If People Could Be Saved Before Jesus, Why Was It Necessary for Him to Come?

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If People Could Be Saved Before Jesus, Why Was It Necessary for Him to Come?

March 24, 2025

Questions about why it was necessary for Jesus to come if people could already be justified by faith apart from works, and what the point of the Old Covenant was if God was going to make the New Covenant.

* Since Old Testament Jews and Gentiles could be justified by faith apart from works, it seems there was already a path for salvation in place, so why was it necessary for Jesus to come?

* What was the point of the Old Covenant if God was going to make the New Covenant?

Transcript

I'm Amy Hall, I'm here with Greg Koukl, and this is Stand to Reason's hashtag, S-T-R-A-S-C-Podcast. Greg. Over to you, Greg.

No, actually, back to me. Okay, the first question today comes from Giles. Prior to the incarnation, we know Old Testament Jews and Gentiles could be, and were, were justified by faith apart from works.

If so, why, other than it was God's plan, was it necessary for Jesus to come? It seems there was already a plan for salvation in place. Oh, this is a fair question, but it misunderstands something really important. Forgiveness is possible in the economy of God.

In other words, in terms of the, let's just say banking for the sake of clarity here, or at least in analogy, the debt needed to be paid. We incur a debt against God when we sin, because we owe him obedience. There's a parallel in the legal system of this country that we are obliged, or we owe the community, reflected by the government, obedience to the laws.

And when we break the law, we incur a debt, and this is why, at least in the past, and maybe this is a little archaic, people would say, yeah, he went to prison and paid his debt to society. It was a common way of talking about it that captured this notion that we are obliged, or we owe obedience, and then when we disobey, that incurs a debt that we need to pay off. The same thing is true in God's economy.

We owe him perfect obedience, and when we violate his law, we incur a debt, and we need to pay that debt back. There's all kinds of language in the New Testament that reflects this, and in fact, forgive us our debts, as we forgive others. Notice that one iteration of the Lord's Prayer uses that language, rather than the language of, forgive us our sins, but their synonyms in the way they function, our sin incurs a debt, all right? So in the Old Testament, people were saved by faith, but it was only in virtue of the fact that there would be a payment in the future that would cover the debt of their sin.

If there was nobody in God's economy that was capable or able to pay the debt for human sin, then every human being would have to pay that debt themselves. And that's what eternal punishment entails. It's that payment of that debt.

We can be forgiven, released, pardoned, because there is a debt payment that's been made by Jesus. Now he did that at a point in time to the Old Testament believers who were justified by faith, and Giles is correct there, salvation has always been based on faith. That's been the consistent theme, and the archetype is Abraham, and Paul, of course, trades on Abraham to make this point, that it's not the law which comes, what, 500, 1000 years after Abraham, 500 years after Abraham, roughly.

But the faith that is established before, that is the salvific element. But it's only possible, say, faith is the hand that takes or receives the gift, but the gift is not available if the debt hasn't been paid. What is the gift? It's the payment of the debt.

And if the debt hasn't been paid or will not be paid, as it turns out, for Old Testament saints in the future, then there's nothing to put one's faith in, so to speak. Now, of course, the faith, even back then, was in God's provision, his gracious provision of forgiveness. The Old Testament, they didn't have details of the of the metrics at all.

Nevertheless, there was a plan in place, and I think the simplest way to think of this is like a credit card. So in the Old Testament, salvation was purchased through faith like a credit card purchases an item. There's no payment made them.

It's it's an earnest. It's a it's a it's a pledge against the future payment. And so you get the product in the present, but the future in the future that must be paid.

Okay. And this was the way that worked out, I guess, for Old Testament saints that they were writing with their faith on the salvation that was made available as a credit in virtue of the payment that was to come, that payment through Christ. So it wasn't like, well, it's faith.

I guess we have to be careful how we say this. I was pausing for a moment to think about seeing it right. We talk about faith saves.

But of course, it isn't faith. All faith doesn't do the saving. Right.

Jesus does the saving. Faith is what enables us to benefit from the thing that Jesus did that rescues us. All right.

Faith without Jesus isn't going to do any good at all. And this is why bothers me. I've talked about it before when you have some Christian who's lost in the woods for a week or something, and they finally find that person.

And then the reports are his faith saved him. Well, it's faith didn't do anything for him. God did it.

It wasn't it wasn't the internal attitude. It was the external force that was rescuing him. And in the same way, our faith doesn't save us in the ultimate sense.

It's Jesus who saves us. And our faith is what what appropriates that salvific element that pays the debt because our debts because Jesus was the one who provided the means for the payment. So I think there's a passage.

And I always forget where this is at about to be moments of my being relations. But it says he passed over the is that what you got? Yeah, I've got it right here. I'll pass it on to you.

I had a suspicion. Maybe you're looking it up. Yes.

So just to put a verse to what you're saying here, this is in Romans three, where it talks about Jesus publicly being displayed as a propitiation in his blood. By the way, propitiation is a satisfaction. It's satisfaction.

In this case, the focus on God's wrath being satisfied. And how is it satisfied? The payment, the payment satisfies the wrath. And then it says, this was to demonstrate his righteousness because in the forbearance of God, he passed over the sins previously committed for the demonstration, I say, of his righteousness at the present time so that he would be just and the justifier of the one who is faith in Jesus.

So this is his way of upholding justice was having Jesus actually make the payment that everyone had been waiting for all this time. Right. And the thing about the Old Testament, the other section, I think that's really helpful here is Hebrew.

So Hebrew seven through 10. I think those are the main ones that talk about this particular issue. They talk about Jesus being the sacrifice that all of these other things were pointing to the blood of bulls and goats could never take away since.

So that wasn't the ultimate system. What what Hebrew says is that it was the shadow of the real thing, which was Jesus coming. So the whole mosaic law was a shadow showing them who would come and how things would be resolved.

But what they were doing didn't actually pay for their sins. The blood of bulls and goats does not pay for that. They needed Jesus to pay for that.

And the blooded bulls and goats was the means by which God provided for the Jews under the dispensation of the law to express their faith that God would forgive. So there are different objects of one's faith as we go through time. The and I talk about this in an article that one way or many ways I've actually written this a couple of times in different iterations with different is one way the only way whatever.

And the whole question is why is Jesus necessary? And the point I make there is that faith is always what saves. I mean, it's always the expression that it's what the believer does to receive the benefit of justification. But it isn't what causes the benefit.

What secures the benefit is always the work of Christ. But before the work of Christ was available in any detail like it is now post crucifixion post post resurrection. There was all they knew is that God was was capable.

God was was capable. He could be trusted to forgive. And so Abraham believed a certain set of promises and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.

It was counted to his account, so to speak back to banking terms again. And as at different times there were different areas of focus for the faith. But once Jesus came, he is the area of focus.

This is why by the way people say, well, some will say, and then some notable people. Well, people were saved in the Old Testament without believing in Jesus because there was no Jesus to believe in. So nowadays people can be saved without believing Jesus.

The New Testament leaves absolutely no room for that. Now the the grounds of salvation is the specific object of faith. And any rejection of Jesus now is a rejection of those grounds of salvation.

And like I said, the New Testament is very, very clear on this. There is no room for any other inclusivism or pluralism or anything like that. It's just not justified by the text.

So that was a question about why it was necessary for Jesus to come in the New Covenant. So now we're going to get the opposite question. This one comes from Katie.

What was the point of the old covenant if God made a new covenant? Was it to show us the cost of our sins so that we would see Christ work on the cross accurately? Yeah, well, you've actually hinted at this a moment ago that the Mosaic system was a kind of preparation. And as you mentioned from Hebrews 10, the blood of bulls and goats, it's impossible for those to take away sin. And that sacrifice, the writer Hebrews points out, was a continual reminder of how sin, how terrible sin was and the price of that sin, the sacrifice for sin needs to be paid.

So I didn't say that very well, but there is a picture there, okay, but it was not efficacious. It wasn't in itself efficacious. If it was, then the writer Hebrews argues that they wouldn't have to keep sacrificing.

You give one sacrifice for all time and it's done. But that didn't happen under the with the blood of bulls and goats because animals can't pay for human sin. With Jesus, we have one sacrifice for all time, which is exactly what the author of Hebrews writes in Hebrews, chapter 10.

So these two are related in a certain sense, we laid a foundation for answering the second when we answered the first. It was a way of carrying them over to teach them some important things, to prefigure a sacrifice to come. And what's pretty incredible to me is the exclamation point on the book of Hebrews, especially on this particular point that we see, I think, at a crescendo in chapter 10 of Hebrews, 7, 8, 9 building up to it.

And there it is all laid out. A body thou has prepared for me, behold, I have come to do thy will, O God, you know, Jesus is not long after that book was written, the temple was destroyed by the providence of God. I mean, there are a lot of political details involved, but by the providence of God, it became impossible for the Jews to continue in the Old Testament sacrificial system, which the writer of Hebrews makes very clear is no longer efficacious.

If we go on sitting willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, and I take that to me, this is Hebrews 10, and I take that to mean willful sitting that is continuing in the sacrificial system that he has just acknowledged is no longer efficacious, effected to forgive. It doesn't do anything anymore. Jesus is come.

That's old hat. If we go on in that system, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sin, only a certain next terrifying expectation of judgment. Those people read that verse, what 24, 25, or Hebrews 10, and they get all confused.

They think that's talking about the sacrifice of Jesus. And therefore, if you sin after you come to Christian and lose your salvation, this is nonsense. It makes no sense in the context.

If you reject Jesus and you go back to the old system, there's no sacrifice that's going to pay for your sins. That's the point that he's talking about. The sacrifice in view there is the sacrifice they've been talking about that the author has been talking about all along.

And so it is meant to emphasize the security that's in Jesus and the lack of security anymore in a system of bloodables and goats that ultimately could never take away sin anyway. It prefigured the one who would come Jesus and that old system is defunct. You want to keep pursuing that? It's not going to be any good.

It's not a legitimate object of faith for salvation anymore. It's what the writer Hebrews is saying. And I want to go back to something you said in the last question.

And that is that the old covenant, the covenant made with Abraham was by faith. So when Katie is talking about what is the point of the old covenant and God made the new covenant, was it to show us the cost of our sin, you have to ask what I think she's thinking of is the Mosaic Covenant. Now the Mosaic Covenant was a covenant of law that had other purposes other than the covenant God made with Abraham.

Although it was part of it and it was part of what they were required to do. But if you want to understand how that fits in with the covenant of grace that God made with Abraham, all you have to do is go to Galatians 3. And I've tempted just to read straight through the whole thing because it answers this question so perfectly. But I just want to read a little little parts of it.

So he's talking about how God made this covenant with Abraham by grace and he says, now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say and to seeds as referring to many, but rather to one and to your seed, that is Christ. So he's saying he's making this covenant of faith with Abraham.

And it was going to result in Christ receiving these promises. So he says, what I am saying is this, the law, which came 430 years later, does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God so as to nullify the promise. For if the inheritance is based on law, it is no longer based on a promise, but God has granted it to Abraham by means of a promise.

So the old covenant promise to Abraham was not affected by the law. The law was added 430 years later, and it did not affect this promise that God made by grace with Abraham. So then Paul says, why the law then? Paul's great in that he always anticipates exactly how people will object.

So if you have an objection, chances are Paul has addressed it already. He says it was added because of transgressions, having been obtained, having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator until the seed would come until the promise had been made. So then he says, if the law contrary to the promises of God, may it never be.

And he says, there was never a law given that could make us righteous. So the law had other purposes. And it says, but the scripture has shut up everyone under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe, who believe.

And then he talks about how we were kept in custody under the law until the faith in Christ was revealed. But now that faith has come, we're no longer under this tutor. And we've become one of Abraham's descendants in Christ.

So there's old chai. I did read the whole thing word for word, but the point is, first of all, God's covenant of salvation was always by faith, as you mentioned in the first question. The law was added until Jesus came.

And there were various reasons we already discussed some of them. It shut up everyone under sin. It did help us to see our sin, as Katie mentioned.

It was a tutor to bring us to Christ by showing us our sin, by teaching us our need for a sacrifice, and by shaping our expectations for what would come. And so that we would recognize Jesus when he came. So all of this is explained in there.

And hopefully between the two of these questions, you have a better grasp of how the two parts of the Bible fit together, which is really just one long story. So this is why I'm going to recommend, I think, one of our most important training tools available through standard reason that is the Anansung product. We don't talk about it very much.

But it lays the foundation for all of these things and explains them clearly. And this is the Bible fast forward. So this is eight sessions that I taught, 50 minutes a session.

And we, it basically, if you think of the story of reality, God, man, Jesus cross resurrection, that's kind of like the big picture. This goes down a little deeper and fills in all the spaces, especially the space between man and Jesus. So you have God, that's Genesis one, man, Genesis two and three, the fall, and then you have Jesus in the gospels, which is the solution to the fall.

That's a huge lacuna, that's a huge hole between the fall of man and the Jesus coming on the cross to pay for that pay that debt. And what I do in the Bible fast forward is I look at the details that we're talking about now that fall in between man and Jesus and how all of this unfolds theologically and historically to help you understand how it all fits together. So that's available at str.org Bible fast forward.

And I mean, it's not expensive. Well, this is what so many people miss. They miss the big picture.

And this is why that's helpful. The story of reality is helpful. The Bible is one complete story.

It all fits together, which is in itself amazing, considering how much time it took to write it and by so many people, it's just another indication that this came from God. And if you want to read more about this particular thing, here, here are the chapters I recommend, I recommend Romans four talks a lot about Abraham's faith. So Romans four through eight discusses faith.

It discusses our justification by faith. And then it talks about then why do we not send it anticipates a problem. Yes.

Romans chapter six, it explains our relationship to the law and our new life with the spirit. So Romans four through eight Galatians three, which is what I just read and Hebrew seven through 10. And I think between those chapters, you get a good grasp of how the Old Testament relates to the New Testament and how all the covenants relate to each other.

And all of these chapters all underscore magnify the grace of God. And I am so thankful that very early in my Christian life, I had I received superb teaching on the grace of God. And also the notion that the grace of God is teaching us to deny on godliness.

You know, it's not licentiousness. And that's what Paul addresses in Romans six. And consequently, I have not had to wrestle with issues that many, many Christians wrestle with because they don't understand the grace of God.

They don't understand what Jesus has purchased for them and their security because of Christ. And there are all kinds of other problems for us to wrestle with. That's one you shouldn't have to wrestle with.

And that's why it's so important to get a solid foundation in our understanding of the grace of God. And those chapters will do that for you. Well, thank you so much, Giles and Katie.

Those were great questions. If you have a question, you can send it to us on X with the hashtag strask or go to our website at str.org. This is Amy Hall and Greg Coco for stand to reason.