This great truth categorically uttered in the New Testament is historically illustrated when Abraham laid 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 Isaac whom he loved (Gen 22.2). The fire, the wood, the knife, the journey, the binding, each made claim after claim upon the father's love.
If this is the type, who can fathom the depths of the antitype? Who can tell what it caused God the Father to give Him up for us all, so that His Son cried, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Mt 27.46). Why Thou? And why Me? "They went both of them together" (cp Gen 22.8) through the whole of His earthly career till He was cut off in the midst of His days and had nothing. That judgment knife which fell on Him; "For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen" (2 Cor 1.20); that sword which was unsheathed against the man that was God's fellow; the heat of judgment fire before which He melted as wax all caused pang after pang in the Father's heart, whose Son it was that 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 of God went through all in its bitter reality, and not "in figure" but in fact came out in resurrection life. No substitutionary ram was found for Him: He was Himself the substitute for others.
