Rooted in Love to Grasp the Boundless Love, 11/23/2008

When we relate the story of Abraham offering Isaac to Christ’s sufferings on the cross, we can see that Abraham’s experience was a prefigure of how God would feel when Christ died on the cross. Isaac’s death was avoided as God has prepared a lamb as His substitute. There is a Lamb who will come and die as the substitute for our sins. This is something that will happen many years later — but, Abraham grasped this many years earlier. Abraham caught a glimpse of this. Abraham entered into this experience — the very experience of the love between God and Christ as Christ went to the cross.
On the one hand, the offering of Isaac was a test to Abraham’s faith; on the other hand, this was a deep experience of the love of God as He gave His Son to us on the cross. When God said to Abraham, “You have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” — it is as if God is saying, “just as I will not withhold from you my Son, my Only Son.” On that day on Mount Moriah, Abraham grasped the love that surpasses knowledge — the love which is incomprehensible, the love which is length, breadth, height and depth, the love of Christ. He grasped it by offering to God the very thing that is dearest to his heart in loving obedience to God’s will.