310 Right any way you read it hlh“And Isaac spake unto Abraham 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? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering. So they went both of them together.”
There are three different ways you can read the expression, “God will provide himself a lamb.”
And no matter which way you read it, it is still right. I like texts you cannot read wrong. You can read this word himself to be what our English teachers call an appositive. God will himself provide a lamb. That is right, isn’t it? God will do the work himself. If you read it that way, it is right.
Or you can read the word himself to be a direct object. God will provide himself to be the lamb. The Lord Jesus Christ was and is God. He is as much God as the Father is God. He was God, when he went to Calvary. He always continued to be God. He continued to be what he had always been, and he took upon him what he had not previously had. He continued to be God, and he took on him a human nature. It was in his human nature that he suffered and died.
He was “put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit,” 1 Pet. 3:18. So if you read it to say that God will provide himself as a lamb, it is still right.
Or you can read the word himself to be an indirect object. You can read it to say that God will provide a lamb for himself. In other words, he will provide the lamb to satisfy the demands of his own righteous judgment against sin. You can read it that way, and it is right that way as well.
One thing I think people forget is that the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ accomplished something with regard to God himself. It satisfied the righteousness of God in the salvation of his people.
“To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus,” Rom. 3:26.
The suffering and death of Jesus was for the purpose of satisfying the righteous demands of God in the salvation of his people. Without doing any damage to the verse, you can paraphrase it to say, “God himself, will provide himself, as a lamb for himself.” I like verses you cannot read wrong.