As far as spiritual representation and significance is concerned, among those who took God’s way of life, Noah was the continuation of Enoch. Just as Enoch walked and lived with God, so also did Noah (Gen. 6:9). However, Noah took a further step—he worked with God to build the ark according to God’s revelation for the preserving of the purified human race and the various living things on earth that God intended to keep (Gen. 6:14-22).
Noah was born into the human race that was corrupt to the uttermost, and he lived among that race. At that time, men abused their fallen bodies and became flesh. They were full of lusts (Gen. 6:3a, 5). As a result, the fallen angels joined themselves to man through illegal marriage, so that the human race was no longer pure but became a mixture of the human nature with fallen spirits (Gen. 6:2, 4). That was the most evil thing in the eyes of God, and He could not tolerate it.
But Noah found grace in the eyes of God (Gen. 6:8). Born into a godly family (cf. Gen. 5:4-29), he inherited the spiritual blessings from his forefathers and took God’s way of redemption and life, including Adam’s way of salvation, Abel’s way of offering, Enosh’s way of calling, and Enoch’s way of walking with God. Moreover, by faith he became a righteous man in God’s eyes and a perfect man who walked with God in that generation (Heb. 11:7; Gen. 6:9). Therefore, he maintained and extended God’s way of life so that God could carry out His plan on the corrupted earth according to His desire.
At a time when people on earth were corrupted to the uttermost, God was still able to find Noah, one who took His way of life, to cooperate and work with Him for the accomplishing of the salvation that was being carried out by Him for those who took His way of redemption and life. The ark, which Noah built by working with God and into which he entered, signifies God’s salvation. Noah was saved before he began to build the ark, but he still needed to be saved further, from that corrupted world. The ark that he built terminated the old age and ushered in a new age. That ark was the salvation that Noah built, which saved him not only from God’s judgment but also from that crooked and perverted generation. This corresponds with Philippians 2:12-16, where Paul said, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who operates in you both the willing and the working for His good pleasure....that you may become blameless and guileless, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverted generation.” This kind of salvation not only is prepared by God, but also is worked out by those who take God’s way of redemption and life, through their cooperation with God.