Later in Abraham’s life, after a decades long battle with infertility, God blessed Abraham and his wife Sarah with a son, Isaac. God tested Abraham’s loyalty by instructing Abraham to sacrifice his only son on an altar. Just as Abraham was about to plunge the dagger into the soft flesh of his boy, God stopped him and said, “Do not lay a hand on the boy. Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” (Genesis 22:12).
In the next verse we read this, “Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.” (Genesis 22:13).
Our heavenly Father is the true and better Abraham who was not asked to sacrifice his only Son, but willingly, on his own initiative, sent him. And when the hammers were raised to plunge the nails into his Son’s hands and feet, no verbal command to cease ever came.
Jesus is the true and better Isaac who willingly laid his life out on the altar with no ram to serve as his substitute. Jesus is the ram. He himself is our substitute.
The Bible is not a collection of isolated stories, but a single, unified story ultimately about Jesus Christ.
