Have you ever wondered how saints in the Old Testament were saved? Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). How could believers in the Old Testament go to heaven if Jesus hadn’t come yet?
Adriel Sanchez and Harrison Perkins discuss this question and more in a conversation about covenant theology on Sola Media’s YouTube channel: “What Is the Difference Between Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism?”
Adriel Sanchez:
I remember as a newer Christian thinking about those Old Testament sacrifices and the laws that God gave through Moses and wondering: Okay, is it that people in the Old Testament were saved by keeping these laws and performing these rites, these sacrifices—and then all of a sudden, in the New Testament, things change radically. Totally different substance.
So now God is gracious in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, it was really heavy, legalistic—that sort of thing. But I appreciate the way you’re presenting this because it does highlight the practical nature of covenant theology we’re thinking through: How has God administered his salvation, his grace, throughout redemptive history?
Harrison Perkins:
It’s really not niche.
Adriel Sanchez:
Yeah. This is very important and fundamental, I would say, to a proper understanding of the scripture.
Harrison Perkins:
Yeah. I think sometimes the assumption, in a conservative, biblical, evangelical sort of context [is that] most people are going to say, “yeah, God always gave grace to his people,” and that bit is accepted. But, whether it’s been thought out or not, the assumption there may be that God gave grace by giving some mechanism to obtain salvation.
In the Old Testament, if the mechanisms are different, the assumption is that Old Testament believers were saved by these sacrifices.
Adriel Sanchez:
Which Hebrews says is impossible (Heb. 10:4).
Harrison Perkins:
Right, right. And then, you know, another spin on that might be, well, it’s not that those things saved them, but that Old Testament believers didn’t go to heaven when they died. You know, they didn’t truly enter the presence of God. Most evangelicals would hesitate to say purgatory, but kind of a holding tank of sorts—a place that wasn’t hell, but it wasn’t heaven. And they weren’t truly let into the heavenly city. And I don’t think that’s helpful either.
And the reason I noted it is that it’s actually becoming popular again. And I don’t think we need to burn the bridges down as we talk about that topic, but I’m a little bit concerned about it too… because I think that if we recognize that covenant theology teaches us that God gave us means of grace that were different in different eras of redemptive history, well, all those means of grace were still about word, sacrament and prayer. And the sacraments changed—that’s really the thing that shifted throughout redemptive history.
All of these means of grace were given to create, confirm, and cultivate faith in Jesus Christ. Now, Old Testament believers trusted in Christ who would come. We trust in Christ who has come. It’s a difference of perspective of our faith, but not a difference of kind or quality…
Paul basically says the same thing in 1 Corinthians 10, where he’s talking about Israel in the wilderness and that the Rock that followed them was Christ—the mediatorial designation of the Son, the Christ, the Messiah. These types, shadows, and ordinances in the Old Testament were about Jesus Christ and were ways that he was present with the people of God in that time.
It’s always been salvation by faith in Jesus Christ.
