on sacrifice

When, at our gathering of Bethany Bible School last month, I asked for insights from the students on the meaning of “sacrifice” as it appears in 1 John 4:10, one old man referred me to the story of Abraham offering Isaac (Gen 22:1-19). And so it happened that I began to ponder that story once again.

The old man’s point, I think, was that “sacrifice” is an act of “love”—the main theme of the 1 John text we were studying. That, of course, is also how the author put it there: “Not that we loved God but that God loved us, and sent his only Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 Jn 4:10).

Many theologians in the West, both professional and lay, would dispute the assumption that sacrifice is an expression of love, that God’s sending of the Son to his slaughter proves not God’s love but God’s cruel detachment. However one interprets the Aqedah, “the binding of Isaac” from Genesis 22, on its own merits, the New Testament’s interpretation of that story—of which the 1 John text may be one example—is a classic example of employing a human story to speak of the mysteries of God. In other words, the story of Abraham offering up his “only son, Isaac, whom [he] loves” became for the New Testament authors a window on the Heavenly Father who offered up his “only begotten Son” for a sinful world. For the New Testament authors, the story of Abraham and Isaac illuminated the story of Jesus, the one whom they “declared to be the Son of God” (Rom 1:4).

The key, of course, is that the New Testament’s declaration of “the Son” does not imply his distance but his closeness to the Father—a closeness so close so as to reveal that they were really One Person. Yet, when that One should appear in flesh—a new realm for the One who is not a human being—he cannot but acquire another human title which differentiates him from the experience of him in the realm of pure Spirit. That title, of flesh married to Spirit within God, is “the Son”.

Once, therefore, the Son is understood, not from the perspective of pure flesh (“from a human point-of-view”) (2 Cor 5:16) but from flesh-in-Spirit, the Son ceases to be a pure object of slaughter, something acted upon by someone else. The Son becomes, rather, both Subject and Object, One who gives himself to the world of flesh. The Son is not simply the human Jesus, sent to his death by Another; the Son is Jesus the “Christ”, the one “in” whom “God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor 5:19). The “Father” is not detached; the “Father” is in the “Son.”

From the perspective of closeness, therefore, one also begins to appreciate the metaphor of Abraham and Isaac, a father and his son, for the Father and the Son. For, when we read that Abraham heard the word to “take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love . . . and offer him there as a burnt offering . . .” (Gen 22:2), we remember, from knowing the whole story, that this Isaac was the same son of his old age, the one promised him with his wife Sarah before they as yet had any heir. It was this Isaac for whom they waited and scarcely dared to hope, this Isaac who, when announced by angels, was greeted with the laughter of incredulity (Gen 17:17; 18:12). It was this Isaac who, when born, actualized the promise of God that Abraham might become the father of many nations, his descendants more numerous than the stars in the sky (Gen 15:5). This is the Isaac whom God now says to sacrifice, he the long-awaited promise now given up.

It is from this perspective--the story of a human father Abraham giving up his human son Isaac--that 1 John 4 has drawn its interpretation of God in human flesh in Jesus the Christ. In other words, it is not from the characterization of God at the outset of Genesis 22--the God who simply "tests" and commands Abraham to offer Isaac as a "burnt offering"--that the author of 1 John has found inspiration; it is from Abraham's, the father's, "sacrifice" of his "only son, whom he loved." 1 John's inspiration, moreover, comes not specifically from the father Abraham, that is, in isolation, nor from the son Isaac, but from the "sacrifice"--with all its intense relational implications. Abraham the father with Isaac the son approaches, becomes the best available analogy for God in Christ, because the story so vividly "counts the cost" of "offering up", of "sacrifice" (Lk 14:28). Whatever Abraham's reasons for heeding the call to offer Isaac, or however obvious it may seem that Abraham's will to kill Isaac was to deny his love for him, the background to the text--the personal history of father and son and all the implications of their relationship--and the text itself illustrates the complexities, the hardships, the suffering inherent to love. Precisely because Abraham "loved" Isaac is their story a story of sacrifice. Only that which is loved is truly "offered up".

Because the story of Abraham and Isaac is, therefore, a true offering, it invites, for those who know it, comparison with another story of authentic love. Considering the giving up of the son of promise, the one through whom the world was promised to Abraham, we glimpse the depth of the love of the God who "sent his only Son into the world . . . to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 Jn 4:9-10). We see, that is, that God gave up God's own Self-identification. Like Abraham who gave up his God-promised dreams for posterity in offering his son, so God gave Godself in the person of the Son. The Spirit takes on flesh. The Source of life enters death. The Light confronts the darkness. The blessed becomes the cursed (Gal 3:13). The Righteous One is made to be sin (2 Cor 5:21). In the Son, God denies Godself--everything, that is, but his love. "So that we might live through him" (1 Jn 4:9).

-Joe