The Triumph of Faith

In one of the classics of modern philosophy, Fear and Trembling, Søren Kierkegaard brings the reader into a tortured view into Genesis 22—God seeming to command contrary to what He had promised. To respond well to God was an act of faith against the understanding. We get the expression “leap of faith” from this. There’s just one problem. That is not the biblical psychological profile of Abraham. We are told by the author of Hebrews:

“He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back” (Heb. 11:19).

At best, Kierkegaard’s challenge is a minor note. What really comes to the forefront here are three things:

• Abraham as a Type of the Believer

• Isaac as a Type of Christ

• God as Provider and Provision

Doctrine. The true believer must trust and obey God in the most difficult thing to give up.

Abraham as a Type of the Believer

The very first words of the text are crucial: ‘After these things God tested Abraham’ (v. 1).1 The Hebrew for TESTED, according to Waltke, with “a personal object … means ‘test another to see whether the other proves worthy’ (1 Kings 10:1; 2 Chron. 9:1; Dan. 1:12, 14).”2 God did that. Chapter 1, verse 1—“In the beginning God.” Chapter 3, verse 15—“I [God] will put enmity between.” At the beginning of Job, which the majority Christian tradition believed was in the time of the patriarchs, who initiates with Satan in the heavenly court, not once but twice? God says to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job?” (1:8; 2:3) When Jesus went into the wilderness to be tempted, how did He get there again? “The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness” (Mk. 1:12). I see a pattern. As another has said,

“Satan tempts us to destroy us (1 Peter 5:8; James 1:15; Rom. 6:23), but God tests us to strengthen us (Ex. 20:20; Deut. 8:2).”3

But why did God test Abraham? Following from everything we have seen so far, it is as an example to us of faith persevering through our limited sight. Again, see Romans 4 and Hebrews 11 on their interpretations of what was brought out of Abraham’s testing.

So, how is he a type? It is as “father of those who would have faith.” In order for types to function in the biblical narrative, they must be extreme in one form or another.

But this is implied already in the words of response given in Genesis 22.

This is why the Apostle James picks up the theme of justification by faith alone as Paul taught it and ensures that the doctrine is not misunderstood and abused. This faith that justified Abraham before God was not a mere profession, but one which trusts and obeys. So where Paul speaks of being “justified” before God in a legal sense—that is, made right with God—James speaks of being “justified” in an evidential sense. So he says,

“But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works … Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone” (Jas. 2:18, 21-24).

It made no sense on the surface. Isaac was the child of promise.

But lest we get the idea that Abraham was only scratching his head instead of losing his life, the text repeats a word ten times, not to recalculate but to suffocate. The word ten times is son,4 and here in verse 2, your “only son.” Take your very life. Rip your own heart out. Just when hope was lost and turned into joy, give it back to me.

Isaac as a Type of Christ

Note these seven details about Isaac in this account.

First, he was called his “only son” (v. 2). When the New Testament calls Isaac the monogenes, or “only son” (Heb. 11:17), it is just as when the Psalmist called David the “firstborn … of the kings on earth” (Ps. 89:27). There, prototokos has the same connotations of the inheritances as monogenes.

Second, he obeyed his father (vv. 7-9).

Third, he carried the wood he would be sacrificed upon, as Christ carried His cross (v. 6).

Fourth, he was bound (v. 9).

Fifth, he was silent (vv. 8-9).

Sixth, he was to be a burnt offering (v. 8).5

Seventh, it was to be the father who exacted the punishment—‘ Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son’ (v. 10)

There is another sense in which Isaac was a type of Christ that connects directly with Abraham’s test of faith. As I said, Isaac was the promised one. If Isaac was cut off, then the inheritance, the kingdom, and the glory of the new world are all gone. But do you not remember this very reasoning among the disciples—most famously, by Peter—at the thought of Jesus being delivered up to die?

“And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, ‘Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you” (Mat. 16:22).

“This cannot happen! Not this way!” If the promised one is cut off—if the one who has been given to fulfill all one’s hopes and dreams himself falls, then, what will happen? And yet, there is that statement in Hebrews: “He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead” (11:19).

God as Provider and Provision

God intervenes through the agency of an angel again: ‘And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son’ (v. 13). As Isaac was a type of Christ in the willingness of the sacrifice and the preciousness in the eyes of the one offering, now this ram would be a type of Christ as a substitute.

“the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness” (Rom. 3:24-25).

Something about God is always on center stage in the gospel. So it was here: ‘So Abraham called the name of that place, ‘The LORD will provide’; as it is said to this day, ‘On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided’ (v. 14). ‘While the root word is “to see,” ra’ah (רָאָה), nevertheless the construction in the sentence takes the noun form (יִרְאֶ֑ה). It may be that the context of the verb form that follows—“it will be provided” (יֵרָאֶֽה)—informs how the noun form, as the second part of a divine name, “Adoni [will] Provide,” is rendered. It should also be noted that we derive the English word provision (as well as providence) from a construct in the Latin language of the ideas “to see” (videre) and “before” (pro). The sense of “see” comes to mean “see to it.”6

God does not simply see all and do nothing, nor do any without seeing all. Stephen Charnock wrote,

“As the knowledge of God is not a bare contemplation of a thing, so his presence is not a bare inspection into a thing. Were it an idle, careless presence, it [would be] a presence to no purpose, which cannot be imagined of God. Infinite power, goodness, and wisdom, being everywhere present with his essence, are never without their exercise.”7

All that is in God is God, and so to have God is to have all that is worth having at one’s disposal.

Practical Use of the Doctrine

Use 1. Correction. We must answer an objection about this passage that comes courtesy of the Open Theist or others who do not want to believe in an all-knowing God who transcends time and does not depend in any way on what the creature does. The objection is this: “In verse 12, God says ‘Now I know’; therefore, prior to this, He did not know.” However, this is an example of God using accommodating speech in order to communicate in a narrative form a truth about Abraham’s having been refined in his faith, and in a way we can understand. It is not meant to be a statement of theology proper. For example, God is not communicating any amount of surprise for how it turned out.

Use 2. Exhortation. Peter also speaks generally to this, even if not about Abraham by name:

“In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:6-7).

God is fashioning a new world by fire. That means that He is burning the dross of the old world out of us. Yet indwelling sin in us is attached to this or that in the old world. Hence, the pain. What are the action items for us? Two—trust and obey. First, trust.

“For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith” (1 Jn. 5:4).

Second, obey. Matthew Henry comments of this: “The best evidence of our fearing God is our being willing to serve and honor him with that which is dearest to us.”8

Use 3. Consolation. In the earliest days of ministry for me, I would find myself counseling mothers when the couple was discovering the doctrines of grace. The last pin preventing the mother every time was this: What about my son? The question betrayed a fundamentally misplaced hope, and I would make a bee-line to address it.

So it is with our children. They are never safer than in the arms of He who alone can save them in the first place. This letting go is more easily said than done.

The location of this sacrifice was a place called Mount Moriah. It is said to be the present day spot of the Temple on the Mount.9 There 1000 years later, toward the end of King David’s life, after he had sinned big, he wanted to sacrifice on this spot: “And Gad came that day to David and said to him, ‘Go up, raise an altar to the LORD on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.” (2 Sam. 24:18).

“Then Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take and offer up what seems good to him. Here are the oxen for the burnt offering and the threshing sledges and the yokes of the oxen for the wood. All this, O king, Araunah gives to the king.” And Araunah said to the king, “May the LORD your God accept you.” But the king said to Araunah, “No, but I will buy it from you for a price. I will not offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God that cost me nothing” (vv. 22-24).

And there on that same rough spot one-thousand years after that, the ultimate Seed of Abraham and true King David offered up Himself. That which was most costly, given up by the Father, has been given.

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1. According to Waltke, “At least a decade has passed since the last chronological notice that Isaac was weaned (see 21:8). He is now old enough to carry a load of firewood sufficient for the sacrifice of an animal” (Genesis: A Commentary, 303).

2. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary, 304.

3. Youngblood, Genesis, 186, quoted in Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary, 304.

4. Genesis 22:2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 16.

5. The law of Moses forbids such sacrifices, and many skeptics have brought this up either about a supposed inconsistency in the law—“You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the LORD” (Lev. 18:21); “Say to the people of Israel, Any one of the people of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech shall surely be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him with stones” (Lev. 20:2)—or else as a supposed monstrosity in God.

6. 22:14 The Lord will provide. The Hebrew word here translated “provide” means “see” or “see to it” (used in vv. 4, 8, 13, 14). The name by which Abraham commemorates the event shows that he perceives God’s revelation of His saving purpose. Sproul, R. C. (Ed.). (2015). The Reformation Study Bible: English Standard Version (2015 Edition) (p. 48). Orlando, FL: Reformation Trust.

7. Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, I:585.

8. Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, 53.

9. Waltke comments that the “region of Torah … probably refers to Jerusalem (see 2 Chron. 3:1, followed by Josephus, the Targums, and the Talmud [b. Ta‘an. 16a])” (Genesis: A Commentary, 305).