Then God may appear again and ask, “Are you willing to go on with Me? Do you want to enjoy My further appearing? If you do, you must give up Isaac. Give up what I have given to you. Do not cast Isaac away, but offer him up to Me. Bring the very Christ whom you have experienced, lay Him on My altar, and offer Him to Me that I may be satisfied. Your experience of Christ has become your portion and it satisfies you. Now I ask you to offer this portion to Me that I may be completely satisfied.” Will you do this? Out of a hundred Christians who have had this kind of experience, not one will do it. Everyone will reply, “How can I give up my dear and precious experience of Christ? It is wrong to ask me to give this up. I will never go along with this.” However, everyone who has been asked to offer up to God his experience of Christ as Isaac and was unwilling to do it was deadened in his spiritual life. To such people God seems to say, “Since you treasure your Isaac-experience and will not give it to Me, I will leave it with you. I cannot go further with you. You have your enjoyment and satisfaction, but I don’t have Mine. I cannot do anything with you for the fulfillment of My purpose.”
Abraham offered up Isaac for the satisfaction of God. That was a genuine burnt offering. On Mount Moriah God received His complete satisfaction. In Genesis 22 we see that God is not only the God who calls things not being as being—He was revealed as this God in Genesis 15 and 17— but the God who gives life to the dead. In the eyes of God, Isaac died when Abraham laid him on the altar and raised the knife to slay him. God stopped Abraham, forbidding him to kill Isaac. In typology, this means that God imparted life to the dead Isaac. According to Hebrews 11:17-19, Isaac was resurrected, and Abraham received Isaac back from God in resurrection. This resulted in a further and richer transfusion, infusion, and permeation of God into Abraham.
On Mount Moriah Abraham’s spiritual experience reached its peak. As a result, Abraham became so spiritual and so mature in life that in Genesis 24 he typifies God the Father. Where did he become so mature? On Mount Moriah where he received the full portion of God. God the Father was transfused into him. Therefore, Abraham became the father, not only of an individual Isaac, but of the corporate thousands of descendants who are the kingdom of God on this earth for the accomplishment of God’s purpose.
Now we can see why Paul, after writing Romans 3, was burdened to use Abraham’s history in chapter four as a portrait to show the climax of God’s justification. The purpose of God’s justification is to have a reproduction of Christ in millions of saints. These saints, as the reproduction of Christ, become the members of His Body (Rom. 12:5). This Body then becomes the kingdom of God on earth (Rom. 14:17) for the fulfillment of God’s purpose. The Body as the kingdom of God is expounded in Romans 12-16. All the local churches are expressions of the Body of Christ as the kingdom of God. The church as the kingdom of God is not composed of one Isaac, but of many Isaacs who have proceeded out of God’s justification. All of these are the issue of the subjective and deeper experience of justification.
Nevertheless, we need to see even more. Let us return to the first chapter of Genesis once again.
According to Genesis 1, man was not only created by God but also for God and to God. Man was created to God that he might express God’s image and exercise God’s dominion for the building up of His kingdom. Man was created to God for such a high purpose. In Genesis 2 we see that God was represented by the tree of life, indicating that the man created to God should continually eat of this tree. Man needed to come to God, contact God, and have God transfused and infused into him. However, man failed to do this, going to the wrong source, the tree of knowledge. Thus, the man who was made to God turned away from God. This is the accurate meaning of the fall of man.
God appeared to call Abraham out of this fallen condition, meaning that God wanted to bring man back to Himself. When God called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees, He did not tell him where to go, because God’s intention was to bring him back to Himself. Man had to return to God in order that God might transfuse Himself into him.
In calling Abraham out of Ur, God was bringing him back to the tree of life. The principle of the tree of life is dependence; the principle of the tree of knowledge is independence. To come to the tree of life means to depend upon God; to turn to the tree of knowledge means to forsake God. Every day and every hour we need to depend upon God as our life. We can never stay away from God as our life. Therefore, Abraham was brought back to God as the tree of life. When God appeared to him, that was also the appearing of the tree of life. As Abraham spent time in the presence of God, he enjoyed the tree of life. Every time this happened, God’s essence was transfused into him. In this way God trained Abraham to be totally transfused, infused, and permeated with God and no longer to act by himself. This was not an easy lesson for Abraham to learn.
We are undergoing the same training today. God has called us out of our fallen condition back to Himself as the tree of life. Now we are under His transfusion, infusion, and saturation. We must not do anything by ourselves. Our self must be terminated. The old man must be cut off and buried that God may be everything to us. Then we can say in reality, “It is no longer I, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God” (Gal. 2:20). This is the life of Abraham. As Abraham’s descendants we are the same as he. We walk in his believing footsteps and are under God’s saturating work.
As we experience this process, we have various reactions to God. Our first reaction is to believe in Him with the faith of Christ. This causes another reaction from God’s side, which is to reckon Christ to us as our righteousness. After this, we act on our own and produce a failure. We go to the wrong source, Hagar, the law, and give birth to Ishmael. Following this, we need to be circumcised. This brings in a further experience of Christ as our present Isaac. Then we will be required to offer this Isaac to God as a sacrifice for His satisfaction. If we obey this demand, God will react to us once again, giving us an experience of resurrection that produces many Isaacs. Once we offer our individual experience of Christ to God, we find ourselves in the church with many Isaacs surrounding us, and we have the corporate experience of Christ. Then we are no longer individuals; we are a kingdom, the Body of Christ fulfilling God’s purpose.
This is the deeper meaning of justification shown by the example of Abraham. We must confess that the source of it all is God’s transfusion, infusion, and saturation. This process of transfusion and infusion causes many reactions between God and man. This traffic, this interchange between us and God, makes us one with Him and brings into being a universal man for the fulfillment of God’s eternal purpose. In this process divinity is mingled with humanity. This is the consummation of God’s justification.