15th July 2025 Question box

OK so today’s question is:

How does salvation differ from Old Testament and New Testament? Similarly how does the idea of righteousness?

OK, so this is actually the question I answered in this morning’s sermon, which was on Romans chapter 4. If you want to hear a detailed answer to the question, you can listen to the audio of that sermon here.

But here’s the short answer: They are the substantially the same.

In the Old Testament it says: “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6). And then in the New Testament it says: “The words “it was credited to him” were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness” (Romans 4:23–24). The Old Testament believers share the same righteousness and share the same salvation as us. They were justified by faith, just as we are.

However, there are at least two ways in our experience of salvation is better:

• We have more clarity: they had to trust God, not quite knowing how salvation worked. Whereas we look back to the cross and the resurrection- and we see so much more clearly how God saves us.
• Secondly, in the New Testament we share the experience of salvation with so many more brothers and sisters: Because God’s Holy Spirit is moving his church to take the gospel to all the world, and so God is saving people from every tribe and tongue and nation.

And so , in summary: Old and New Testament believers had the same righteousness (that is, same legal standing before God), but we New Testament believers have a clearer and wider experience of it.

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This question was originally answered in our evening service on 9 March 2025. I’ll aim to post another question and answer next week. You can read about how our question box works here.