閱讀中文版：在舊約時代的人如何得救？

Q: How were people saved in the Old Testament era? Abraham? Moses? David? And so on?

A: Let’s first look at the text:

And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. (Acts 4:12, ESV)

The “him” here refers to Jesus — people of any era are saved through Jesus. Whether Old Testament or New Testament, it is by “faith” in what Christ has done that people are counted as “righteous.” Paul mentions in Romans:

For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.” Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. (Rom 4:2–9, ESV)

Paul uses Abraham’s example to show that a sinner can be counted righteous through faith in God — and at that time, the Old Testament Law had not yet even been given. Paul’s quotation of David makes the same point: the Old Testament people were not counted righteous by keeping the Law, but were counted righteous by trusting in God’s grace. This “faith” is not merely a matter of cognitive assent, but trust — trusting and relying on God. The author of Hebrews says:

For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. (Heb 10:1–4, ESV)

This passage points out that the blood of animal sacrifices could never actually remove sin — only Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross was the perfect sacrifice the Old Testament sacrificial system foreshadowed, the one that could truly take away sin. Of course, people living in Old Testament times may not have known that the salvation their trust in God brought them would come through Jesus — the prophecies concerning the Messiah who would save the world were only progressively unveiled step by step in the later prophetic books.1 But because of the same faith, both Old and New Testament believers who trust in God receive grace through Jesus.

For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” (Rom 1:17, ESV)

Here’s another illustration. Peter owed a huge debt he couldn’t repay. His good friend Joshua signed a guarantee promising to pay it off for him in the future. The creditor accepted this arrangement, so Peter’s debt was forgiven — because the creditor knew Joshua would pay off Peter’s debt.

Peter represents an Old Testament believer who trusted in God; Joshua represents Jesus Christ (the Greek original of “Jesus” is actually the same as the Old Testament name Joshua). On the cross, Jesus didn’t atone only for the sins of people who came after him — he also atoned for the sins of those in the Old Testament who trusted in God before him.

If you have other questions about Scripture or faith, feel free to ask below.

Update (August 2026)

In recent years, reorganizing this line of thinking, one point in this article needs clarifying: the Peter/Joshua analogy above was an illustration the writer heard some years ago, used to help explain “why Old Testament believers could be counted righteous by faith.” But this is only an illustrative picture, not a specific mechanism the writer firmly holds to, nor content explicitly stated in Scripture.

The writer’s current position is: God credited Moses, David, and others as righteous on the basis of faith — this is a fact Scripture clearly affirms (see Romans 4:2–9 above), and Hebrews 11 further places both Old and New Testament believers who trusted in God together on the same list of “witnesses of faith” (Heb 12:1), without treating the two as two different kinds of salvation. As for exactly how this faith concretely connects to Christ’s later work on the cross — by what mechanism a person who never knew Jesus’ name could, through faith in God, be counted righteous — Scripture does not give a complete explanation. Paul mentions in Romans 3 that God “in his divine forbearance… had passed over former sins” (Rom 3:25) — this tells us God did, in some way, connect Christ’s work to the sin of those before Christ, but without explaining step by step, the way it explains present-day salvation, exactly how that operates.

The writer’s view is that holding to the fact that “God accepted their faith” is what matters, while remaining agnostic about the specific mechanism by which this was accomplished — that is more honest than forcing together a mechanism one cannot fully verify oneself. The Peter/Joshua analogy above can remain as a helpful illustrative picture, but should not be read as the writer’s definite claim about the mechanism itself.

  1. Isa 9:6; 28:16; 43:11–12; 53:1–12; Jer 23:5–6; 31:31; Ezek 34:23–24, etc. ↩