“God is someone who calls people to die.” This may be a tad hyperbolic, but it’s what a very dear friend of mine told me when I myself was confronted by a difficult choice. What he said was shocking, and it perhaps offends our modern sensibilities, however I do believe there is some truth in what he said. God doesn’t always ask us to do easy things: his will is our sanctification, and that’s sometimes uncomfortable.

A prominent example of this from the Old Testament is the story of the Binding of Isaac, in which God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, who was born against the odds by his barren wife, Sarah. Abraham reluctantly does as he is told, but just as he was about to sacrifice his son, he’s stopped by an angel, who tells him not to go through with it. Abraham is relieved (as I’m sure his son is as well), and he sacrifices a ram instead.

Leaving typology aside for a moment and considering the story only as a narrative, what is it that we ought to take away? Naturally, the first time one reads this story, they’re shocked. After all, how could God ask that of Abraham? How could he demand it? How awful! Let’s be honest: I’m sure these thoughts (and more) crossed our minds when we first read the story.

However, Abraham and his son saw only the events at hand, but not how they fit into the larger scheme of things. Abraham could not have told you even decades after the fact, for instance, that this event prefigured the sacrifice of Christ at Calvary. When Abraham said, “God himself will provide the lamb,” (Genesis 22:8) I very much doubt that he understood the full truth of what he was saying. On the face of it, God called Abraham to sacrifice his son and Isaac to die, but in this call, he had an ulterior motive, and did not truly want Isaac to die. God does not want anyone to perish, but for us all to share in life eternal in Heaven (cf. John 3:16, 2 Peter 3:9).

God wants the best for all of us, but at the same time, God is, in the words of my friend, “someone who calls people to die.” As Christ himself said:

For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

Matthew 16:25

Ironically, it is by our profound indifference to our lives that we can live more fully. God calls us to die to ourselves, to die to the world, to die to sin, and to live for something greater: Ad maiorem Dei gloriam; and this greater glory of God, as Irenaeus of Lyons famously said, is found in man “fully alive”.