With just one exception, whenever the Bible refers to an only child,
it is in reference to the child’s death. (The exception is Proverbs
4.3). In the Book of Judges, for example, we read of Jephthah, a judge, who
made a foolish vow. If the Lord helped him in a particular campaign, he would
sacrifice the first living thing he met on his return home. To his dismay, this
turned out to be his daughter who was his only child (Judges 11.34).
The prophets speak of the particular
sadness involved in mourning for an only child (Jeremiah 6.26 and Amos 8.10).
Zechariah in particular speaks of a time when a spirit of supplication will be
poured out on the inhabitants of Jerusalem and a fountain will be opened to
cleanse them. When they ‘look on the one whom they have pierced’, he says,
‘they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly
over him, as one weeps for a firstborn’ (Zechariah 12.10; 13.1).
This sense of special sadness continues in
the New Testament, particularly in the Gospel of Luke who notes that three of
the children restored to life by Jesus were the only children of their parents:
the widow’s son at Nain (chapter 7), the daughter of Jairus (chapter 8), and
the teacher’s son (chapter 9).
The most important of the only children of
the Old Testament is Isaac. He was the child miraculously given to Abraham and
Sarah in their old age. The promises made to Abraham, through him to the
Hebrews, and through them to the whole world, rested on Isaac. Bizarrely, God
asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (Genesis 22). He is to take Isaac, ‘your son,
your only son, whom you love’ and offer him as a burnt offering to God. Isaac
himself carries the wood for the sacrifice though he is unaware of who the
victim is to be. At the last moment God intervenes, satisfied that Abraham has
passed the test, and a ram is offered in place of the boy.
The Jewish people believed that the
promised Messiah would be raised up by God as a reward for the faith Abraham
showed on that occasion. This is what Saint Paul is thinking of when he says
that ‘God did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all’ (Romans 8.32).
He spared the son of Abraham but he did not spare his own son.
The most important references to an only
son in the Christian scriptures are those passages in the writings of John
where Jesus is described as the only son of the Father. Keeping the story of
Abraham and Isaac in mind helps us to understand what is happening between the
Father and Jesus.
God so loved the world that he gave his
only son, we are told, so that everyone who believes in his name may be saved
through him (John 3.16-18). The first letter of John famously declares that
‘God is love’. We know this because ‘God sent his only son into the world so
that we might live through him’ (1 John 4.9). The promises first made to
Abraham are fulfilled in ways beyond anything old father Abraham could have
imagined. Just as Isaac carried the wood for the sacrifice, so Jesus takes the
cross upon his shoulders (John 19.17).
The prophecy of Zechariah is fulfilled in
the moment of Christ’s death. His side is pierced with a spear. The inhabitants
of Jerusalem look on the one whom they have pierced (John 19.37). The fountain
opened in the heart of Jerusalem is the blood and water flowing from the side
of Christ. John tells us that the glory of Jesus is the glory ‘of a father’s
only son’ (John 1.14). This means death, the death of a beloved child, in all
likelihood a sacrificial death.
It seems strange that we must look to the
cross of Jesus to see his divinity. What glory is there in this man dying
without beauty, ‘from whom others hide their faces’ (Isaiah 53.3)? We think we
know what God is, what is appropriate for God and what is not. So we transfer
the ‘glory’ to some other moment in the story. We cannot see it in the cross.
But no one has ever seen God, John tells us, so how can we be so sure of what
is or is not fitting for God? ‘It is God the only Son, who is close to the
Father’s heart, who has made him known’ (John 1.18).
It is in the death of Jesus that God is revealed
because it is in his death that the love which God is, the love of a Father and
his only Son, is finally revealed to the world.
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