Salvation before Jesus’ Death and Resurrection

It is sometimes taught that before Jesus’ death and resurrection, people could not be saved by grace through faith. Rather, they had to keep God’s law in order to be saved. However, this is not true.

In reality, no one can be saved by keeping God’s law (Rom. 3:20; Gal. 3:11). This includes people who lived before Jesus died on the cross. After all, pre-Christian believers were also sinful people, and they could not keep God’s law perfectly. So then, if pre-Christian believers needed to keep God’s law for salvation, then none of them were saved!

In Romans chapter 4, the Apostle Paul used two pre-Christian believers as case studies to demonstrate that people were saved by grace through faith, and not by doing good works: Abraham (vv. 1–5) and David (vv. 6–9). This implies that both Abraham and David were saved by grace through faith—even though they lived and died a long time before Jesus’ death and resurrection!

Throughout history, there has been only one way of salvation. Pre-Christian believers were saved in the same manner that we are saved today: by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone.