On every Good Friday, many of us contemplate the sacrifice that God made on our behalf, a sacrifice that He made willingly. Other than on Good Friday, how often do we think about it? We should contemplate this much more often than just on that one day because without the shedding of His blood on that day, we would remain dead in our sin to this day. I think we should contemplate something else as well. Even though it was His sacrifice that paid our sin debt, in full, He requires sacrifice of us as well. I think we don’t talk about this nearly enough and so I would like to talk about it now.
The coming of Jesus and His sacrifice was foreshadowed in the Old Testament in many ways. I would like to look at one example of this foreshadowing, connect this foreshadowing up with the actual sacrifice of Jesus Himself, and see what we can learn from these things.
Let’s talk a bit about the story of Abraham and Isaac.
God promised Abraham that he would have a son, with his wife Sarah, and that, through that son, all nations would be blessed and that Abraham’s descendants would be too numerous to count. Abraham was a godly man but he did not always do everything as God would have had him to. And yet, when Abraham was 100 and when Sarah was 90, miraculously, they did have the son that God had promised. They did as God had instructed and named their son Isaac. It was through the lineage of Isaac that the nation of Israel was to be formed and through that lineage that Jesus would come.
Let’s look at Genesis, chapter 22, verses 1 through 18.
Genesis 22
1 Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”
2 Then He said, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”
3 So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son; and he split the wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.
4 Then on the third day Abraham lifted his eyes and saw the place afar off.
5 And Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you.”
6 So Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife, and the two of them went together.
7 But Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” Then he said, “Look, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”
8 And Abraham said, “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.” So the two of them went together.
9 Then they came to the place of which God had told him. And Abraham built an altar there and placed the wood in order; and he bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, upon the wood.
10 And Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.
11 But the Angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” So he said, “Here I am.”
12 And He said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”
13 Then Abraham lifted his eyes and looked, and there behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up for a burnt offering instead of his son.
14 And Abraham called the name of the place, The-Lord-Will-Provide; as it is said to this day, “In the Mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”
15 Then the Angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time out of heaven,
16 and said: “By Myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son—
17 blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies.
18 In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.”
I would like to stop for a moment here and point something out. Multiple times in the above Scripture, Isaac is referred to as Abraham’s only son. If you are familiar with the story of Abraham, You may say but what about Ishmael, who was born before Isaac? The Hebrew word used for “only” is “yachiyd”, which means unique. Isaac was unique in that he was the child of promise and in that he was born to Sarah when she was 90 years old. This idea that “only son” really means “unique son” is significant and will come up again later.
Abraham was tested, to see if he would be willing to sacrifice Isaac. He passed the test, in multiple ways.
For one thing, he trusted God. He knew that Isaac was the child through which God’s promise would be fulfilled (Genesis 17). He knew that God asking him to sacrifice Isaac did not nullify God’s earlier promise. So, even though he did not understand how, he knew that God would reconcile these two things in some way. In Verse 5, Abraham told his men that both he and Isaac would be coming back to them. In verse 8, he told Isaac that God would provide Himself a sacrificial lamb (a foreshadowing of Jesus). You see, he trusted God completely.
Ultimately, Abraham passed the test because, if God required it, he clearly was willing to actually sacrifice Isaac. God didn’t stop Abraham from actually going through with it until Abraham reached for the knife. In the end, God did not require him to actually make the sacrifice but He did require the willingness to make the sacrifice. Because Abraham was willing, he was blessed beyond measure.
It’s the same way for us. God does not always require us to sacrifice a particular thing but he does always require that we truly be willing to sacrifice anything and everything.
He is not asking us to do anything that He was not willing to do. God, Himself, was willing to sacrifice His Son, for us, and Jesus was willing to go through with that sacrifice. Let’s look at the willingness of Jesus.
First, we have to look at what it is that Jesus was willing to do. Hell is a real place. In Matthew 13:50, Jesus called Hell a furnace of fire. He did not want us to have to endure that. Second Corinthians 5:21 says that Christ never sinned but he took our sins on himself and Romans 5:8 says that He died as punishment for those sins. He took the Hell that we deserve.
We just talked about Abraham being willing. Jesus was also willing. He did have a choice about doing what He did, about the sacrifice He made for us, and I think we tend to forget that. Speaking of His own life, in John 10:18, Jesus said “No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. In Matthew 26:53, just before His trial, Jesus said to Peter “do you think that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He will provide Me with more than twelve legions of angels?” In John 19:11, Jesus told Pilate “You could have no power at all against Me unless it had been given you from above”. Jesus’ sacrifice was in the Father’s plan but Jesus had a choice and He voluntarily followed that plan. He was willing to sacrifice everything and, in so doing, He gained everything.
Let’s look at Philippians, chapter 2, verses 5 through 11.
Philippians 2
5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,
6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God,
7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.
8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.
9 Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth,
11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Because Jesus was willing to sacrifice everything, God set Him over everything. One day, every single person will bow before Him and confess that He is Lord. We can do it now, because we are willing, or we can do it then, because we are forced to, but we will all do it.
Because Abraham was willing, he was blessed beyond measure (Genesis 22:16). Because Jesus was willing, He was blessed beyond measure (Philippians 2:9). If we are willing, we too will be blessed beyond measure. But we can’t make that decision lightly because when we say that we are willing, we have to remember what it is that we are saying we are willing to do. We are saying that we are willing to sacrifice everything, that we are willing to give Him everything.
Salvation is not complicated but we have sometimes oversimplified it. We like to say that salvation is free but that isn’t exactly true. It is true that Jesus paid our sin debt but it is not true that salvation costs us nothing at all.
A few years ago, my youngest son wanted to get his mom a Christmas gift, which cost about $50. There was a problem. He only had about $5. I told him not to worry about it. I told him that he could put in his $5 and I would pay the rest. I have a question. Would it be accurate to say that her gift cost him nothing? No. It did cost him his $5. It cost him everything he had. It cost me much more than that. That was OK. He was willing to give everything he had to give but what he had wasn’t enough so I gave the rest and I was happy to do it because he was my son.
It’s like that for us and Jesus. We are not capable of paying the price for our sin and so He paid it and He gave everything He had in order to do so. He requires the same of us. If we truly want to have a relationship with Him and live for Him, we have to give Him everything we have. That isn’t enough to cover our sin debt. From our side of the equation, it isn’t about covering the debt, it’s about establishing the relationship. It is Him that actually pays the price, and He is happy to do that, once we are His. We have to give Him everything, to show Him and everyone else that we are His.
Have you done that?
Let’s look at John 3:16.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Here, Jesus is referred to as God’s only begotten Son. Remember that I said we would come back to the only son topic? Here we are. The Greek term translated here as “only begotten” is “monogenes”, which means one of a kind or unique. Jesus was one of a kind in that he was the only one Who ever lived a sinless life and so was the only man who could be the perfect sacrificial lamb to atone for our sins. Hebrews 9:22 says that without the shedding of blood, there can be no remission of sins. Our sins were removed through the shedding of His blood.
The word “believe” here does not just denote affirmation of existence. It denotes action. Abraham was willing to take action, in that he was willing to sacrifice the life of his son, Isaac. God was willing to take action in that He was willing to sacrifice His Son, Jesus. He wasn’t just willing. He did. Now, the question is, are you willing to sacrifice? Are you willing to truly give your life to Him Who gave His life for you?
If you want to know more about how to do that, please look at the “The Most Important Thing” section of this website.
