Relating to the Old Testament saints

“These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.” Hebrews 11:39-40
I find this verse really interesting, and well worth memorising. As was mentioned yesterday, Hebrews 11 is often called ‘the Hall of faith’. The author gives several examples of Old Testament people who displayed faith in God – Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, etc.
Sometimes it’s difficult to know, as Christians, how we relate to these people who lived in the Old Testament times. We can feel that we are separated from them because they lived under the old covenant and the law, while we live under the new covenant (Jer. 31:33-34, 1 Cor. 11:25, 2 Cor. 3:6, Heb. 9:15) and the new law associated with it (Heb. 7:12). We can think that we are different because they related to God more as the Father, while we relate more to Jesus, God the Son.
But the reality is quite different. It is we, who have faith in the past, finished work of Jesus Christ, who actually make the Old Testament saints complete. Both we and they are saved by faith in Christ. The only difference is that we look backward on what He did, while they looked forward (through the offering of sacrifices etc. which were symbols of what God would provide at some point which for them was yet future).
I don’t know about you, but I’m really looking forward to meeting these people in heaven and learning what it was like to live in their time in terms of how they related to God, and what they might think about how things are different for us. Just as we have learned from the examples of these Old Testament people, they too are only perfected in faith by us joining them.