This story in the life of Abraham is perplexing and tempts us to ask all sorts of questions that it simply refuses to answer. It leaves us mystified—and possibly even horrified—at who this God of Abraham is and what he is up to.

Thankfully, we are able to read the whole story and see how it turns out positive in the end. When it is all over, Abraham receives the final assurance of God’s great promises and finds himself, in the words of one New Testament author, a friend of God. It is through this test of faith that Abraham endures in Genesis 22 that he becomes known as God’s friend. And so it is with us. We, like Abraham, become friends of God through the testing of our faith in God.

As we consider this story together, let’s explore the reason, the features, and the outcome of Abraham’s test of faith.

The Reason for the Test

First, the reason for the test. Look, this is a disturbing story, and we want to jump to verse 2 and start critiquing God for commanding Abraham to perform a child sacrifice. But the story begins by telling us that this is a test. This softens the blow a little bit. At least it urges us to consider why God finds it necessary to test Abraham, and what his purpose is for the test.

God’s Confidence in Abraham

Let’s begin with the meaning of the verb “to test.” It generally refers to the desire to prove the quality of a person or thing.[1] Think of how the Queen of Sheba came to test Solomon, asking him hard questions (1 Kings 10:1). She had come to test him because she wanted to see for herself if what she had heard about Solomon was indeed true. She didn’t come hoping to find that he couldn’t answer her questions, that he couldn’t pass her test. She came because she believed he could and was pleased to find that he did pass her test.

Similarly, we could hardly conclude that God was unsure about the particular quality he wished to examine about Abraham. A teacher gives a test to a student only after the teacher has taught the information the student is expected to have learned. Verse 1 says that God tested Abraham “after these things,” after all the things we’ve seen in his life, after Abraham has been a student of God for many, many years and has, quite literally, learned his lessons. God tests Abraham because he is confident that Abraham was ready for it. That he would be able to pass it.

An Agonizing Test

God tests Abraham because he knows Abraham is ready to pass it, but he still has to actually pass it. And although Abraham is ready for the test, that doesn’t mean it was easy for him.

A surface reading of the story might make it sound as if Abraham has no problem doing what God has commanded him to do. The command in verse 2 is quickly followed by Abraham’s obedience in verse 3. But there are interesting features in the story that we are meant to observe, some which show just how challenging the test was for Abraham.

There are several things we would like to know that the story just doesn’t tell us. How does God relay his command to Abraham? In a dream? In a theophany? And where is Sarah? Is she even aware of what is happening? But notice the details the story does give us. In verse 3, it is only after Abraham has saddled his donkey and summoned his son and a couple of servants that he goes to cut wood. It’s like he has packed the car for a road trip, loaded up the family, and then says, “Oh, let me change the oil and maybe the spark plugs, too.” We wonder if he’s stalling, wresting with God’s command and his resolve to obey it.

Then there’s the three-day trip it took to reach the destination. We have to wonder what was going through his mind during the journey. Verses 6-8 are even more agonizing. Leaving the two servants at the base of the mountain, verse 6 concludes with these words: “So they went both of them together.” Those words are repeated again at the end of verse 8, interrupted only by a brief and ambiguous conversation between father and son. We imagine a silent walk of deep emotion up that mountain, what one commentator calls “the most poignant and eloquent silence in all literature.”[2]

Another commentator calls the whole story “a gem of Old Testament literary art.”[3] The story itself is troubling, but the way the story is told is beautiful. It is, in fact, rather similar to the beauty of the book of Job. We can pepper those stories with questions that they don’t set out to answer, or we can ponder them for the realities they represent and that God’s people continue to experience to this day.

In other words, when we ask, “Why does God test Abraham?” at least part of the answer is, “Because God also tests us.” Your test will not be the same as Abraham’s or Job’s, but it will be no less agonizing. Yet God also expects that you can and will pass the test.

Purifying Abraham

The Bible does in other places give us a more straightforward answer to our question why God tests his people. In Deuteronomy 8, God tells Israel that he tested them “to know what was in your heart” whether or not they would keep his commandments (Deut 8:2). He also says these tests were designed to humble them, to make them aware of how dependent on him they were (Deut 8:3), to inspire them to walk in God’s ways and to fear him (Deut 8:6). Now all of that can sound like God is a tyrant, but he insists in Deuteronomy 8:16 that he only tests his people to do them “good in the end.”

In other words, God has high expectations for his people, and that is why he tests them. The purpose of these divine tests is not to see if God can entrust his heaven to you when you die. God tests his people because he intends to entrust his world to them. Remember the Abrahamic covenant? If God is going to bring his blessing to the world through Abraham, then Abraham must be trusted.

And so, Abraham must be tested. So also must you and I.

The purpose of such divine tests, Eugene Peterson wrote, is to

show whether we are choosing the way of awe and worship and obedience . . . or whether, without being aware of it, we are reducing God to our understanding of him so that we can use him. Have we slipped into the habit of insisting that God do what we ask or want or need him to do, treating him as an idol designed for our satisfaction? Does God serve us or do we serve God?[4]

The test will answer that question for us.

The Features of the Test

Now notice the features of Abraham’s test. How was he tested? What was on his test? What would he need in order to pass the test? It is, of course, a test of his faith, but how does God test Abraham’s faith?

Present and Focused

Notice that God doesn’t test his faith with a theological exam. The test instead requires Abraham to simply be present to God and to others. Abraham passes the test because, three times in the story, he is present. Focused. Undistracted.  In verse 1, God calls to him and he says, “Here I am.” After all these years, after all he’s been through, what more could God want from him? And yet, here he is, ready to receive whatever God wanted to say to him.

Those same words come from his mouth in response to his son as they climbed the mountain together in verse 7. Although Abraham is doing what God says, his obedience to God does not cause him to be distant from those around him. In fact, it has the opposite effect.

And then again Abraham responds to the call from the angel of the Lord with those same words, “Here I am,” in verse 11. God spoke to him again at this climactic moment, when clearly Abraham was resolved to carry through with his assignment. Nevertheless, he continued to be present to God, ready to do as God said at any moment.

Here we see that genuine faith is relational. God is not an object but a person. Knowing things about God is simply not the same as knowing God and responding to his voice. Spiritual maturity is not how much you know about the Bible but how much you relate to the God of the Bible. 

Ready to Sacrifice

Another feature of the test, and the one that gets our attention the most, is the fact that it involved sacrifice.

Abraham has been tested before. We can see divine tests in virtually every one of the narratives from Abraham’s life. But what makes this one unique is that Abraham is called to sacrifice his most precious treasure. God tells him to “take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love” and offer him back to God as a burnt offering.

And modern readers go crazy. You know that typical question we are told we are supposed to ask about any biblical text, “What does this say about God?” Well, don’t answer that question here!

Ok, well let’s at least say that God would never demand a child sacrifice. That’s what God says in Jeremiah 19:5.

Except, for here where he does exactly that.

What’s going on here? For Abraham at the time it couldn’t have been known if this God would in fact require some kind of child sacrifice. This is what made it a good test for Abraham.[5] In other words, the test is essentially a dilemma between what we might expect to hear from God and what seems like the exact opposite. We are tested when, on the one hand we know God says it is wise to save money and on the other hand he calls us to sacrifice and give it up. The test comes when we reflect on the tension between the goodness of work and the practice of Sabbath. God gives us good things, and God calls us to give those good things back to him.

Eugene Peterson says, “Sacrifice is to faith what eating is to nutrition; it is the action that we engage in that is transformed within ourselves invisibly and unobserved into a life lived in responsive obedience to the living God who gives himself to and for us, sacrifices himself for us.”[6]

What is he calling you to sacrifice, to offer back to him in joyful worship?

Hope for Joy

Most of us hear the word sacrifice and associate it with the word loss. But that betrays the deficiency of our faith. To quote Peterson again,

Only in the act of obedience do we realize that the sacrifice is not diminishment, not a stoical “This is the cross I bear” nonsense. It does not result in less joy, less satisfaction, less fulfillment, but in more—but rarely in the ways we expect.[7]

Abraham did not end up on the top of the mountain with his son bound and his knife raised without agony. But neither, apparently, was he there without hope.

The author of Hebrews, commenting on this story in Hebrews 11, remarks that “by faith” Abraham “offered up Isaac,” that he was “in the act of offering up his only son” (Heb 11:17). The test wasn’t over until the sacrifice had begun. In the Genesis account, it is only when the knife is in his hand that the angel of the Lord calls out, “Abraham, Abraham!” The double mention of his name expresses some urgency to stop Abraham before it was too late. But it was never too late in Abraham’s mind, because by the time he had gotten to the top of that mountain he had considered, “that God was able even to raise him from the dead” (Heb 11:19).

He didn’t get there overnight. His whole life had been marked by this path of faith that required him to possess hope for a greater joy. From the moment God told him to leave his father’s house and go to the land God would show him (Gen 12:1) all the way until now when he found himself in the land of Moriah on a mountain that God had said he would show him (Gen 22:2)—this is the path of faith Abraham had been on, a path which he was certain would end with more, not less, than he had before he started out.

The Outcome of the Test

Lastly, notice the outcome of the test. Verse 12 tells us that Abraham has passed the test. The following verses tell us what he gained from it.

The Provision of God

“And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked,” verse 13 says, “and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns.” What a strange sight! I suppose Abraham and Isaac could have just had a good laugh and then went on down the mountain.

But wait a minute. Hadn’t Abraham said to Isaac, on their way up the mountain, when Isaac asked him where the animal was that they would sacrifice as a burnt offering to God, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering”? (v. 8). I doubt Abraham had been evading the question from Isaac but was instead expressing his confidence that God would see to it that everything would come out right in the end.[8] Abraham’s answer turned out to be prophetic, in ways that he surely couldn’t have known himself.

And he knows what they must do. He offers up the ram as the burnt offering they had come to that place to conduct. A place that Abraham now called, Yahweh Yireh, “The LORD will provide.” Verse 14 drives this phrase home as the message of the entire story.

Presence of God

But even still it is somewhat ambiguous. The Hebrew word translated provide is the verb “to see,” and the Greek translation of verse 14 is, “On the mountain the LORD was seen,” suggesting that what Abraham saw was not just God’s provision but his actual person.[9]

Maybe there’s not a whole lot of difference. Maybe the way we encounter God’s presence, especially in the tests of faith that often make us wonder if God is present at all, is through the provision he makes for us, the daily bread he provides though often in quite unexpected ways.

Partnership with God

And then the angel of the Lord speaks one more time, in verses 15-18. Essentially he reiterates the promises that God had previously made to Abraham.

But at both the beginning and the end of this speech, he explicitly ties those promises to Abraham’s passing of the test. “Because you have done this,” in verse 16, “because you have obeyed my voice” in verse 18.

Given the fact that the New Testament calls these promises to Abraham “the gospel” (Gal 3:8), we might be surprised to see how contingent the promises are here tied to Abraham’s obedience. But when we remember what the promises are, that they are not about how Abraham can earn his eternal home in heaven but rather how God will bring his eternal salvation home to earth, we start to see the importance of Abraham’s obedience here. It is here, now that we see just how far Abraham is willing to go to be obedient to God, that we are confident that God has found the right man for the job he has given him to do.

We might say it this way. Because Abraham obeyed God and passed this test, God’s justification for choosing Abraham is now fulfilled.

That’s exactly how James 2:21-23 says it, arguing that Abraham was “justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar.” God had counted Abraham’s faith as righteousness back in Genesis 15, but now, God’s declaration has been justified. Abraham’s faith is completed by his works, by his obedience to God’s voice.

And then James adds this: and Abraham “was called a friend of God” (Jas 2:23). He became God’s friend through the testing of his faith, as surely God intends to make us through the testing of our own faith. Peter writes that “the tested genuineness of your faith,” more precious than gold, will result “in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 1:7). Like Abraham, like Job, God intends to deepen our friendship—our partnership—with him in our own tests of faith.

This is the gospel story, the salvation of the world. The God who has made great promises of salvation bases the “fulfillment of the promises not only on himself but also on Abraham’s obedience and, indeed, on the future obedience of Abraham’s family.”[10] Abraham obeyed. Thank God, he obeyed! The salvation of the world depended on it.

But it wasn’t just Abraham. Isaac, too, obeyed, apparently going along with the plan. Josephus says that Isaac was at this time 25 years old, fully capable of resisting his father’s plan. Thank God he obeyed the voice of God!

And thank God that there has come another Son of Abraham, a descendent of Isaac, who also obeyed. The Son whose person and work is all over this story. The one who, like Isaac, carried the wood of a tree up a mountain, Father and Son going there together to do what must be done. The one who gave up his life in obedience to the father’s will. Yes, the one who also did not take himself down from that sacred altar and instead was slaughtered on that old rugged cross. The one who died as a substitute for our own deserving death. The one who brings us not only God’s provision for the salvation of the world but also God’s presence for our own moments of testing. And the one who was gloriously raised to life on the third day, fulfilling the scripture and the Abrahamic covenant, so that you and I, through faith in him and obedience to his voice, may also be called the friends of God, and by his grace, see the blessings of his kingdom in our day.

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[1] Marvin R. Wilson, “נָסָה,” Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, ed. R. Laird Harris (Chicago: Moody Press, 1980), 581.

[2] E. A. Speiser, cited in Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 16–50, Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 2, ed. Bruce M. Metzger, David A. Hubbard, and Glenn W. Barker (Dallas: Word Books, 1994), 108.

[3] Wenham, Genesis 16–50, 108.

[4] Eugene H. Peterson, The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Ways That Jesus Is the Way (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co, 2011), 54.

[5] Wenham, Genesis 16–50, 105.

[6] Peterson, The Jesus Way, 51.

[7] Peterson, The Jesus Way, 51.

[8] Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 18–50, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1995), 109–10.

[9] Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 11:27–50:26, The New American Commentary, vol. 1B, ed. E. Ray Clendenen (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2005), 297.

[10] Peter John Gentry and Stephen J. Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants, Second Edition (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 332.