Genesis 22:12 esv

“He said, ‘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.’”

When he heard those words, Abraham was about to slit his son’s throat and burn his body. Three days prior, he had been told by God to do just that. God told Abraham to take his son, his only son, the son he loves and offer him as a burnt offering.¹ He was to go specifically to this mountain and kill his son as a sacrifice to Yahweh.

It wasn’t simply the fact that he loves his son, Isaac, that made this a difficult thing to do. This son was special. His name was literally “laughter.” He’d been given that name by God directly because Abraham had laughed at the impossibility that this child would ever be born. Abraham was old, as good as dead. His wife had been barren and was well past the age for bearing kids. Yet God made it happen, just like he’d promised.

Abraham was supposed to be the father of a great multitude! This child was the child through whom all the nations were to be blessed! Hope for humanity seemed to rest on this boy. God had explicitly promised that he would make his covenant with Isaac.² What was God thinking? Was he capricious? Was this a mood-swing? That happens with the other gods.

Hebrews tells us that Abraham even considered that God was able to raise Isaac from the dead.³ His faith was so strong that he was ready to slaughter and burn his son with the expectation that God would somehow keep his promise of raising up offspring, creating a nation, and blessing the nations through that same son.

God stops Abraham. This makes sense. Slaughtering Isaac wouldn’t really accomplish anything except making a mess. Abraham can’t offer Isaac to pay for his sins.⁴ Isaac couldn’t really pay for his own sins since he’d be dead. God provides a ram to sacrifice instead, but even that really wasn’t the true substitute. Another beloved Son would have to be sacrificed. Jesus would have to die. Maybe that’s why Abraham named the mountain “Yahweh will provide” and not Yahweh did provide.”⁵

But God makes a big deal about this faith. It’s as if you can’t test a man any more than asking him to kill his own son. God knew what was in Abraham; he’d already justified Abraham by faith.⁶ But this was the external and undeniable proof that the faith was there. “Now I know” could almost be translated “Now I’ve experienced.”⁷ Abraham’s faith was made visible by his willingness to sacrifice Isaac; there was nothing God could ask that Abraham would not be willing to do.

Paul echoes the language of Genesis 22:12, I believe intentionally, when he makes the case that God’s sending Jesus means that there is nothing God will fail to give us. If he could ask nothing more of Abraham than his son, than God can give nothing more to us than his Son.

In Christ we have everything. We need not fear anything. It is the loudest way that anyone can say “I love you.” The divine and innocent Son of God slaughtered on the Cross for our sins⁸ is God’s way of shouting His love and grace more clearly than anything else he could have done.⁹ Salvation is accomplished and we need not doubt that God will do everything necessary to save his elect;¹⁰ really, he already did. God, our provider, provided.

Paul said it better than I can, though. Read his words:

Romans 8:31–39 esv

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.