Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob with Joseph as the last four main persons in Genesis constitute a complete type portraying the different stages and aspects of the experiences of a complete person chosen, called, redeemed, and transformed by the Triune God.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob with Joseph are a complete unit in the experience of life. We should not consider them as separate individuals, but as different aspects of one complete spiritually mature person’s complete experience of God. Hence, although the Triune God is one God, He became the God of three persons—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob (Exo. 3:15). The Triune God in three aspects is for the complete experience in three sections of a person who is mature in life.
In Jacob we clearly see God’s selection (Gen. 25:21-26). Romans 9:10-13, referring to Jacob and Esau, says, “Rebecca ... having conceived by one, Isaac our father, though the children had not yet been born nor had done anything good or bad (that the purpose of God according to selection might remain, not of works but of Him who calls), it was said to her, ‘The greater shall serve the less’; as it is written, ‘Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.’” Jacob was chosen before his birth. It was not of his own works, nor was it the issue of his own struggle and strife, but of God who calls. God’s selection altogether depends on His pleasure and mercy (Rom. 9:15-16).
In like manner, we believers were chosen by God the Father before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4). God the Father’s choosing is His selection. He exercised His divine foreknowledge (1 Pet. 1:2) and chose us out of numberless people, not because of our works but absolutely because of His mercy.
God the Father called us according to His selection. Calling is the beginning of God’s work of recovery, and its starting point was Abraham. When the man whom God created for Himself fell and forsook God, God came in to call man that He might have a new beginning with fallen man. He called and transferred man from the created Adamic race to the called Abrahamic race, from the life of the old creation to the life of the new creation, for the fulfilling of His eternal purpose in the creation of man.
Abraham was called twice. The first time was in Ur of the Chaldees in Mesopotamia. The God of glory appeared to him there, telling him to come out from his land and his relatives and go into the land which God would show him (Acts 7:2-4). The second time was in Haran, where God called him again to leave not only his land and kindred but also his father’s house, and from where God removed him into the good land of Canaan. Moreover, God promised to make him a great nation and a blessing to all the families of the earth (Gen. 12:1-3).
We, the believers in Christ, have also been called by God the Father (1 Thes. 2:12; 2 Tim. 1:9). In eternity past God the Father chose us, and then in time He called us according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28) and grace (2 Tim. 1:9-10) through His own glory and virtue (2 Pet. 1:3) that we might be regenerated and saved to have a new beginning and to partake of His glory. As the God of glory, He cannot be defeated and He does not give up. No matter what our condition is in the way that we follow Him, His calling is irrevocable (Rom. 11:29) and it has such a great hope (Eph. 1:18).
Following the calling of God the Father is the redemption of Christ the Son. This is because the man whom God created became fallen and forsook God before he was called. Therefore, after God the Father’s calling of man, God the Son’s redemption is needed to bring man back to God. This is seen in Isaac. In testing Abraham, God charged him to offer Isaac, his only son whom he loved, for a burnt offering (Gen. 22:1-2). By faith Abraham obeyed God and brought Isaac to the place of which God had told him and built an altar there. As he was preparing to offer up Isaac, he experienced God’s provision of a ram as a replacement of his son Isaac (22:9-13). The ram which was killed instead of Isaac is a type of Christ. Just as the ram was killed and sacrificed instead of Isaac, so Christ, the Lamb of God, became our Substitute (1 Pet. 3:18) through His crucifixion on the cross for our redemption. In Genesis 22:8 Abraham prophesied that God would provide Himself the lamb for a burnt offering. Christ was foreordained, prepared, by God to be the redeeming Lamb for His elect according to His foreknowledge before the foundation of the world (1 Pet. 1:19-20; John 1:29). This was done according to God’s eternal purpose and plan; it did not happen accidentally. Hence, in God’s eternal view, Christ was slain and became the redemption to God’s people from the foundation of the world (Rev. 13:8), that is, from the fall of man.