We are puzzled that God would command Abraham to sacrifice Isaac because our conscience has been trained by God.
How is it moral for God to command Abraham to sacrifice Isaac?
Notice we are not asking, “Is it moral for God to command Abraham to sacrifice Isaac?” It is a given that God only does what is right. “His works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he” (Deut. 32:4, NIV).
In fact it is evil to suggest otherwise: “Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing” (Job 1:22). God himself is the standard of what is right.
Reverence
Therefore, as we seek to understand how God could command Abraham to offer Isaac, we must do so with reverence, remembering that God does not answer to us; rather, we answer to him. God does not have to explain himself, and in this story he does not. He is perfectly righteous, while we have been corrupted in our thinking and cannot reason rightly unless God renews our minds. Therefore, we must beware of asking and answering questions accusingly as though we might be morally superior to God.
That is laughable arrogance and total delusion. On our own morally, we do not know our left hand from our right (Jonah 4:11). Morally, God is perfect and has always been perfect; he never had to learn morality, either on his own or from someone else. On the contrary, everything we know about morality came from God.
The conscience
Anything our secular culture correctly understands about morality also came from God. Over many centuries God has deposited moral truths in secular cultures through Scripture, through the conscience he gives everyone, and through wisdom he has given his church, which is the preserving salt of the earth. In his mercy God can even refine moral understanding in a culture through wise people who do not acknowledge him. But even they have had their consciences trained directly and indirectly by these godly influences.
Standing on the shoulders of all this good moral influence from God, limited still by our brief lifespans and miniscule knowledge of reality, and morally crippled by a sinful nature, no one should presume to evaluate God’s actions with the attitude that he knows better than God what is right, or what God should or should not do.
We find answers to questions raised by this test elsewhere in Scripture. God does not change or evolve; but, like raising the curtain on a stage, what he reveals about himself and his will in Scripture does increase over time until it reaches highest clarity in Jesus and the New Testament. When all is said and done, this test does not contradict anything God reveals about himself in Scripture. On the contrary, this test foreshadows the glory of God revealed in the New Testament.
The lover of life
Even so, this story shocks us—and it should. It is disturbing because the Lord has trained our moral sensibilities after his own. He does not enjoy death and does not want people to die.
Ezekiel prophesied, “As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:11)
Life is God’s idea. It was he who “breathed into [Adam’s] nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” (Genesis 2:7)
It was God who warned Adam, “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:17)
God created life and loves life. His Ten Commandments say, “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13), and elsewhere in the Old Covenant he commanded the Israelites to protect and nurture others. (For example, Deuteronomy 22:8 and Leviticus 23:22)
Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).
God created mankind to live forever, not to die.
The lover of peace
In keeping with his love for human life, God also loves peace and abhors violence. “His soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.” (Psalm 11:5)
In Noah’s time it was in particular the violence of mankind that grieved God’s heart and provoked him to do what he later told Noah he would never repeat: to destroy nearly all mankind with a flood. “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence…. And God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them.’” (Genesis 6:11–13)
At the end of King David’s life, when he wanted to build a temple for God, God refused him because, “You have shed much blood and have waged great wars. You shall not build a house to my name, because you have shed so much blood before me on the earth.” (1 Chronicles 22:8)
The Lord hates violence because he is “the God of peace.” (Philippians 4:9)
Although the evil in our world sometimes demands the violence of divine judgment, God does not enjoy such violence but judges people reluctantly.
Therefore, knowing that the Lord loves life and abhors violence, we are rightly confused when he commands Abraham to slay Isaac.
Continued next week