God of Life

Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see My day. He saw it and was glad. John 8:56

This statement sounds like a riddle. Jesus says that Abraham was looking forward to “seeing his day” and he had seen it, long before Jesus was born. What could he mean? When had Abraham “seen his day”, and why did he rejoice?

Most likely, Jesus means that Abraham had seen the day of Jesus, his cross, figuratively in his own foiled attempt to offer Isaac as a sacrifice to God. This raises the question, how are the cross of Jesus and offering of Isaac related?

One might assume that God prevented Abraham from offering Isaac because later Jesus would be offered instead, but could this be right? The rabbis understood the Isaac story as God declaring an end to human sacrifice which was commonly practiced in the ancient world, and Abraham himself, from his pagan background, thought it appropriate. But this proposed reading would mean that God really does want human sacrifice, only Jesus instead of Isaac.

Can God be saying “no” to human sacrifice when it is anyone other than Jesus, but “yes” at Calvary? Is Abraham’s joy that at least it is not his son who has to die? Reading the story this way seems very convoluted and makes us question God’s nature. Is he really a God of death?

A better reading is that God wanted Abraham to offer Isaac as a living sacrifice, not a dead corpse. Is that not Paul’s conclusion in Romans 12:1? Abraham misunderstood the assignment, thinking this new God he’d met was like all the other gods. But the One who called him is a God of life and not death, and this is why Abraham rejoiced!

The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. Acts 5:30-31

The early preaching of the apostles shows why Abraham rejoiced to glimpse the truth of God doing away with death. God is granting repentance, a change of mind and heart, to Israel, and forgiveness precisely because he is a God of life. Unforgiveness is death. Lack of repentance is death. God raises Jesus because he is a God of life.

The only sacrifices God wants are living ones we give out of love. This is exactly how Jesus offers himself to the world, as a gift of God’s love to overcome every form of death, even though we insist on it. Death from our hand becomes life from God’s.

Abraham saw the truth of the cross in God’s refusal to accept the death of Isaac. A reversal of death from a God of life was the cause of his joy.