How Is It Loving For God to Command The Sacrifice of Issac?

Q. Why do people say God is “loving” when he actually commanded Abraham to kill his own son as a sacrifice to him? How is that loving?

Viewed holistically, the story of Abraham’s life is one of the Old Testament’s greatest examples of God’s undeserved lovingkindness toward humanity. God chose this obscure man from a region of nature worshippers, and called him to become the patriarch of the Israelite nation. To understand the (near) sacrifice of his son Isaac, it must be looked at in the context of Abraham’s life from start to finish.

Before He Was Abraham

Abraham (then “Abram”, meaning “exalted father”) was born in a Babylonian city called Ur, in what is today southern Iraq. His inglorious ancestry and obscure history make him a very unlikely candidate to be the father of the Israelite nation. Yet, in Genesis 12:1 God initiates the relationship which would lead to Abram’s honored place in Biblical history.

“Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

The Unlikely Birth of Isaac

Isaac himself was the product of God’s loving, miraculous intervention in the life of Abraham and his wife Sarah. In Gen 17:15, he tells Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah [meaning "princess"] shall be her name. I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her.” Abraham laughed at God’s words (an understandable reaction, as he was nearly one hundred years old, and Sarah was ninety). But sure enough, Sarah conceived shortly after, and Isaac (whose name means “he laughs”) was born.

The (Near) Sacrifice

Genesis 22 is the account of God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. “Take your son,” he says, “your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” Abraham rises early in the morning, and on the third day of travel, they reach the mountain. Abraham lays the wood for the offering on Isaac’s shoulders, and asks his servants to remain behind. When Isaac asks where the lamb to be sacrificed is, Abraham simply responds, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” After Abraham binds Isaac, and is about to “slaughter him,” God stays his hand: “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me” (Gen 22:12).

Several objections may now be raised. First, did God not know Abraham feared Him before the near sacrifice of Isaac? The simple answer is that He of course knew Abraham’s fear (or holy reverence) of Him. God did not learn anything, as if it were new information to Him. The real beneficiary of the incident was Abraham himself, who gained a new understanding of God’s providence, to the point that He named that very spot “The Lord will provide” (22:14).

Second, any objection that God was simply toying with Abraham in some cruel, sadistic way should be thwarted by examining the previous points, but also by remembering a much more familiar incident in the pages of the New Testament. There, God placed on Himself the same requirement He asked of Abraham. Laying the wood for the sacrifice on the shoulders of His only Son, He led Jesus to the hill where He would be sacrificed (it is possibly the same hill where Abraham led Isaac). The difference is that God did not stay His own hand, but again provided the sacrificial lamb “who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).

This entry was posted on February 12, 2010 at February 12, 2010 and is filed under God, The Bible. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.