Zechariah and Elizabeth in Relation to Law and Salvation

Zechariah and Elizabeth were not “saved” in the same way believers are in the present age of grace. Before the revelation of the mystery given to Paul, no one possessed what we now mean by “salvation”: the settled, Pauline assurance that upon death one is immediately in the presence of the Lord, forgiven all sins, secure forever, as in 1 Timothy 1:15–16 and Paul’s later testimony about being “present with the Lord.”

Before this dispensation, the dead—both righteous and unrighteous—went to the waiting place of the dead, described in the King James Version language as “hell” (Sheol/Hades). Within that realm there was a righteous side (often called “Abraham’s bosom” or “paradise”) and an unrighteous side. Zechariah and Elizabeth went to that righteous place of the dead, not to the immediate heavenly presence of Christ as Paul describes for us.

They almost certainly did not know Paul’s gospel. Their lives likely ended either before, or without any exposure to, Paul’s revelation of the mystery. Therefore they could not have been saved “under the Pauline pattern.” In that sense they were not saved as we are.

If we ask instead, “Will Zechariah and Elizabeth ultimately be saved, and on what basis?” then the answer involves the law and their covenant relationship to God as Israelites. Luke testifies concerning them in Luke 1:6:

"And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.’’

Standard evangelical and standard dispensational theology tends to read this as if it must mean “righteous by grace through faith apart from works,” and therefore insists that no one ever had any true standing before God in relation to the law. But the text itself attributes their righteousness “before God” to their walking “in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.” Scripture repeatedly affirms that certain Israelites did in fact walk according to the law in a way God recognized as blameless in that covenantal context (Paul says something similar of himself regarding “the righteousness which is in the law” in Philippians).

Zechariah and Elizabeth did not know the death, burial, and resurrection as the content of a personal salvation message for Jew and Gentile alike, nor did they know of a “dispensation of the grace of God” extended beyond Israel’s covenants, as revealed later in passages such as Colossians 1:26 and Ephesians 3. That mystery was “hid in God” until revealed through Paul. Nevertheless, God reckoned them righteous under the covenantal administration given to Israel. Their faith expressed itself in covenant obedience to the commandments and ordinances of the Lord; within that system, they were counted righteous.

They, along with the other righteous dead of that era (as portrayed in the account of the rich man and Lazarus, where Lazarus is comforted in Abraham’s bosom), await the resurrection. At the resurrection and in the final ordering of God’s program for Israel, they will be saved. In that future, eschatological sense, they will be saved in accordance with the promises, covenants, and law under which they lived. Stated this way, we can say:

Negative and positive answers distinguished

• Were Zechariah and Elizabeth saved by the law in the present-age Pauline sense of “salvation” (immediate entrance into Christ’s presence at death through the revealed mystery gospel)? No. That kind of salvation did not yet exist and was not yet revealed.
• Will Zechariah and Elizabeth ultimately be saved on the basis of their righteous standing as covenant-keeping Israelites, “walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless”? Yes. They will be saved according to the law-covenant framework God Himself ordained for Israel, and in which He already declared them righteous.

Their current state is that of the righteous dead in the waiting place of the dead, not in the lake of fire. At the appropriate resurrection for Israel’s saints, they will experience the fullness of the salvation God promised to His covenant people, grounded in the law and the sacrificial system as ordained for that dispensation, and ultimately resting on the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ that gives efficacy to all those earlier provisions.

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