Probably recalling the event of the sacrifice of Isaac, who in the end did not have to die at the hands of Abraham, St. Paul says that "God did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all" (Rom 8:32).

How is it to be understood that God "did not spare" his own son? 

As Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the Pontifical Household, explained, this should not be understood as if the sins committed by men over the centuries accumulated an immense debt before God, and God was only satisfied or appeased by sending his Son to the Cross, God the Father remaining tranquil on his heavenly throne, while Jesus suffered in his human nature.

No. Jesus in his passion and death was always accompanied by his Father, as he had said: "You will leave me alone. But I am not alone, for the Father is with me" (Jn 16:32). Cantalamessa writes: "Thus, the heavenly Father and his Son Jesus were both together in the passion and both were together on the cross. Jesus was nailed more than to the wooden arms of the cross, to the arms of the Father, that is, to his will". The Holy Spirit, who proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son, flows for us with a new impulse from the Cross (cf. Jn 19:30).

Therefore God the Father, who certainly as God cannot suffer in the human way (involuntary and forced), is in himself infinite Love. And therefore, as the ancient ecclesiastical writers used to say, there corresponds to him a passion of love. It is what St. Bernard calls a "compassion" (sovereignly free) for the sins and sorrows of men. And all this teaches us that "love cannot be lived without pain" (Imitation of Christ III, 5).

In final, if Isaac is a figure of Jesus, Abraham is a figure of God the Father, who made the sacrifice of giving us his Son. This is why St. Augustine exclaims: "How you loved us, good Father, who did not spare your only Son but gave him up for us sinners! How you loved us" (Confessions, X, 69). St. Paul already posed a joyful consequence: "How could he who gave us his only Son not give us everything with him" (Rom 8:32).

Thus Benedict XVI points out in his encyclical on hope: "Man is of such great value to God that he became man in order to suffer with man in a very real way, in flesh and blood, as the story of the Passion of Jesus shows us. For this reason, in every human suffering there has entered one who shares in suffering and suffering; hence in every suffering the con-solatio, the consolation of God's shared love, spreads, and thus the star of hope appears" (Spe Salvi, n. 39).