Devotional 49: The Extent of Redemption: Christ Died for the Elect

The Confession Read

Although the work of redemption was not actually wrought by Christ till after his incarnation, yet the virtue, efficacy, and benefits thereof were communicated unto the elect, in all ages successively from the beginning of the world, in and by those promises, types, and sacrifices, wherein he was revealed, and signified to be the seed of the woman which should bruise the serpent's head; and the Lamb slain from the beginning of the world; being yesterday and today the same, and for ever.

— Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 8, Section 6

Introduction

There is a river that runs backward. Not in the geography of this world, but in the economy of grace. The blood of Christ was shed at a fixed moment in history, in the days of Pontius Pilate, under a Judean sky, on a wooden cross outside the city wall. And yet its saving power did not begin flowing forward from that moment alone. It flowed backward as well, reaching across the centuries that had already passed, cleansing the consciences of Abel and Enoch and Noah, justifying Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, sanctifying Moses and David and Isaiah, carrying every Old Testament saint into the presence of God on the merit of a sacrifice that lay yet in the future. This is the mystery that Section 6 of our Confession sets before us. It answers a question that every thoughtful reader of Scripture must eventually ask: How were the saints of the old covenant saved? If salvation is found in no one else but Christ, and if there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved, then what of those who lived before the name of Jesus was spoken in Bethlehem? What of those who offered the blood of bulls and goats, who circumcised their sons on the eighth day, who kept the Passover with unleavened bread, who trembled before the thunder of Sinai — were they saved by a different gospel? Did they belong to a different covenant of grace? Did the cross of Christ avail for them, or did they stand or fall by their own obedience to the law? The Socinians, whom we have met repeatedly in this chapter, answered that question by reducing the Old Testament religion to a system of moral instruction and divine rewards. The enthusiasts of the same era spoke of Old Testament saints as possessing only an earthly hope. Both errors spring from a failure to see that the work of Christ, though accomplished in time, is efficacious for all time: backward and forward, for Abraham as truly as for Paul. The Confession will have none of this fragmenting of the covenant of grace. With the measured precision that characterizes every line of these thirty-three chapters, it declares that the virtue, the efficacy, and the benefits of Christ's redemptive work were communicated to the elect in every age, from Adam to the last prophet who spoke before the silence fell, in and by the very means through which Christ was revealed: promises spoken in Eden and repeated to the patriarchs, types enacted in tabernacle and temple, sacrifices offered on smoking altars morning and evening without end. These were not alternative ways of salvation. They were channels through which the one salvation, purchased once for all upon the cross, flowed to those who lived before the purchase was made. We stand now on the far side of Calvary, looking backward through the lens of the finished work. And what we see is this: the cross of Christ, casting its saving shadow across the entire landscape of the old covenant, so that every true believer from Adam onward was saved by the same blood, the same righteousness, the same Mediator to whom we look. The unity of the people of God across the two testaments is grounded in the eternal efficacy of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

Scripture Foundation

The doctrine that the Confession here confesses is not a speculative construction imposed upon the biblical text by systematic theologians eager for tidiness. It arises from the Scriptures themselves, from the witness of Moses and the prophets, from the teaching of Christ and His apostles, from the whole sweep of redemptive history as it unfolds from Genesis to Revelation. Begin where the Bible itself begins the story of redemption — in the garden, in the aftermath of the fall, in the first words of hope spoken to a guilty pair hiding among the trees. In Genesis 3:15, God addresses the serpent and speaks a promise that the church has long called the protevangelium, the first gospel: "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." The seed of the woman. No ordinary child is promised here. In the idiom of the Hebrew Scriptures, children are uniformly the seed of their father, not of their mother. Yet here, before any patriarch has been named, God speaks of the seed of the woman. The Confession seizes upon this verse because it was the first revelation of the coming Mediator — signified, promised, glimpsed in the dim light of that earliest dawn. The seed of the woman would be bruised in the conflict; His heel would feel the serpent's strike. But He would also be the victor; the serpent's head would be crushed. And every Old Testament believer who grasped this promise, however faintly, was grasping Christ. By faith Abel offered a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain; by faith Enoch walked with God and was not; by faith Noah built an ark to the saving of his house. Faith in what? Faith in the promise. Faith in the seed. Faith in a Redeemer dimly perceived but truly trusted. The Confession draws our attention to promises, to types, and to sacrifices. And here the epistle to the Hebrews becomes our indispensable guide. In Hebrews 9:15, the author sets forth the doctrine with a clarity that leaves no room for doubt: "And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance." Every phrase of this verse is a blow against the notion that Old Testament saints were saved by some other means than the death of Christ. The death of Christ is explicitly said to redeem "the transgressions that were under the first testament" — the Greek parabasis, the deliberate stepping over of a known boundary. The sins of the Old Testament saints were real sins that incurred real guilt. And the blood of bulls and goats could not take away that guilt — the author of Hebrews has already made this point with force. What, then, could take away the transgressions committed under the first covenant? Only the death of the Mediator of the new covenant. The cross reached backward. The blood of Christ was the retroactive payment for every sin ever forgiven, from Adam's first transgression to the last sin committed before the veil of the temple was torn in two. And what did this retroactive redemption secure? The same thing it secures for us: "the promise of eternal inheritance." Not an earthly inheritance of Canaan, not the temporal blessings of the Mosaic covenant, not a merely national hope — but an eternal inheritance, the same inheritance we have been studying throughout this chapter, the inheritance that is incorruptible and undefiled and unfading, reserved in heaven. Abraham was not looking for a patch of ground in the Middle East. He was looking for a city whose builder and maker is God. This brings us directly to the testimony of our Lord Himself. In John 8:56, Christ makes a statement that must have stunned His hearers: "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad." The Jews had appealed to Abraham as their father. Christ does not deny the relation, but He redefines it. Abraham was the biological ancestor of the Jewish nation, but more: he was a believer in the coming Christ. Not a vague believer who merely trusted in the general mercy of God without any specific object for his faith. Abraham saw Christ's day. He saw it with the eye of faith, through the lens of promise, glimpsed in the ram caught in the thicket, in the laughter of Isaac born of a barren womb, in the stars of the night sky that spoke of a seed more numerous than the dust of the earth. He saw it and he rejoiced. The Greek word is ēgalliato — he exulted, he leaped for joy, he was filled with a gladness that overflowed. Abraham was not saved by general theism. He was saved by faith in the coming Seed, the promised Son, the true Isaac who would not be spared but would be offered up as the Lamb of God. The eleventh chapter of Hebrews gathers up this entire testimony and presents it as a unified witness. In Hebrews 11:13, we read of the patriarchs: "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth." And again, in Hebrews 11:39-40, the author concludes the roll call of faith with this remarkable statement: "And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect." Here is the two-testament economy laid out with simplicity. The Old Testament saints truly believed and obtained a good report — their faith was genuine, their justification real, their salvation certain. And yet they did not receive the promise in its fullness. They saw it from afar, like Moses on Mount Nebo gazing across the Jordan into a land he would not enter. They died in faith, still waiting, still trusting that the God who had promised was faithful. And why did they not receive the fullness? Because God had provided something better for us — the actual accomplishment of redemption in history — and in His wisdom He ordained that they should not be made perfect without us. Their salvation was real but awaited the historical event upon which it was grounded. And what was that event? The death of the Lamb who was, in the mystery of the divine decree, slain from the foundation of the world. In Revelation 13:8, John speaks of "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." The death of Christ was not an afterthought, a plan B necessitated by the fall. The Lamb was slain in the eternal decree before the first atom of creation was spoken into being. And because the Lamb was slain in the divine purpose from eternity, the virtue of that slaying could be applied in time before the slaying actually occurred. And so the Confession closes its scriptural argument with the words of Hebrews 13:8: "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever." The immutability of Christ guarantees the continuity of His saving work across the dispensations. He does not change, and therefore His salvation does not change. The object of faith in the old covenant was the same as the object of faith in the new: Jesus Christ, the Mediator, the Redeemer, the Lamb of God. The light was dimmer then, the shadows were deeper, the types were cruder — but the substance was the same. There has never been but one Savior, one gospel, one way of salvation, one Mediator between God and man. From Abel's acceptable sacrifice to the last sinner who shall believe before the trumpet sounds, every soul ever saved was saved by the blood of Jesus Christ.

What the Divines Meant

The Westminster Divines were not composing abstract theology in a vacuum. They were shepherds of souls, and the errors they confronted had pastoral consequences. To misunderstand how Old Testament saints were saved was not to make a mere mistake in the classroom; it was to undermine the unity of the covenant of grace, to cast doubt upon the sufficiency of Christ's work, and to open the door to every form of legalism and works-righteousness that has ever plagued the church. The primary error in view was Socinianism, which we have encountered several times in this chapter. The Socinians argued that Christ was not truly God, that His death was not a satisfaction of divine justice, and that the Old Testament saints were saved by obeying the law of Moses and trusting in the general mercy of God. In this scheme, Christ was at most a moral teacher and an example of self-sacrifice, but He was not the ground of salvation for anyone, whether before or after His incarnation. The Confession answers by anchoring Old Testament salvation in the person and work of Christ with as much firmness as New Testament salvation. The promises, types, and sacrifices of the old covenant were not independent means of grace; they were "those promises, types, and sacrifices, wherein he was revealed." They were windows through which Christ was seen, channels through which His grace flowed, instruments by which the Holy Spirit united the elect of the old covenant to the Mediator who was yet to come. A second error, less systematic but no less dangerous, was the tendency among certain radical Reformation groups to divide the people of God into those saved by works under the old covenant and those saved by grace under the new. The Confession demolishes this division by insisting that the "virtue, efficacy, and benefits" of Christ's redemption were communicated to the elect in all ages. There was never an age in which salvation was by works. From the moment God spoke the promise of the seed of the woman in Eden, salvation has been by grace through faith in the promised Redeemer. The old covenant administration had more shadows, more ceremonies, more types — but its substance was the same Christ, the same grace, the same faith. A third error is the notion that the Old Testament saints possessed only an earthly hope — land, progeny, national blessing — with the hope of eternal life absent or only faintly whispered. The Confession refutes this by insisting that the benefits communicated to the old covenant elect were the very benefits of Christ's redemptive work: forgiveness of sins, imputation of righteousness, adoption, the hope of eternal life. The difference is not in what was received but in how: we look back to a finished work; they looked forward to a promised work. The direction of faith differs; the object of faith is identical. The Divines also understood, with a wisdom drawn from the whole Reformed tradition, that the three instruments mentioned in the Confession — promises, types, and sacrifices — correspond to the threefold need of the believing soul. Promises addressed the mind, giving the believer something to know and trust. Types addressed the imagination, painting pictures of the coming Redeemer that the simplest believer could grasp: the lamb without blemish, the scapegoat driven into the wilderness, the bronze serpent lifted up in the wilderness, the rock that flowed with water in the desert. Sacrifices addressed the conscience, providing a tangible enactment of the principle that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. Each bloody altar, each smoking offering, each slain lamb was a sermon preached to the senses, declaring that sin deserves death and that God has provided a substitute. Yet — and this is the crucial distinction — none of these instruments possessed inherent efficacy. The blood of bulls and goats did not, in itself, take away sin. They were instruments in the hand of the Holy Spirit, who used them to unite the elect to Christ by faith. The efficacy was always in the thing signified, not in the sign. The grace was in the Mediator, not in the shadow. The salvation was through the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, not through the lambs slain on Jewish altars. They were the appointed means, but Christ alone was the appointed Savior.

Theological Depth

The doctrine that the Old Testament saints were saved by the same Christ, the same grace, and the same faith as we has been the settled conviction of the Reformed churches from the Reformation onward, and its roots reach back through the medieval scholastics to Augustine and to the apostles themselves. Listen to several voices from the tradition that deepen our understanding of what the Confession confesses. Augustine expressed the unity of the two testaments in a formula that remains the classic expression: "The New is in the Old concealed; the Old is in the New revealed." The Old Testament is not a different religion with a different way of salvation. It is the same way, seen through a glass darkly. The saints of the old covenant believed in the Christ who was to come; we believe in the Christ who has come. The difference is one of clarity, not of substance. Augustine saw this unity preeminently in the Psalms, where David speaks in the first person of sufferings and glories that far exceed his own experience, pointing unmistakably to the greater Son of David. When David cries, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" he speaks as a type of Christ. When he declares, "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell," he speaks words that Peter would apply to the resurrection of Jesus. David was not a poet only; he was a prophet, and his prophecies were the vehicle by which the benefits of Christ's future work were communicated to his own soul. Calvin, commenting on Hebrews, develops the doctrine of types with characteristic care. A type is not an arbitrary symbol; it is a divinely intended correspondence between an Old Testament person, event, or institution and the person and work of Christ. The tabernacle was a type of the incarnation. The priesthood of Aaron was a type of Christ's high priesthood. The Passover lamb was a type of Christ our Passover. These correspondences were built into the fabric of redemptive history by the God who ordained both the type and the antitype, the shadow and the substance. And the old covenant believers who participated in these types were not going through empty rituals. By faith, they were laying hold of the reality the types signified. When an Israelite brought his lamb to the tabernacle, confessing his sin over its head, he was exercising faith in the promised Seed, the true sacrifice that his lamb only prefigured. John Owen, in his commentary on Hebrews, labors over the question of how Christ's death could redeem transgressions committed under the first testament. His answer: the efficacy of Christ's death has a twofold reach — an antecedent efficacy for those who lived before the event, and a consequent efficacy for those who live after. The Old Testament saints were saved by the antecedent efficacy, grounded in the certainty of the divine decree. Owen insists that the death of Christ was the meritorious cause of their salvation just as it is of ours, and their faith — though tangled in shadows and ceremonies — was true faith in the promised Mediator. From Abel onward, justification has been by faith alone, in Christ alone, through grace alone. Patrick Fairbairn, in The Typology of Scripture, argues that a type is not a mere pictorial prediction; it is a divinely appointed institution that, by its very nature, communicates the grace of the thing prefigured to those who participate by faith. When the Israelite ate the Passover lamb, he was feeding upon Christ by faith, truly though not sacramentally. Fairbairn's insight is that the types were not empty shells waiting to be filled with meaning. They were already instruments of grace, already means by which the elect were united to Christ — but their efficacy depended entirely upon the future reality toward which they pointed. A shadow is not the body, but it testifies that a body exists, and the shadow cannot be cast unless the light is shining upon that body. Geerhardus Vos provides the unifying framework for everything we have been considering. Vos insists that revelation and redemption are inseparable. God was not disclosing a mere plan in the Old Testament; He was actually applying the benefits of Christ's work, actually uniting sinners to the Mediator. When Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness, that was not a placeholder justification later replaced by the real thing. It was real justification, grounded in the real work of Christ, applied by the real Holy Spirit, received by real faith. The only difference — and it is a difference of administration, not of essence — is that Abraham looked forward to the coming Seed while we look backward to the Seed who has come. Both gazes meet at the same point: Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and today and forever. That this is not mere academic theology but the lived experience of believing souls may be seen in David Dickson, the Scottish covenanter whose commentary on the Psalms shaped generations of Reformed piety. Dickson urges his readers to see that David's experience of guilt and forgiveness was not different from our own. When David cried, "Against thee, thee only, have I sinned," he was confessing to the same God, on the basis of the same atonement, looking forward to the same Savior. Dickson writes that the Old Testament saints "had the same Spirit of faith, the same righteousness of Christ, the same remission of sins, the same adoption, the same hope of glory, that we have." They saw these things through the lattice of types and shadows; we see them in the full light of the gospel. But the things themselves are identical. The inheritance is the same. The Savior is the same. The salvation is the same.

Puritan Application

The doctrine set before us in this section of the Confession is not an abstract curiosity for theologians to debate in their studies. It touches the heart of the Christian life at a dozen points, and the Puritans pressed this truth home to the conscience. Let us consider several applications. First, this doctrine should fill us with reverent amazement at the unity of God's saving purpose. The same Christ who saved Paul on the Damascus road saved Abraham in the plains of Mamre. The same blood that cleanses your conscience cleansed the conscience of David after his fall. The same Spirit who indwells you indwelt the prophets who spoke of the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow. We are not members of a different religion from the saints of the old covenant. We are members of the same body, branches of the same vine, stones in the same temple. When we sing the Psalms, we are joining our voices with saints who saw Christ from the other side of the cross, who trusted in the same promises, who were washed in the same blood. This unity should humble us. We are not superior to them because we live in the era of fulfillment. Many of them walked with God in a darkness that would have overwhelmed us, holding fast to promises whose fulfillment they never saw. Let us honor them as fellow heirs of the same inheritance, older siblings in the family of God who have gone before us into glory. Second, this doctrine teaches us how to read the Old Testament as Christian Scripture. The Old Testament is not a collection of moral tales, not a repository of legal demands, not an antiquarian record of an obsolete religion. It is a book about Jesus Christ. Every promise points to Him. Every type prefigures Him. Every sacrifice bleeds toward Him. Every prophet speaks of Him. When you read of the ram caught in the thicket on Mount Moriah, marvel at God's provision for Abraham — and see beyond it: the Substitute who was provided for you. When you read of the bronze serpent lifted up in the wilderness, look past the episode to what Christ makes of it. Hear Him saying, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life." When you read of the tabernacle with its seven-branched lampstand and its table of showbread and its altar of incense and its veil concealing the holy of holies, do not get lost in the architectural details. See Christ, the true tabernacle, in whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, through whose flesh we enter the holy place. The Old Testament is your book, Christian. It was written for your instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. Read it as a book about your Savior, and it will become alive to you in ways you have not expected. Third, this doctrine gives us a pattern for living by faith in promises not yet fulfilled. The Old Testament saints saw the promises from afar, embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. We, too, are waiting for promises not yet fulfilled. We have the down payment of the Spirit, but we await the full possession. We see Christ now through a glass darkly, but we await the day when we shall see Him face to face. In this, the Old Testament saints are our teachers. They teach us how to wait with patience, how to trust when the promise seems delayed, how to die in faith not having received the things promised but having greeted them from afar. Abraham went to his grave owning nothing in Canaan but a burial cave, yet he died believing that through his seed all nations would be blessed. What a rebuke to our impatience, our demand for immediate gratification, our restlessness when heaven seems slow. They waited longer than we have waited, trusted with less light than we have been given, and died with fewer fulfillments than we have witnessed — and yet they persevered. So can we. Fourth, this doctrine silences every whisper of works-righteousness by insisting that salvation has always been by grace through faith in Christ alone. There was never a covenant of works that any sinner could fulfill. There was never a dispensation in which obedience to the law could justify. There was never an age in which the blood of animals could take away sin. From the moment the first promise was spoken in Eden, the only ground of salvation has been the righteousness of Christ imputed to the believer and received by faith alone. This is liberating news for the conscience that is tempted to despair. You may feel that your sins are too great, your faith too weak, your obedience too spotty. But consider the saints of the old covenant. Consider David, an adulterer and a murderer, who yet was a man after God's own heart because he trusted in the promised Redeemer. Consider Abraham, who lied about his wife to save his own skin, who laughed at God's promise, who tried to fulfill the promise by his own scheming — and yet was justified by faith. Consider Moses, who struck the rock in anger, who was barred from the promised land, who died on a mountain in Moab — and yet appeared with Christ on the mount of transfiguration, speaking of His decease which He should accomplish at Jerusalem. If God saved such sinners through the promise of a Redeemer yet to come, will He not save you through the finished work of the Redeemer who has already come? Look to Christ. He is sufficient. He was sufficient for them, and He is sufficient for you. Fifth, this doctrine deepens our appreciation of what Christ accomplished at Calvary by showing us the scope of His saving work. The cross was not a local event whose effects were limited to those who happened to live after it. It was a cosmic event whose efficacy extends to the whole history of the human race — backward to the first sin in Eden, forward to the last sinner who will believe before the end. Every sin ever forgiven was paid for at Calvary. Every conscience ever cleansed was washed in that blood. Every soul ever admitted to the presence of God entered through that torn veil. When you come to the Lord's Table and take the bread and the cup, you are not participating in a ritual that began two thousand years ago. You are participating in a reality that stretches back to the foundation of the world, that was foreshadowed in every Passover meal eaten in Egypt, in every sacrifice offered on Israel's altars, in every lamb slain from Abel onward. The communion of saints is not limited to those who happen to be alive at the same time as you. It includes Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, Moses and David and Isaiah, Peter and Paul and John, Augustine and Calvin and Owen, and every believer of every age who has trusted in the Lamb of God. We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, and the cloud includes both those who looked forward to the cross and those who look back upon it. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all — and one Savior, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and today and forever.

Prayer

O Lord our God, whose saving purpose stretches from before the foundation of the world to the consummation of all things, we bow before Thee in wonder and adoration. Thou hast not left Thyself without witness in any age. Thou hast not abandoned any generation of Thy people to find its own way to Thee. From the gates of Eden, where the first promise of the Seed was spoken, to the upper room where the Comforter descended in tongues of fire, Thou hast been saving one people, through one Mediator, by one gospel, for one inheritance. We thank Thee for the river of grace that flows backward from Calvary, reaching across the centuries to cleanse the sins of Abel and Enoch, of Abraham and Sarah, of Moses and Rahab, of David and Ruth and all the saints of the old covenant who saw Thy day from afar and rejoiced. We bless Thee that their salvation and ours are one — that we are not divided from them by a different covenant or a different hope or a different Savior. They are our fathers and mothers in the faith, and we shall feast with them at the marriage supper of the Lamb. Teach us to read the Old Testament as Christian Scripture, to see Christ in every promise, every type, every sacrifice, every prophetic word. Give us the faith of Abraham, who trusted Thy word against all human hope and was counted righteous. Give us the patience of those who died without receiving the promises, yet embraced them from afar and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. And when our own faith wavers and the darkness presses in and the fulfillment seems long delayed, strengthen us by the knowledge that the same Christ who sustained them sustains us, the same Spirit who indwelt them indwells us, the same inheritance that awaited them awaits us. Lord Jesus, Lamb of God, slain from the foundation of the world, we rest in Thee. Thy blood is sufficient for all the sins of all Thy people in every age. Thy righteousness covers us as it covered them. Thy intercession upholds us as it upholds them. Yesterday and today and forever, Thou art the same — and we are Thine. Bring us safely home, with all the redeemed of every age, to the city whose builder and maker is God, where we shall see Thee face to face and sing the song of Moses and the Lamb forever. Amen.