On the Cross, Jesus offered his life as a sacrifice to make it possible for us to be saved.
But what about the people who lived before he made that sacrifice?
How can they be saved? How did his death relate to them?
Let’s take a look at that . . .
An Outstanding Question
Recently, I blogged about the general question of how salvation works before and after the time of Christ, but we didn’t answer all the questions a person might have.
One outstanding question is how Jesus’ sacrifice could apply to people before it was even made.
Scripture gives us some interesting possibilities . . .
“From the Foundation of the World”?
One image that some have looked to is found in Revelation 13:8, where in some translations we read a description of Jesus as “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”
If this is the way that the passage is to be understood, it would seem to teach that Jesus’ sacrifice is available to people no matter when they lived in history.
In other words, although Jesus was slain in A.D. 33, from God’s eternal perspective, that sacrifice has been available “from the foundation of the world” and thus able to save anyone in world history.
Is This the Right Interpretation?
Although it’s theologically true that Christ’s sacrifice can save anyone in world history, that doesn’t mean that this is what the passage intends to say.
There is another–better–way to look at the passage.
