Suffering, Sacrifice, and Temptation: A Meditation on Genesis 22

Our Old Testament reading for the first Sunday in Lent brings us back to the familiar and uncomfortable story of Abraham preparing to sacrifice his son Isaac.  It is clearly God who calls to Abraham, and directs him to take his only and beloved son out into the wilderness, there to slaughter him as a sacrifice.  There’s no getting around it—God is calling Abraham to execute a human sacrifice, and specifically to sacrifice the son he so dearly loved.  Isaac was the son given to Abraham as a covenant promise from God, and the line through whom all the nations would be blessed.  This son of the promise is the son God called Abraham to kill on a lonely mountain, three day’s journey from home.

The story is troubling enough, without the danger of trying to read into the text more than what is written.  We might want to see God as doing this all with a wink-wink and a nudge-nudge, since this request sounds much more like the character of the pagan gods than the one true God.  We might want to imagine Abraham having some kind of special insight into the request, so that he never really intended to kill his only beloved son.  None of that seems true.  In the text, we see Abraham preparing for the trip, and there is no record of his even mentioning God’s request to his wife or his son.  Abraham cuts the wood for the burnt offering, loads up his animals, gathers his servants, and heads out for a three day walk.

That three days had to be torture for Abraham, as he alone carried the burden of God’s awful request.  Whatever the great faith of Abraham, we can only imagine what passed through his mind.  How would he explain this to the boy’s mother?  To his servants?  To himself?  How could God ask such a thing that seemed so contrary to His divine nature?  Is this really the same God who called him out of his country and his father’s house, and promised to bless him?  How could God intend to inflict such suffering upon someone He claimed to love?  Does God really love me and my family, or am I in this dark world all alone?  And however many more might come into his mind, as he plodded along for those three days.

But like so much of Sacred Scripture, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense apart from the fullness of revelation in Jesus Christ.  Through Christ, we can see Abraham’s struggle and God’s call, as a foreshadowing of what God Himself would accomplish for the sake of the whole world.  Where God asked of Abraham to sacrifice his only beloved son, and yet stopped Abraham from going through with it, God would go all the way through with sacrificing His Only Beloved Son for the lives of sinful men.  Unlike Abraham and Isaac who both deserved to suffer and die for their sins, God the Father and His Beloved Son would suffer unjustly in their place.  The Father would walk His Only Beloved Son up the hill of Calvary, and there would be no substitute ram caught in the thicket to offer in His place.  There the Father would see His Son bound to the wood of His Cross, and there He would see the horrific multitude of every sin of every man, woman, and child, heaped upon His Son’s Holy flesh.  Every rape, every murder, every abuse of a child, every genocidal massacre, every torture, every tyranny, every intrigue, every plot, every fornication, every heresy, every apostasy… every evil thought, word, and deed, of things done, undone, and yet to be done, mounted upon the blessed shoulders of His Beloved Son.  At such a putrid horror, even the Father must turn away in His holiness, that all His righteous wrath might be poured out upon His Only Beloved Son, and there the Son must die utterly and unimaginably alone, under the weight of every evil ever to be perpetrated upon His good creation.  Where Abraham’s knife was stayed, the nails and spear pierced through the Son of God.

And yet, the suffering, sacrifice, and temptation of the Son of God is not swallowed up by sin and death.  Rather, death and sin are overcome through the suffering, sacrifice, and temptation of the Only Beloved Son.  For death was not able to contain the Author of Life, as His death became life for the whole world.  Every ounce of human sin was placed upon Him, and every ounce of the Father’s justice was poured out upon Him, so that as He rose victorious from the grave on that third day, the curse of sin and death were broken by Him.  In Him there is now no condemnation for those who live by grace through faith in His Vicarious Atonement—for He has become not only our death, but our eternal life.

So what becomes of Christian suffering, sacrifice, and temptation?  Like Abraham, we are often called into the darkness of this world, where pain and loss can be tremendous.  Christians bear the burdens of disease and injury, treachery, anguish and death.  But for us, like for blessed Abraham, the cross we bear makes little or no sense apart from Jesus Christ.  Abraham’s faith was tested, and his suffering pointed forward to the glorious salvation of Jesus Christ.  The Prophets and Apostles often suffered and died, as they bore witness to their Savior, Jesus Christ.  Many generations of Christians into our very day, suffer and die for their witness to our Savior Jesus Christ.  But written in the tears, agony, and blood of every Christian, is a testimony to the Only Beloved Son who has conquered every foe of mankind, giving forgiveness, hope, and everlasting life through His own suffering, sacrifice, and death.  Our temptations endured by faith, point back to our Savior, who endured every temptation, and yet remained without sin.  Our sufferings endured by faith, point to our Savior who suffered an eternity of condemnation in an instant, so that He might bring consolation to all creation.  Our sacrifices endured by faith, point to our Savior who was sacrificed for the sins of the world, so that He might be the salvation of all who would trust in Him.

In this faith, the Christian picks up the cross of suffering, sacrifice, and temptation that has been given to him by his Savior, that he might by grace through faith bear witness to the salvation won for us in our Lord Jesus Christ—just as our father Abraham did, nearly four millennia ago.  For in the salvation of Jesus we suffer with Him, we sacrifice with Him, we are tempted with Him, so that by faith in His grace and mercy, we might live in Him forever.  Amen.