How blessed are the saints who are alive today, when our salvation has been accomplished by Jesus, when His sacrifice in our place has been finished and accepted at the throne of Heaven!
Our everlasting righteousness in the Lord Jesus has been brought in! We no longer wait with a mixture of dread, hope, and fear, that God's promise will be carried out one day, for the day of God's finishing the work of redemption has come already!
In the Old Testament, the saints cried out for forgiveness, and expressed their hope and trust in God's promises of forgiveness, waiting for it to come at last.
Part of the uncertainty was the question, how can God forgive our crimes? How can He show mercy in the face of His pronouncement of wrath and judgment for all sinners?
There were hints, for example, in God's providing a lamb in the place of Isaac. Abraham seemed to have some knowledge of this substitution, that the Isaac's rescue was but a picture of what God one day would do for His people who trusted in Him. In the mount of the Lord, it will be provided!
Of course, the sacrificial system always pointed to the Lamb of God Who would be provided one day. And yet, Isaiah's prophecy of Messiah's being put to death for our sins was opaque to Old Testament believers.
If Jesus had to open the eyes of His disciples after He rose from the grave, then surely the eyes of believers in olden times must also have been holden.
Those blessed saints waited pensively, trusting that God would make clear His salvation and their forgiveness one day in the future.
The writer of Psalm 130 provides an example of a believer crying out to God and trusting for forgiveness and redemption.