My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Among Jesus' last words were "My God, my God, why have you forsake me?" found in Matthew and Mark. These words have come to mean so much to me in the past year.

C. J. Mahaney writes in Living the Cross Centered Life, “For Jesus, the cross will bring incomparable and unprecedented suffering of wrath and abandonment.” When Jesus was praying in the garden of Gethsemane, He wasn’t crying out to God and sweating blood because He was afraid to die; He knew He was about to face all of God’s wrath toward sin poured out on Him. When Jesus prayed for God to “remove this cup,” He was pleading for the Lord to save Him from His wrath. What is this “cup?” It is a reference to the wrath of God for our sins. Isaiah 51:17 says “Wake yourself, wake yourself, stand up O Jerusalem, you who have drank from the hand of the Lord the cup of his wrath, who have drunk to the dregs the bowl, the cup of staggering.” In the words of Mahaney, “This cup contains the full vehemence and fierceness of God’s holy wrath poured out against all sins, and we discover in Scripture that it’s intended for all of sinful humanity to drink.” When Jesus prays in the garden, He is not worried about dying; He is in fear of the agony of being abandoned by His Father. Habakkuk 1:13 says “You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong…” God is so holy and so perfect that He cannot even look at sin. When Jesus called out “My God my God, why have You forsaken me?” He felt God look away because He could not look at all of the sin on Jesus.

Adam Hamilton in 24 Hours That Changed the World has a slightly different viewpoint on these words from the dying Messiah. He doesn't think God removed His gaze from His Son; He suffered with Jesus. Hamilton says that Jesus was facing what most of us face in our lives but to a much greater degree: a "moment when the silence of God is so deafening that we feel forsaken by him. Pain and doubt creep in and block out any sense of God's presence." Hamilton goes on to say that Jesus knows how we feel in times of despair because He has experienced it too. As much as I can see his point, I still think that Jesus' words have to do with God being too holy to look at all the sin that was placed on the atoning sacrifice of Jesus.

Whichever way we see it, one thing is for sure: Jesus died as the atoning sacrifice for our sins so that we can spend eternity with Him and God gets the glory. The cross is definitely a sign of love, but it is also a place where salvation is made possible for you and me.

Just a matter of time until we celebrate His resurrection!

In Christ,
Christine ><>

Please check out Matt Maher's song "You Were On the Cross." When we think God has turned His back on us, we must think of the cross-He was there suffering for us.