God's promise. In verse 2 Abram asks God, "O LORD God, what will you give me, since I am childless?" God responds in verses 4-5 that He will keep His promise to Abram, "One who will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir.' And he took him outside and said, 'Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.' And He said to him, "So shall your descendants be." God would keep His promise to Abram because as Titus 1:2 says, "God cannot lie."

Abram's response to God in Genesis 15:6 is one of the most important verses in the whole Bible. Genesis 15:6 says, "Then he believed in the LORD; and He reckoned it to Him as righteousness." The question we are trying to answer is how people were saved before Jesus and the Apostle's - Genesis 15:6 shows us how.

Abram trusted in the truthfulness of God. He believed God keeps his promises although at this time Abram had seen none of them come to pass. Abram looked away from himself to the promises of God for his salvation. Romans 4:13 says, "For the promise to Abraham (God changes his name later to Abraham)...that he would be heir of the world...was through the righteousness of faith." Romans 4:18-22 says, "In hope against hope he believed, so that he might become a father of many nations according to that which had been spoken, 'So shall your descendants be.' Without becoming weak in faith he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead since he was bout a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah's womb; yet, with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able to perform. Therefore it was also credited to him as righteousness."

Abram trusted God to keep His promise in spite of the fact he and his wife were way past childbearing age. Abraham looked away from himself and anything he could do for his salvation and trusted God for it. It was because of his faith that God credited righteousness to him. John Piper explains it this way, "The point of Genesis 15:6, as taken up by Romans 4, is that Abraham was regarded as righteous... when he continued to place his trust in God's promise of a seed...God looks at faith and for the sake of this faith credits righteousness to the believer...Faith is the abandonment of all claims to be righteous, and, instead, is trust in him who counts the ungodly to be righteous.” Righteousness means all that God requires of a person to enter into relationship with Him. What God requires for salvation He provides through the promise.

Let's try and draw this to a close. At this point I'm quite confident the student will never ask me another question! The Bible has one author, namely God the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21) who "breathed (2 Timothy 3:16)" God's Word through human men. Because God is a God of truth (John 14:6), His Word is truth (John 17:17). Therefore, there is no difference between how an Old Testament believer is saved and a New Testament person is saved. God's promise, as originally given in Genesis 12:3, was not to be limited only to Abraham's people, but God told Abraham all the families of the earth would be blessed through him (Through one of his descendants).

Galatians 3:16 makes it clear that the seed God promised in Genesis 3:15 who would crush Satan's head and the One promised to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3 that through whom all the nations will be blessed is Jesus Christ. Galatians 3:16, "Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, 'And to seeds,' as referring to many, but rather to one, 'And to your seed,' that is, Christ." Christ is the promised descendant of Eve and Abraham who accomplished the divine work of salvation when He died on the cross to crush the serpent's head and satisfy God's wrath against the sins of all who believe in Him. His resurrection on the third day proves that God accepted His sacrifice and we can trust in Him for salvation.

To put it as plainly as I can people were saved before Jesus and the Apostle's by trusting God's promise concerning Jesus and those of us who live after Jesus and the Apostle's are saved by trusting God's promise concerning Jesus. Romans 3:25-26 says, "(Christ Jesus) whom God displayed publicly (on the cross) as a propitiation (Wrath absorbing sacrifice) in His blood (Blood a reference to his death) through faith (faith is the means by which a person receives His work). This (Christ's death on the cross) was to demonstrate His righteousness (What God requires for a relationship with Him), because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed (By those who lived before Jesus and the Apostle's who trusted God's promise); for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time (now all saved people look to the cross for salvation), so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." Faith in Jesus is how people were saved before Jesus and the Apostle's and faith in Jesus is how people are saved since the time of Jesus and the Apostle's. "There is salvation in no one else (Acts 4:12)."

It is important to note in closing that the faith that saves is not a dead faith but a faith that works. James 2:17 says, "Even so faith, if it has no works is dead, being by itself." The faith that truly saves is a faith that leads to obedience to God's Word. Romans 1:5 calls it, "The obedience that comes from faith." Obedience to God is the natural response of the human heart who sees God's promises as trustworthy and rests in Christ for salvation. The faith that saves according to Galatians 5:6 is, "A faith that works through love." True faith in God's promises which issues forth in true faith in Christ leads to a life of love for God and others.

Hope this helps,
Blake