A new take on atonement...kind of

[jfrog]

First of all I would like to say that I feel like I've read something similar to what I am about to say before, but I cannot place whether I really have or not.

I would like to being by examining the story of Abraham offering Isaac. I have a great deal of trouble with that story. God commands Abraham to go and do something that we all know would be very wrong (kill his own child). I had a thought today, a possible solution to how perplexing this story is, though I'm not sure it will be satisfactory to anyone who really has trouble with this story... heck I'm not even sure if its satisfactory for me. But the solution I thought of was this, what if Abraham knew God so well that he knew, not that he just believed but that he knew that God would move his hand and save his child. So Abraham in his love for God did as God told him and he went up to sacrifice his son. And then once Abraham had got to the point of no return God moved his hand and resurrected Isaac from the dead.

I'm sure most of you are saying, well Isaac never actually died so he couldn't have be resurrected and this is true. But you see, Isaac was going to die unless the hand of God had moved. Well when Abraham raised that knife and God's hand moved it gave Isaac a new life that he wouldn't have had otherwise. In a sense, it was a resurrection!

Well, I'm sure it touched God very much that there was a man out there who loved God so much that he would give his own son. In fact its almost like it touched God so much that years later when God had a son, Jesus Christ, that God offered his son up to show us how much he loved us just as Abraham had offered up Isaac to show God how much he loved him. And just like when God moved at the last moment and gave Abrahams son new life, God also moved at the last moment on his own son and resurrected him from the dead.

So in these stories we see the love of Abraham for God, the love of God for us and the love of Abraham for his son, and the love of God for his son, and the goodness of God in not letting death take either child who was offered up to show the love of the childs father for God in the case of Abraham or for Humanity in the case of God.