Here's a question that I have been seriously thinking about for a long time:

Would God ask us to literally sacrifice a child like He asked Abraham (Genesis 22)?

Don't give a glib answer. Consider it for a second. God did ask Abraham to make that kind of sacrifice. But we live under a new testament. But that does not mean that we do not sacrifice things (dreams, desires, money) for God. Do we just not have enough faith? Is there a moral imperative?

I've been trying since November or Decemeber to come up with a good answer but I couldn't find anything that satisfied me. I prayed about it a lot and read through a number of books but it wasn't until tonight (after searching through 28 webpages on Christian apologetics) that I finally found a satisfying answer.

The part of my question that I was getting caught on was the fact that God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son and Abraham was praised because he intended to do it. He stopped Abraham, but if He hadn't, didn't God still have the right to demand Isaac's life. God is the author of all life, and He controls when and how we all die. So if He said that Abraham should sacrifice Isaac, no one could anyone say that it was morally wrong.

But I could not reconcile that with the God we know. I couldn't tell what, but something was not matching up. So tonight I decided I would stay up again and try to find the answer (hang the homework, I've got a question). Anyways I finally came across one sentence from a separate question that made everything fall immediately into place.

"God's way of testing Abraham by calling for the sacrifice of Isaac...and then the abrupt staying of the knife...was intended to demonstrate that God abhorred human sacrifice and would not accept it (Gen 22.12)"

It may seem simple, but I had never thought of it that way. God wanted Abraham to fully intend on sacrificing his son, and then by stopping him, He showed that child sacrifice was abhorent to Him. Instead, He reconfirmed the system of animal substituionary sacrifice, which foreshadows Christ's sacrifice for us.

Praise God who has sacrificed Himself for us.