On the Basis of Faith

How All People are Saved

“Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him according to the custom of the Law, he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said,
‘Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.’”

— Luke 2:25-32 (ESV)

The old man’s hands received the infant. Perhaps even trembling from the sudden realization—the kind that floods the soul when prophecy becomes flesh, when waiting transforms into arrival. Luke tells us that Simeon was “righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him” (Luke 2:25, ESV). But here’s the question that should arrest us: How was Simeon righteous? The cross hadn’t happened yet. Calvary was still three decades away. The resurrection remained locked in the purposes of God, unrevealed to human eyes. So by what mechanism, through what transaction, did this elderly temple-goer possess righteousness sufficient to recognize the Christ child when his own generation’s religious experts would later demand that same child’s crucifixion?

This question opens a chasm in popular Christian thinking. We’ve grown comfortable with our salvation narratives—Christ died, we believe, we’re saved—but we’ve left the Old Testament saints in theological limbo, as if their salvation operated on different principles, ran on different fuel, required different currency. We speak casually of “Old Testament times” as though God’s plan of redemption had multiple drafts, various beta versions, before the final release on Golgotha. But what if we’ve fundamentally misunderstood the architecture of salvation? What if the divide isn’t between Old and New Testament methods, but between our perception and God’s eternal reality?

The Misconception That Haunts Our Reading

The error runs deep in the evangelical imagination: that Old Testament believers were saved by keeping the Law, that their righteousness came through animal sacrifices, that they earned standing before God through ceremonial obedience and ritual purity. This misconception creates a two-tier salvation system, one for those who lived before Christ (saved by works) and one for those who came after (saved by grace). It seems like a tidy little box, mistakenly assumed from a wooden reading of the old coventent, but it crumbles under the weight of Scripture itself.

The biblical truth cuts clean through this confusion: salvation has always been—always—by faith credited as righteousness. The mechanism never changed because it never needed to. From Eden’s gates to Revelation’s open door, one narrow path has existed for human beings to stand justified before their Creator: trust in God’s promise, reliance on his provision, faith that looks beyond what is seen to what God has declared. The Law was never plan A. Sacrifices were never the payment. These were shadows, signposts, prophetic performances pointing to the substance that would be revealed when “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14).

Righteousness is the lynch-pin, the non-negotiable requirement for standing before a holy God. But righteousness comes only one way, through one door, by one means—and that means is faith. This is not a New Testament innovation. It’s the eternal architecture of grace.

The Universal Verdict: No Righteousness Within

Before we can understand how anyone is saved, we must grasp the depth of the problem. Paul’s Roman epistle builds its case with prosecutorial thoroughness: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (Romans 3:10-12). This isn’t hyperbole. It’s diagnosis. Paul quotes the Psalms and Prophets to demonstrate that the verdict of universal unrighteousness spans both testaments, condemning Jew and Gentile alike.

The Law, when it finally arrived through Moses, didn’t solve this problem—it exposed it. Paul writes, “Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:19-20). The Law’s purpose was never to make people righteous. It was to silence human self-justification, to shut every mouth that might claim moral achievement, to force humanity to look beyond itself for salvation.

This means that even in the golden age of Torah observance, even when the temple stood in splendor and sacrifices burned morning and evening, no one was made righteous through these acts. The Law measured the gap between divine holiness and human corruption. It named sins. It prescribed penalties. It outlined shadows of atonement. But it could not—by its very design—produce the righteousness it demanded.

Abraham: The Test Case of Faith

If righteousness doesn’t come through Law-keeping, where does it originate? Paul answers by reaching back before Sinai, before Moses, before the covenant at Horeb, to a mesopotamian moon-worshiper¹ named Abram who heard an impossible promise and believed it. “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness” (Romans 4:3, quoting Genesis 15:6). This crediting, this divine accounting move, happened centuries before the Law existed. Abraham hadn’t been circumcised yet. He hadn’t offered sacrifices according to Levitical code. He’d simply trusted God’s word against all evidence.

Paul makes the sequence explicit: “He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised” (Romans 4:11). Circumcision didn’t create Abraham’s righteousness—it authenticated a righteousness already present through faith. The ritual followed the reality. The sign pointed to the substance. And that substance was faith credited as righteousness.

This pattern establishes the template for all salvation across all ages. Abraham becomes “the father of all who believe” (Romans 4:11), not because everyone must be ethnically descended from him, but because everyone who is justified follows the same path he pioneered: faith in God’s promise despite circumstances that deny it. Abraham looked at his aged body and Sarah’s barren womb and believed God would somehow, impossibly, give them descendants as numerous as stars. We look at our sinful souls and Christ’s completed work and believe God will somehow, impossibly, credit us with righteousness we did not earn.

The mechanics are identical. The object of faith becomes more fully revealed—what Abraham glimpsed in shadow, we see in sunlight—but the principle remains unchanged. Paul writes, “That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham” (Romans 4:16). Faith guarantees grace across all time. It’s the permanent mechanism, not a temporary workaround.

The Law: Temporary Tutor, Not Permanent Solution

So what was the Law doing for those fifteen hundred years between Sinai and Golgotha? Paul calls it a custodian, a guardian, a pedagogue: “So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith” (Galatians 3:24). The Law had a time-bound pedagogical purpose. It taught Israel about God’s holiness, their own sinfulness, and their desperate need for a righteousness they could not manufacture.

Every commandment they broke revealed the gap. Every sacrifice they offered admitted their guilt. Every Day of Atonement confessed that last year’s sacrifices hadn’t permanently solved the problem. The Law created a sustained tension, a ritualized reminder that sin remained unatoned, that access to God’s presence required blood, that the human condition was dire.

But—and this is crucial—the Law was never meant to be permanent. Paul writes, “For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law” (Galatians 3:21). Notice the conditional: if such a law existed. But no such law was ever given or ever could be given, because righteousness doesn’t come through legislation. It comes through faith. The Law performed its temporary tutorial function, and then Christ came. “But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian” (Galatians 3:25). The tutor has been dismissed not because the lesson failed, but because it succeeded.

Those who lived under the Law’s administration and were saved—and Scripture testifies that many were—were saved not by the Law but by faith in God’s promises embedded within the Law. They trusted the covenant-keeping God who spoke through the Law. They believed the prophets who pointed beyond the ceremonial system to a coming redemption. They exercised the same faith Abraham did, believing God’s word even when circumstances seemed contrary.

Sacrifices: Shadow Theater Pointing to Substance

The sacrificial system presents a particular challenge to our understanding. If animals were slaughtered, blood was shed, atonement was pronounced, weren’t Old Testament believers saved by these sacrifices? The question reveals the confusion. The book of Hebrews addresses this directly: “For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Hebrews 10:4). Impossible. Not difficult, not partially effective, not sufficient for lesser sins—impossible.

The author of Hebrews explains that these sacrifices were “a reminder of sins every year” (Hebrews 10:3). They didn’t eliminate sin; they memorialized it. They kept the problem visible, fresh, unresolved. Year after year, the high priest entered the Holy of Holies with blood, and year after year, sins remained. The repetition itself testified to the inadequacy. If these sacrifices truly cleansed, why did they need repeating?

But they served a vital prophetic function. They were “a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities” (Hebrews 10:1). Every lamb on the altar whispered about a coming Lamb. Every priest performing his duties pointed toward a coming High Priest. Every blood-splattered mercy seat anticipated the mercy that would flow from a Roman cross. The sacrifices worked not by their own power but by pointing to Christ’s sacrifice. They were promissory notes guaranteed by a future payment.

Those who offered sacrifices in faith—believing not that animal blood saved them, but that God would somehow provide atonement—were saved by that faith. The sacrifice expressed their faith, gave it concrete form, but the faith itself, directed toward God’s promise of redemption, secured their righteousness. This is why the prophets could condemn empty ritualism so harshly. When sacrifices became mere religious performance divorced from faith, they became worthless. “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6). God wanted the faith the sacrifice symbolized, not the dead animal.

Case Study: Melchizedek’s Mysterious Righteousness

Before we return to Simeon, consider Melchizedek, one of Scripture’s most enigmatic figures. He appears suddenly in Genesis 14, identified as “king of Salem” and “priest of God Most High” (Genesis 14:18). He blesses Abraham, who gives him a tenth of everything. Then he vanishes from the narrative until the Psalms reference him and Hebrews unpacks his significance.

What’s striking is that Melchizedek possesses legitimate priesthood before the Levitical system exists, before the Law is given, before Israel even exists as a nation. He serves God acceptably outside the covenant structures that would later define acceptable worship. How? By what authority? Through what righteousness?

Hebrews tells us that Melchizedek “resembles the Son of God” (Hebrews 7:3) and that his priesthood is superior to Aaron’s because it’s permanent rather than temporary, perfect rather than flawed. But the deeper point is that God had priests before he had Levites, worshipers before he had Israel, righteous people before he had a written Law. Melchizedek’s existence demolishes the idea that Old Testament righteousness came through the Mosaic covenant. He preceded it. He stood outside it. Yet he was righteous.

The only explanation is faith. Melchizedek trusted God Most High, served him faithfully, and was counted righteous—just as Abraham would be, just as every believer across all ages is. The specific revelation Melchizedek possessed may have been limited compared to what we now know, but his faith was genuine and was credited to him as righteousness. He demonstrates that God’s plan of salvation through faith transcends ethnic Israel, predates the Law, and operates wherever people genuinely trust God’s character and promises.

Simeon: The Righteous Man Who Held Tomorrow

This brings us back to the temple courtyard and Simeon. Luke calls him “righteous” without qualification or explanation, as if it’s self-evident how he came to possess this status. But now we understand. Simeon’s righteousness didn’t come from his religious observance, though he was surely observant. It didn’t come from his temple presence, though he clearly frequented the temple. It didn’t come from sacrifices, though he’d certainly participated in the system. It came from faith.

The text tells us that “it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ” (Luke 2:26). Simeon believed this promise. He staked his life on it. He waited, day after day, year after year, for the fulfillment of a prophecy that must have seemed increasingly unlikely as he aged. His faith wasn’t in the system but in the God who spoke through the system, the God who had promised redemption, the God who would somehow provide the consolation Israel needed.

When Simeon took Jesus in his arms, he blessed God and said, “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel” (Luke 2:29-32). Notice what he sees: not just a baby, but salvation itself. Not just a Jewish messiah, but light for all peoples. Simeon’s vision spanned the cross he wouldn’t live to see, encompassed the resurrection he wouldn’t witness, grasped the global gospel he wouldn’t personally preach.

His righteousness and his revelation went hand in hand. Because he was righteous through faith, the Holy Spirit could reveal Christ to him. Because he trusted God’s promises, he recognized their fulfillment. The same faith that made Abraham righteous, that made Melchizedek a priest, that would later make Gentiles co-heirs—this faith made Simeon able to see salvation personified in an eight-day-old infant.

The Permanent Principle Against Philosophical Error

The permanence of faith-righteousness corrects several persistent errors. First, it destroys any hint of Marcionism—the heresy that the God of the Old Testament differs from the God of the New, that one testament teaches works while the other teaches grace. The God who credited faith to Abraham is the same God who credits faith to us. His character hasn’t changed. His plan hasn’t evolved. His grace hasn’t gotten more gracious.

Second, it corrects popular misunderstandings that can arise from overemphasizing dispensational distinctions—the impression that God’s people in different ages related to Him through fundamentally different systems rather than one continuous plan of redemption progressively revealed.

Third, it refutes the notion that the Law was ever meant to save. This error haunted the Galatian church and haunts ours still. We imagine that ancient Israel was under a merit-based system, that they earned God’s favor through obedience. But Paul’s entire argument in Romans and Galatians insists otherwise. The Law exposed sin and pointed to Christ, but it never provided righteousness. No one, in any age, has ever been saved by keeping commandments.

Fourth, it answers the thorny question of what happened to Old Testament saints before Christ’s death. They weren’t in some limbo awaiting retroactive salvation. Their faith was credited to them as righteousness immediately, just as ours is. Christ’s death vindicated their faith, proved God’s promises true, accomplished the atonement their sacrifices symbolized. But they were already justified by faith, already counted righteous, already in covenant relationship with God.

The Blood That Speaks Backward and Forward

How can faith in a sacrifice not yet offered save anyone? Because God operates outside time’s constraints. Christ was “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8, KJV; cf. ESV “whose names have not been written in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain”). In God’s eternal perspective, the cross isn’t a point in time but a timeless reality. The atonement it accomplished reaches backward to cover Abraham’s sins and forward to cover ours. The blood speaks in both directions because it speaks in God’s eternal present.

This is why the sacrificial system could function prophetically. The sacrifices didn’t need to provide actual atonement; they needed to point to the atonement that would be provided. Those who offered them in faith were trusting not the sacrifice but the God who promised that sin would be dealt with. Their faith connected them to Christ’s future-but-eternal work just as ours connects us to Christ’s past-but-eternal work. The direction we look differs; the Savior we see does not.

Hebrews explains that Christ “entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9:12). The redemption is eternal—not just lasting forever forward, but reaching backward to encompass all who ever trusted God’s promise. “Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant” (Hebrews 9:15). Christ’s death redeems transgressions committed under the old covenant, proving that those under that covenant were saved by his work, appropriated through their faith.

Returning to the Temple

So we return to Simeon’s hands holding the Christ and understand them better now. He held the answer to every sacrifice he’d witnessed, the fulfillment of every prophecy he’d trusted, the vindication of every faith-soaked prayer he’d offered. He held permanent righteousness made flesh. He held the One who would render the temple’s sacrifices obsolete because he was the final sacrifice. He held the One who would fulfill the Law because he was the Law’s goal and termination point.

Simeon’s righteousness before Christ’s death and our righteousness after Christ’s resurrection come from the same source, rest on the same foundation, operate through the same mechanism. We are both saved by grace through faith, counted righteous not by our moral achievement but by God’s merciful crediting, justified not by what we do but by trusting what God has done.

The difference is one of clarity, not category. Simeon saw salvation arriving; we see it accomplished. Simeon trusted promises about to be fulfilled; we trust promises already kept. Simeon looked forward to the cross; we look back at it. But we both look at the same cross, trust the same Savior, receive the same righteousness, possess the same salvation.

When Simeon departed in peace, having seen the Lord’s Christ, he did so as a man justified by faith—exactly the same kind of justification that saves anyone in any age. His story isn’t a puzzle to solve or an anomaly to explain. It’s a testimony to the permanence of God’s single plan of redemption, the unchanging nature of salvation through faith, the eternal reality that righteousness comes not from human striving but from divine crediting.

In his arms he held what his faith had always grasped: God’s promise kept, God’s salvation revealed, God’s righteousness made visible. The temporary had given way to the permanent. The shadows had encountered their substance. The faith that had saved believers for millennia now held the fulfillment it had been trusting all along. Simeon was righteous not because he was lucky enough to live until Christ arrived, but because he possessed the same faith Abraham had, the same trust Melchizedek exercised, the same belief that would later save Gentiles who never knew Moses’ Law.

There has always been only one way to be righteous before God: trust his word, believe his promises, receive his grace through faith. Simeon knew this truth intimately, lived it faithfully, and recognized it immediately when it took flesh and lay in his arms. His request to hold the baby Jesus testified to recognition, to fulfillment, to the certainty that God’s permanent plan of salvation through faith had reached its permanent revelation. The righteous man held Righteousness itself, and the temporary gave way to the eternal in a moment of holy recognition that spans all ages and saves all souls who, like Simeon, believe.

‘Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.’

— Luke 2:29 (ESV)