This great truth, categorically uttered in the New Testament, is historically illustrated by Abraham’s laying his son on the altar of burnt offering. It was an act of faith which abandoned on the altar the one in whom all the promises of God centred. The father gave up his son whom he loved. The fire, the wood, the knife, the journey, the binding, each made claim after claim upon the father’s love. If this is a type, who can fathom the depths of the antitype? Who can tell what it cost God the Father to give Him up "for us all" (Rom 8.32) so that the Saviour cried, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Mt 27.46; Mk 15.34). Why thou? Why me?
They two went both of them together through the whole of His earthly career till "he was cut off out of the land of the living" (Is 53.8). The judgment knife fell on Him in whom "all the promises of God…are yea, and in him Amen" (2 Cor 1.20). That heat of judgment fire before which He melted as wax (see Ps 22.14) caused pang after pang in the Father’s heart, whose Son was then on the Altar.
Isaac was spared by the substitutionary ram, but God "spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all" (Rom 8.32). The Son went through all in its bitter reality and not "in figure". No substitutionary lamb was found for Him: He was Himself the substitute for others.
Concluded.
