‘By faith Abraham, being tested, offered up Isaac. Yes, he who had gladly taken on himself the promises was offering up his only begotten son, even he to whom it was said, In Isaac shall your seed be called, accounting that God is able to raise up, even from the dead. From whence he did also in a figure receive him back.'
But an even greater example of faith was when Abraham was called on to offer up his ‘only son', that is the only son borne of his true wife, in whom all the promises were centred (see Genesis 22). Here was a test indeed. Isaac was a ‘miracle baby', born when all hope had been given up, and through him God had promised the fulfilment of all His promises. And now he who had taken on himself the promises was being called on to offer up the one who was the future hope as a burnt offering, as a sacrifice. But his faith in God was such that he did not question it. He went obediently about the dreadful task set for him and was about to offer him, even having the sacrificial knife in his hand ready to slay him, when God stayed his hand, and he then offered up a ram in his place. In this way was Isaac was ‘offered up'. The firm intention was read as the fact.
And there is only one explanation for this in Abraham's mind. On the one hand God called him to slay his son. On the other God had promised that through this son his future descendants would be born (Genesis 21:12). Thus clearly God would raise him up again. ‘He accounted that God was able to raise him even from the dead.' And indeed that was, in all but fact, what God did. It was as though Abraham received his son back from the dead. He did what he did because he had faith in a resurrecting God and in His promises.
‘From whence he did also in a figure receive him back.' The meaning would seem to be that the way in which he received Isaac back (‘from the dead') was a figure, a picture, pointing to resurrection and the future hope, and to what God could and would do in the future.
So however great the trials of his readers might be, those trials could not even begin to approach that of Abraham in this example, and his success was on the basis of fully believing the promises.