The true test of faith...

Still enjoying my daily reading in the first book in the Bible, I was reflecting last week on that well known account in Genesis 22, where Abraham is on the point of sacrificing his young son, Isaac. It’s a disturbing story for many, as the cultural backdrop to those events is completely unfamiliar to us today. We’re horrified that a father could even contemplate giving up his own child... because we don’t remember that such an action was a common occurence among the heathen tribes of Canaan, and not shocking at all to people who didn't know the God of Israel. But we do know that God, and perhaps we’re aghast that a God of love would even ask such a thing of Abraham. Of course, it’s true that it was never God’s intention for any harm to come to the boy, and that the whole episode, according to Genesis 22 vs 1 was simply a way of testing and strengthening Abraham’s faith.... Perhaps, though, our minds can’t fathom what this horrendous experience had to do with faith.

Sometimes we interpret these events to mean that God was testing whether Abraham was willing to give up what was most precious to him; checking whether the Lord was more important to him than his son was. This might have been true and included in the test, but I don’t believe that this in itself is necessarily about faith; this would have been more about testing Abraham’s commitment, or allegiance, or even simple obedience. If Abraham had been willing to lose his son for God’s sake, it would have proved his loyalty to God, but not necessarily his faith. You can be loyal without having or exercising real faith.  There are people who go to church every Sunday, yet they have serious doubts about whether God is good and kind and loving. Loyalty is about following someone, no matter what the cost. Faith, on the other hand, is about believing in who God is, in His good and loving character, and holding on to what He has said or promised to do for us. As the writer to the Hebrews so clearly discerned it (Hebrews 11: 17 - 19), the point of faith here is that Abraham knew God had promised to give him many descendants through Isaac.

As I read the story again, I’m tempted to think that it was never really about losing Isaac, and I suspect that Abraham knew that too. I wonder if the true evidence of Abraham’s faith, in this story, was not the part where he raised the knife above the altar, but was actually even before that: in verse 5, when he tells his servants that he and the boy will both come back after they have worshipped; and in verse 8, when he tells his son that God will provide an animal for the sacrifice. The proof of Abraham’s faith was that he was convinced nothing would stop God from doing what He had said He would do.... and God had promised that Isaac would be an integral part of that. Does it make Abraham’s faith less, if he believed that he wouldn’t really lose his son? No! Perhaps it makes it even more obvious that he was really trusting in what God had promised. 

When it came to the crunch, when he raised his knife in the air, he was not only proving his allegiance (“Okay, maybe there’s going to be no last minute lamb, after all.”), he’s also proving his faith, because suddenly he’s brought to a place of having to trust God for something that had never before happened in the history of mankind; something that no one had ever even dared to imagine: that a person could be raised to life again after death, and that our God is a God of resurrection. Not only was that prophetic, it was also true faith in action.

So it's interesting, in verse 12, that when God intervenes and stops Abraham's hand, He doesn't say, "Now I know you have faith, Abraham." He says, "Now I know that you have respect for the Lord." It seems to point to the fact that the real test of faith wasn't so much about giving up his son as about believing he'd get him back again. And maybe our own tests of faith are not so much about how much we're willing to give for the Lord, but more about how much we're able to receive from Him.