Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac is a similitude of Heavenly Father’s willingness to sacrifice His Only Begotten Son. The Lord blesses Abraham for his faith and obedience after the severe trial of being asked to sacrifice his son Isaac.
Genesis 22:6–13, 15–18
6 And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together.
7 And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?
8 And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.
9 And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.
10 And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.
11 And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I.
12 And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.
13 And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son. . . .
15 And the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time,
16 And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son:
17 That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies;
18 And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.
Elder Neal A. Maxwell said:
“As one’s will is increasingly submissive to the will of God, he can receive inspiration and revelation so much needed to help meet the trials of life. In the trying and very defining Isaac episode, faithful Abraham ‘staggered not . . . through unbelief’ (Romans 4:20). Of that episode John Taylor observed that ‘nothing but the spirit of revelation could have given him this confidence, and . . . sustained him under these peculiar circumstances’ (in Journal of Discourses, 14:361). Will we too trust the Lord amid a perplexing trial for which we have no easy explanation? Do we understand—really comprehend—that Jesus knows and understands when we are stressed and perplexed? The complete consecration which effected the Atonement ensured Jesus’s perfect empathy; He felt our very pains and afflictions before we did and knows how to succor us (see Alma 7:11–12; 2 Nephi 9:21). Since the Most Innocent suffered the most, our own cries of ‘Why?’ cannot match His. . . .
“There was no ram in the thicket at Calvary to spare [Jesus], this Friend of Abraham and Isaac.”
(“Swallowed Up in the Will of the Father,” Ensign, Nov. 1995; “O, Divine Redeemer,” Ensign, Nov. 1981, 8.)
