How Were People Who Lived Before the Time of Christ Saved?

By Hank Hanegraaff

The whole of Scripture demonstrates that believers throughout history experience saving faith in exactly the same way.

To begin with, in the Old Testament Abraham placed his trust in God and it was accounted to him as righteousness. At seventy-five, he made the decision to leave Ur of the Chaldees to follow God in a life of obedience. For the next hundred years he faithfully walked with his Maker, and after a lifetime of obedience he died. In like fashion, New Testament Christians have been saved through union with Christ in baptism; are being saved through the sacramental life of the Church; and, like Abraham, will be saved by God’s grace at the final judgment.

Furthermore, the apostle James cites Rahab as one who was “justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way” (James 2:25 nkjv). In the manner of Rahab, Christians today are justified by God’s grace through faith and “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8–10 nkjv).

Finally, in Moses we realize a man who in life was transformed by the energies of God on Mount Sinai and in life after life was an eyewitness to the dazzling transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor. A man who is the earnest of all who with unveiled faces will behold the Lord as saved sons and daughters of God. The culmination of the Old Covenant is found in the New Covenant where Jesus the quintessential Moses, authorizes his disciples to do the unthinkable—to address God as Father—thus revealing their adoption as sons and daughters—a reflection of God’s eternal purposes from the creation of the first man onward.

Through adoption the saved throughout the generations enter into a mystery beyond all comprehension. They become as Saint Peter put it, “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).

The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, “In you all the nations shall be blessed.”

Galatians 3:8 NJKV

For further study, see Hank Hanegraaff, Truth Matters, Life Matters More: The Unexpected Beauty of an Authentic Christian Life (W Publishing Group, 2019).