SALVATION-OLD COVENANT

So the Gospel is also God’s justifying word about Himself, since under the old covenant, with its symbolic sacrificial system, it appeared as if God was ignoring the sins of those who simply trusted in Him for forgiveness (Rom. 3:25). Now, in the shadow of the cross, it is possible to see that Jesus is the reason that God could justify the ungodly, like Abraham and David (cf. Rom. 4:1-8), without compromising His own integrity. When God forgave His people in the past, He do so looking forward to the cross of Christ as the basis of and revelation of that divine righteousness which makes forgiveness possible. The death of Jesus demonstrated with finality God’s “justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26).

Scott Hafemann

This We Believe, John Armstrong and John Woodbridge, ed. Zondervan, 2000, p. 93.

Do you mean by that, asks someone, that the saints in the Old Testament were not forgiven? Of course I do not. They were obviously forgiven and they thanked God for the forgiveness. You cannot say for a moment that people like David and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob were not forgiven. Of course they were forgiven. But they were not forgiven because of those sacrifices that were then offered. They were forgiven because they looked to Christ. They did not see this clearly, but they believed the teaching, and they made these offerings by faith. They believed God’s Word that He was one day going to provide a sacrifice, and in faith they held to that. It was their faith in Christ that saved them, exactly as it is faith in Christ that saves now. That is the argument.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones

The Cross, The Vindication of God, 1976, p. 12, by Permission of Elizabeth Catherwood.

God gave the law originally as a railroad track to guide Israel's obedience. The engine that was supposed to pull a person along the track was God's grace, the power of the Spirit. And the coupling between our car and the engine was faith, so that in the Old Testament, like the New Testament, salvation was by grace, through faith, along the track of obedience (or sanctification).

John Piper
I Do Not Nullify the Grace of God, March 6, 1983. www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.

There is perfect unity in divine revelation, and the way of salvation revealed in the Old Testament was the same as salvation after Christ’s work on the cross. Salvation was never a reward for human works; it has always been a gift of grace for repentant sinners, made possible by the work of Christ… In the Old Testament salvation was not a payoff for those who observed the law; it was a gift to those who humbly and by faith sought redemption from their sin.

John MacArthur