Like father, like Father

Genesis 22-24

Maybe one of the most peculiar passages in Scripture, Gen 22, has God "testing" Abraham by calling on Abraham to take his "only son, whom [he] loves" and offer him as a burnt offering on a mountain altar. It is a tough theological chapter to digest. God requiring human sacrifice? This is one characteristic that was to set Him apart from other gods like Molech (cp. Jer 32:35)!

So what was God doing? He comes to Abraham, the father of our faith, and asks him to sacrifice his one and only promised son out of an act of love and obedience. And somehow, almost to our horror, Abraham is convinced God has indeed required this thing of him (I can't image how Sarah's taking it!), and with seemingly much lest anxiety than I could ever have had, willingly takes his son, binds him and prepares to strike! But at that moment, God stops the process.

With Abraham's arm lifted over his son, God speaks and commends Abraham's total surrender, pure obedience and wholehearted faith. Then, on His own, He provides a substitutionary sacrifice, a ram caught in the thickets.

God the Father called on the father of our faith only to be willing to do that which He would one day willingly do Himself, put His beloved Son to death. God the Father uses the sacrifice of Abraham's precious long-awaited promised son as an incredible example which continues to speak to us today.

If you were horrified when God asked a man to sacrifice another human, how much more are we to be mortified by God Himself offering His perfect, sinless Son on a cross? As devastating as it must have felt for Abraham and Sarah, imagine it infinitely more meaningful that freely God chose to send His Son to die a death no other substitute was able to appease. Christ, God's one and only Son, demonstrated the unfathomable love the Trinity has for Their creation.

Next time you read Genesis 22 and recoil in horror, just remember to recoil even further at the heinous death of  God's Son on the Cross. But don't stop there... remember that it was out of love that God sent Him (John 3:16)... this picture ends in true worship because our God blows us away with His amazing grace! He used the father of our faith to demonstrate the depth of the love of the Father of our Savior. What a picture... at the same time... mortifying and beautiful!