Here is the passage referred to:
And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of (Genesis 22:1-2).
This concern is troubling on a number of levels. First, it’s horrendous to think of parents killing their own children. Second, it raises the disquieting thought: What if God tells me or anyone else to do it today?
But God tested a single man, significantly, whose faith in God had grown over about a hundred years. Before Abraham’s wife conceived, God had promised to give him many descendents through Isaac, his son. Thirteen years after Isaac’s birth, God gave the command to take him to the mountain and sacrifice him.
This test was not abhorrent to Abraham. Why not? God had shown Him His power by giving him a son when he and his wife were beyond child-bearing age -– they were each over a hundred years old when Isaac was born! As God raised this child to life from a dead womb, so Abraham knew God would raise him from the dead again (Heb. 11:18). It was the only way God could keep his promise to Abraham.
Today, the faith of many men today is so weak that it would be a major personal trauma if God told them to simply remember a promise they gave to their wife, such as to take out the trash regularly, or to be men of their word. If God told you to read the Bible through in a year, or memorize scripture on a regular basis, would you find that offensive or impossible to keep? Many of us in America just can’t imagine a faith like Abraham’s; on the other hand, there are many in the 60 countries hostile to Christianity today who will literally give their own lives for Christ.
How can we love a God who told Abraham to kill his son? Just as one does not love a judge on the bench because he sentences people to the death penalty, but we can for other reasons, so it is with God. We love Him for Jesus Christ’s willingness to die on the cross and bear the punishment we deserve for our sins, then rose again from the grave to grant forgiveness of sins and power over sin to all who place their trust in Him. People have many traits; we love them for some traits (such as a judge for volunteering at a soup kitchen) and are indifferent with regards to other traits (such as his routinely passing sentences in court).
Interestingly, the Old Testament is full of stories that have a spiritual undercurrent referring to a future like event. In this case, Abraham’s sacrificial offering of his son foreshadowed God’s offering of His Son as a sacrifice for our sins on the same mountain.
God tested only one person in over thousands of years of recorded history this way, and has never shown any interest in doing so again. So we need not think that this is a widespread phenomenon, nor should we expect it to be something for God to repeat. God will never tell me to kill my child. Actually, Christians are following the mandate of God of trying to prevent the killing of children through abortion, which claims over 3,000 babies a day. If a woman assents to the killing of the unborn, would we find her totally unlovable? Hardly.
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