Thought for the week: The measure of God's love for us all
"Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him. But the old man would not do so, but he slew his son, And half the seed of Europe, one by one."
So ends early 20th century English poet and soldier Wilfred Owen’s poem ‘The Parable of the Old Man and the Young’, his verdict on those who took Europe to war in 1914.
It is based, of course, on the story in the Old Testament, in which, to test him, Abraham is commanded by God to sacrifice his son (Genesis 22: 1-14). For three days, Abraham, Isaac and two servants walk to the place of sacrifice, Abraham silent about what he is about to do.
On Isaac, born in fulfilment of God’s promise, depends on all that God has promised him, descendants, their possession of the land, themselves a blessing to the nations. As they walk the last part of the journey alone, the boy, carrying the wood, asks the innocent question: "Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"
Abraham’s answer is evasive. "God himself will provide the lamb !"
If Abraham is to meet the test imposed upon him, he must sacrifice his son.
Only when Isaac lies bound upon the wood on the altar and Abraham has the knife in his hand does he hear the angel of the Lord calling upon him to stop. He sees a ram caught in a thicket, and offers that instead of his son. The effect of this upon Isaac, and upon Abraham’s relationship with his beloved and only son, we can only imagine. Although old enough to carry the wood, Isaac was young enough to be overpowered and bound by his father.
The Bible is not concerned with today’s psychology. But, by comparison with Abraham and Jacob, Isaac is a shadowy figure. His father sends a servant to his ancestral home to find him a wife. After a life not unlike his father’s, he is deceived by his younger son Jacob, into giving him the blessing intended for the first-born, Esau. From then on, the history of God’s people runs through Jacob.
St Paul picks up the story when, writing to the Romans (8: 32), he says: "He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all".
God did what Abraham was ultimately commanded not to do. This is the measure of God’s love for us, and of the terrible cost to God of the cross of His Son. There was no substitute for His Son. God sends no one to death except His own Son. And the Son, in whom God in His fullness is present, goes willingly. Such is His love for us!
Jewish tradition calls this story ‘the binding of Isaac’. The late Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks finds it as meaning that we must never take anything for granted. Many things may seem to come naturally. Rather, everything is a gift, not least life itself. This, as we remember the slaughter of the battle of the Somme in 1916 is something we must never take for granted.