1) The connection to Abraham’s life that acts as a theological motif of God’s instruction to him to leave the comfort zone life of Ur in response to God’s promise of the land of Canaan.

 

2) God testing his faith by commissioning him to sacrifice his own son.

 

3) His relationship with God is the archetypal model of how we should live our lives in obedience to Him. 

 

The most famous event that takes place in Abraham’s life is the key event on which we are focusing - his pledge to sacrifice his own son under God’s instruction; an event which illustrates the deeper realties of knowing God, and being in a relationship with Him, and one which when understood opens our eyes to a quite awesome revelation about God. 

 

But before we talk about the extraordinary wonders of the deeper meanings, let us admit that the story has caused much vexation and hostility among atheists, as they repeatedly persist with an attack which demonstrates a total misunderstanding of one of God’s most glorious involvements with mankind, what the story represents, and how it affects every single one of us. Perhaps the most famous disparagement of the story is found in Richard Dawkins’ best-selling book The God Delusion. Here he gives his own account of Abraham’s sacrifice…

 

 

It is not very surprising that a man seemingly far from knowing God can offer such a flawed perception of Abraham’s obedience. Here I shall offer what I believe to be a much more accurate account of God’s plan in asking Abraham to sacrifice his son, and then I will progress onto the extraordinary wonders of the deeper meanings as we peel off the accretive layers.

 

We must first begin with a quick look at the very early stages of Genesis to see the pattern that God was setting - a pattern of order, consonance and beauty. With the right interpretation of Genesis, we can learn something very profound from it – it invites us to steep ourselves both in God’s glory and in recognising the true nature of humanity; we can learn about the essence of the self, and the real nature of the self in relation to God. The story of the fall of man summarises perfectly the whole problem with which we are faced. We are proud, disobedient and rebellious, and we are susceptible to the thrall of a demon more powerful than us - the Devil, and the anti-God ‘ways of the world’. Yet in spite of this, God has a plan for the salvation of mankind; He is Lord of all and the ultimate victory will lie with Him – a victory that we can be a part of if we choose salvation over separation.

 

The central point of the situation which brought about the fall was miscommunication.  Adam was told that he may tend to all the trees but was only forbidden from eating from one tree - the tree of knowledge (Genesis 2:17). He was not told that he may not touch it (he would have to touch it to tend it), just that he must not eat from it. But later on when the Devil questions Eve she claims that they have been forbidden both from eating from the tree of knowledge and from touching it (Genesis 3:3). Now right away the Devil knew that Eve was weak and able to be deceived; he knew full well that that was not what God had instructed; he knew that he would be able to tempt her away because she did not understand God’s will properly. And notice that Adam was with her at the time (3:6) and he knew the correct instructions from God, but evidently he didn’t convey them properly to Eve. So we can see quite clearly what can and does go wrong when communication is amiss. 

 

The cursed Devil is told that he will eat dust (3:14), the dust which He attributes to man’s nature (3:19). But not only are we told in this message what the outcome of man’s sin will be - that the Devil will continue to wield power and negative influence over mankind - we are also told the answer to Adam’s sin. It is in Genesis 3:15 that we find the first prophecy about Christ; that despite His heel being struck, the Devil will be crushed and, thus, defeated (with the crucifixion and resurrection). So already we see that God had the answer for the problems of mankind - that His dying for us was the answer to the Devil’s thrall. 

 

And this is the principal message that we have for mankind. All this talk of false religions and humanistic solutions is not going to bring us to the point of the story; that God became a man because He wanted to bless us. Both the problem and the solution are found right in front of us, and it is with this antecedent knowledge that we will continue into the next section. 

 

God created us because He wanted to bless us. In Genesis 12 God called Abram (later to be Abraham) and told him that there will be great blessings in store both for him and for the nations of the world. But what does God mean by a blessing? Well the first thing we notice when using such a word is this; to be blessed is very different to being happy or content - being blessed is something far greater. In fact, the word for blessed in Hebrew is ‘barak’; God was committed to blessing Abram and the entire world through him. His willingness to obey God set a pattern for all of us to be blessed abundantly by our own obedience – and this is what links the two together - it was Abraham’s obedience that would prefigure the death of Christ. 

 

By being blessed we are empowered for success and we are able to prosper. To talk of being blessed is not to talk of good fortune; it is the ultimate empowerment - to be blessed by God. And under this blessing, we should not be afraid of earthly things, we should wear the armour with pride; we should go forth and do our utmost to help others to be blessed too. 

 

Now in a blessing of this kind, the lesser is always blessed by the greater, as God is greater than man. If I have every book ever written by Thomas Hardy and you have only two of his books, you can’t give me anything that I do not already have, whereas I can benefit you by giving you many Thomas Hardy books which you do not have. The nature of the greater (God) being able to bless the lesser (man) works in exactly the same way – He possess everything we could ever need and will give according to our willingness to receive, and often way beyond. Now of course there are other ways in which the lesser can do something to benefit the greater but they are secondary to this particular point. We find this very useful in our spiritual growth – just as God blesses, we too can bless people who do not have as much of something as we do; thus it is always important to continue to try to help people improve things that they are lacking (plus it is important that we learn how to receive as well as give, as others need to give too). The lesser can always be blessed by the greater and thus the greater always has the opportunity to bless those who are lesser. By lesser I do not, of course, mean inferior in human-human terms; I mean that whenever we meet someone who lacks something of which we have more, we have an opportunity to bless them so they can have more, both material things (in the case of the charity and the poor) and characteristical things (in the case of self-improvement and growth). 

 

We are told to submit to one another, thus if I have something you do not have or you have something I do not have, it is imperative that we both try our hardest to change the situation so that both of us has in abundance what we previously lacked. A sick man cannot tell everyone to get well in the same way that a well man can; thus it is even truer with men who wish to be angels – they cannot help another man fly unless their wings are strong first. The very nature of giving is that each should want the very best for his fellow human.

A moment ago I said that in Hebrew the word for blessed is ‘barak’; and that God was committed to blessing Abram and the entire world through him. Now what does the word ‘barak’ mean? The literal meaning of the word is ‘to kneel down’. Not kneel in worship but kneel to serve. Having understood this, we discover something profoundly astonishing; God says, ‘I will bless you’ - literally He said, ‘I will kneel down to serve you’. This does not mean, of course, that God is at our feet, for He is a whole lot more awesome than is even imaginable by human minds. No, it means that when He said to Abraham that he was going to ‘kneel down’ and serve him and, then, ‘kneel down’ and serve all the families of the earth, He was talking about an immeasurable act of selfless love; for in Christ we see a God who wants to do the most amazing things for us – in fact, the most amazing thing imaginable. The greatest is the servant of all and to be great means to serve. And here if we stop and think for a second about our God serving us, we are beginning to see the real nature of glory, not in what one can gain but in what one can give to a serving God, and what one can receive back. This, by the way, is why all the silly talk of deserving Heaven because of our merits is riddled with nonsense. You will frequently encounter people who claim that God must look upon their position in the kingdom favourably because of good actions they have performed or good traits that they possess. But in truth, none of us can give anything to God that is not His already; that is, all the praiseworthy things are His gifts to us and cannot be used to induce self-praise, much less as a bargaining tool for Heaven. It is by the grace of God and God alone that we have anything at all.

 

God has made a promise with us that through His Son we can have salvation. Now all this seems very opaque to much of the modern day generation, but the promise remains as true and real as it ever has been. One of the biggest examples of doubt is found in Genesis 15 when Abram (later Abraham) questioned the word of God regarding God’s promise about possession of Canaan; he said “how can I know?” – how could he know that such an acquisition would reach fruition? But God did a marvellous thing to show Abram that His word was true - He overlooked Abram’s doubt and offered greater reassurance that God’s plan will be realised, and of course, we see the plan does reach fruition. This is the first step in faith – trusting God; believing is seeing. 

 

We all know how frustrating it can be when we are trying to convince someone of something important when they just won’t believe it, or just can’t see it, so we try that much harder to offer them assurance. This is where the initial stages of faith will be found to be operating at a deeper level than we first imagine. It is not the faith that makes the word more true, nor is it the doubt that strengthens its truth; the word of God remains true whether we choose to accept it or not. 

 

I think there is a strange part of our psychology - what is often referred to as discounting the future - whereby our brains seem to suggest that somehow, at the deepest subliminal level, the word of God won’t be quite so true or relevant if we don’t think about it very much – that if we pretend the words of the New Testament do not apply to us or speak into our hearts, that the denial will somehow avert our gaze from the challenge of an honest genuine and candid self-analysis. But this denial is the kind of thinking that will make us into little Devils. By closing our eyes and ears to the message we close our minds to vital truths about the self, and miss something vital about God’s word – the price has already been paid, the assurance is with us already, so the demands are not about what we can do in the sense of earning salvation, they are about recognising the assurance.

 

Let us suppose that I have a new Rolex watch and I promise to buy you a brand new Rolex watch in the next week. You might have some doubt as to whether my claim is trustworthy; so there are, of course, things I could do to assure you. If I were to give you my Rolex watch as insurance against my failing, you would be in a ‘no lose’ situation because if I fail you still have what I was going to give you anyway. Our covenant with God is a little like this. Our Lord breaks the chains of doubt and anxiety that constrict us - He has already offered us the assurance on the cross; the duty is ours not to earn but to accept. 

 

But what could God do to offer us even greater assurance? There is only one thing that could supplement His glorious act of dying for us - that is to make an even greater connection with us - to send His own Spirit to live inside those who had taken the cross to their hearts; those who had taken their own crosses and accepted His covenant love. The cross of Christ would have been no truer or no less true if we had ignored it or embraced it - it is not our actions that make it true. But God, because of His abundant love for us, offered us even greater assurance - the Spirit of the living Christ inside us, the Christ who had become sin for us so He could cleanse us and give us a full life. 

 

Now Abram was anxious - he wanted to be absolutely certain that the land God promised him (Genesis 15) would assuredly be his. He was offered certainty from God’s instruction to sacrifice some animals, because he knew that a blood covenant would offer him all the certainty that he needed (he never had any doubts about the land after that). We have seen that just as Abraham was offered assurance through a blood sacrifice that we too are given even greater assurance from an even bigger sacrifice - the perfect sacrifice of Christ on the cross. This is analogous to a deeper mystique - Abraham’s story and what was to follow for him after the blood covenant, for here we begin to uncover something even more profound, we can see how ordinary earthly things can be suspended so that the relationship between God and man can reach a new height – by understanding what the instruction to sacrifice Isaac really means. When God told Abraham that He knew the extent of his fear of God and that he didn’t have to sacrifice Isaac, He made a new covenant with him. 

 

 

Here God tells Abraham that his descendants (plural) will possess the gates of their enemies and through your seed (singular) all nations on earth will be blessed. Now here we have a very significant moment, for this is the first time that God has told Abraham that it will be his seed rather than seeds that shall bless the nations. The seed to which he was referring is the same seed prophesied in Eden - it is a prophecy about Christ – it is Christ who will bless all nations on the cross. In the previous covenant God told Abraham that through Abraham himself the nations will be blessed. But the new covenant gave rise to an even more significant event. It would no longer be through Abraham but through God Himself; God Himself would bless all the families of the earth by becoming man; just as Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his own son for God, so God was prepared to sacrifice His own Son for mankind. 

 

When Abraham was about to leave his servant to go and sacrifice Isaac, he doesn’t speak as though he is going to return alone - in fact, he tells them to stay here with the donkey, and ‘we’will come back to you (Genesis 22:5). Yet if the sacrifice occurred ‘we’ the plural would be wrong, he would return alone without his son. This is the special cognisance that Abraham had; this is the special relationship - it was a profound suspension of normal doubt or normal fear - it was certainty that was being offered throughout his test. We see in Hebrews that..

 

 

Here we see something astounding. Abraham did not have to sacrifice Isaac, yet he still (figuratively speaking) received him back from death; that is, he has a prefiguration (a picture or representation) of his son coming back from the dead. Over a thousand years before Christ Abraham was given a glimpse of the special inner-transformation that we who recognise Christ can receive. The prefiguration was really a prefiguration of God’s one and only son - for just as God spared Abraham’s son, He did not spare His own (Romans 8:32) - He knew that in order to save us He had to give Himself. Just as Abraham had certainty that because of a covenant his son would be the seed which went on to bless all the families of the earth, we too are promised (Galatians 3:17) that through an even bigger covenant between God and mankind we can have certainty through the blood that Christ shed on the cross. And just as Abraham’s faith culminated in Christ being raised from the dead, our acceptance of Christ’s covenant with us will result in Him raising us from the dead into a full life with the Spirit of God. The Bible says (in Galatians 3:29) that if you belong to Christ then you are Abraham’s seed (singular) - which means that we too can be sons of God, that if we lose our life for Christ just as He lost His life for us we shall in doing so save our life and have eternal blessings with God. We are part of Abraham’s seed only insofar as we recognise the real nature of the seed and then grow in the seed - the seed of Christ. 

 

God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied. Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about." Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, "Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you." Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, "Father?" "Yes, my son?" Abraham replied. "The fire and wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" Abraham answered, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them went on together. When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the LORD called out to him from Heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied. "Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son." Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, "On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided." The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from Heaven a second time and said, "I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me." Genesis 22:1-18

 

The event is astounding for one incredible reason; the type of sacrifice that Abraham made was, I presume, a sacrifice that brought him as close to God as any person can be. Thus if a man is prepared to sacrifice himself to God in the same way that Abraham was ready to sacrifice Isaac he will find that he has transcended into extraordinary human dimensions; the discourse will no longer be about man’s cognition but about God’s multi-dimensional impartations. This probably explains the ‘figurative’ experience that is mentioned in Hebrews (11:17-19). It will be an experience which taps man’s psychology into the numinous. It will be transcendent in much the same way that the effect a piece of orchestral music has on a man in a valley bears only a transcendent relation to sound waves or grey matter. 

 

Now it is certainly true that Abraham was bound by the moral law not to commit murder - but here no such crime would have taken place; the normative standard was suspended by God for the sake of a covenant. It is what Kierkergaard called ‘a teleological suspension of the ethical’ in his wonderful book Fear and Trembling. The grander benefit which would result from Abraham’s action would benefit the world in a much greater way than adherence to the moral law would have. And just as God can suspend natural law with miraculous events, so too He can suspend the moral law for His own purposes. It is unwise of Richard Dawkins (and others) to condemn God’s character for the injunction. Condemning God for this is a little like condemning a man who ignored the ‘keep off the grass’ sign if it meant saving his child from falling in the lake. 

 

Abraham’s suspension of normal cognitive demands was suppressed by an even greater impartation - he was to be shown certainty that something which seems to defy God’s plan would be suspended in the most incredible way, for Abraham knew the greater of paradoxes - that killing Isaac would still result in him being a progenitor to all the families of the earth who would later be blessed by his action of sacrificing Isaac. The seeds of Isaac from the seed of Abraham would eventually be the seed of Christ, the seed that set mankind free; so in the context of mankind’s future blessing God had to send Abraham into a cognitive state far transcendent of normative human cognition. The appeal to ethics must be suspended for an appeal to the numinous – one might even say, to the miraculous. There must be a providential domain which can be admitted to be higher; not just higher than man’s perception of morality (which lends itself to uniformity), but higher than the moral law itself, and this is where God can administer a teleological suspension of the ethical. 

 

This does not mean, of course, that when we think we know God we can suspend our ethical duty; it means that there exists a Heavenly fabric into which even strands of morality are woven, and can be sampled when by His will we are elevated to a greater understanding of God (this potential might also occur with our God-given ability to heal). The ‘belonging’ is a relationship of subordination; the moral standard serves as a template in guiding us to goodness, whereas in relation to the Heavenly realm, it is serving no purpose smaller than itself - it is part of a much bigger end – how Abraham’s faith, and what it would lead to, would prove to be the most significant human template that mankind ever had. And it this we shall look at next week in part two.

The views carried here are those of the author, not of Network Norwich and Norfolk, and are intended to stimulate constructive debate between website users. We welcome your thoughts and comments, posted below, upon the ideas expressed here. You can also contact the author direct at james.knight@norfolk.gov.uk  

James is a Norwich local government officer, author and Proclaimers church member in Norwich. You can access his current collections of columns here

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