Fourth in a series on the Seven Last Words of Jesus
by Pastor Paul Wolff
Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, “This man is calling Elijah.” And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.” (Matthew 27:45-49)
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| Eve was ashamed of her sin and afraid of God, but God did not forsake her nor her husband. |
In Genesis 3, immediately after Adam and Eve sinned against God’s simple command not to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Moses describes Adam and Eve being frightened by the “sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” Of course they were afraid because they had condemned themselves to death for their rebellion against God, but from Moses’ description of God “walking in the garden in the cool of the day” I have long imagined that God’s visits to His beloved children were frequent. Not just in the morning, but several times a day, until the day when everything changed.
God delighted in His children, and they delighted in their Father. That all changed when the man and woman rebelled against God by disobeying His command. Adam and Eve were now afraid of their loving Father and ran away from Him, afraid of the curse of death. They felt like they had to hide from God in order to live. They were wrong, of course. God loved them dearly, and He showed great mercy to them, as He does to you, too, but God also hid a part of Himself from them after they became sinners. Scripture tells us that no sinner can see God’s glory and live. So God hid the greater part of His glory so that He could confront His children with their sin, and also reaffirm His love for them by promising to send a Messiah who would rescue them from their sin and make everything good again.
Before Adam and Eve sinned against God they could see God in His unfiltered glory. God had made them in His image and they were holy and pure and had nothing to be ashamed about. All that changed when they became sinners. God did not forsake them, but their relationship had changed. They were no longer like God, but now they were something quite different. They were dirty, corrupted, and unclean. They were no longer such close friends and family with God, but they were suddenly strangers, alien to God’s holy nature, and in sin they had become enemies of God, as we all are according to our corrupted sinful nature.
Jesus had no corrupted nature because He is God in the flesh. Jesus had nothing to be ashamed of before God or before man. Yet, Jesus also hid His divine glory. This was for our sake, and so He could live a normal life as a man. Sinful people had no fear of Jesus, and treated Him like any other man, both good and bad. Throughout His whole life, sinners sinned against Jesus without thinking that He was the almighty, righteous judge who could send them to everlasting torment as sinners deserve. Even before the Pharisees and Pontius Pilate conspired to crucify, Jesus surely endured much mistreatment at the hands of sinners, as we all do, and, yet, Jesus still willingly went to the cross to suffer and die for all sinners, including those who treated Him the worst.
That is why Jesus was there, nailed to a cross. That is why Jesus was forsaken by God the Father – and He was truly forsaken by the father in a way that you have never been, and I pray that you never will be. The Father turned away from the Son and poured out all His wrath upon Him for all the sins of all people of all time. This had never happened in all eternity. The eternal Son of God had only known the perfect divine love of the Father and the Holy Spirit in eternity, but Jesus had carried in His body the guilt of the sins of the world so that He could suffer and die and take our guilt to the grave where it would remain even after Jesus rose victorious three days later. Christ’s journey to the cross began at His incarnation when He was conceived as the son of the Virgin Mary, but Jesus affirmed that He would fulfill the Father’s will when He was baptized by John in the Jordan River.
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| Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, … “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” |
John was baptizing repentant sinners, and was surprised when the Christ, Himself, asked to be baptized, too. Jesus told John, “Let us do this to fulfill all righteousness.” It is right that God would punish sinners for their sin, but God accepted a sinless substitute to redeem sinners. In the Old Testament church, they offered lambs as a substitute to die for their sins, but not even all the lambs in the world would pay for the sins of one person. Jesus is the perfect lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The incarnate Son of God could pay the price to redeem the whole world from sin and death. This is why after Jesus was anointed in the Jordan river with the Baptism of sinners, the voice of God the Father was heard proclaiming, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” The Father was pleased not only because His Son had perfectly obeyed God’s commandments every day for about 30 years, but because the Son was also taking the guilt of sinners into His body so that He could pay the price to redeem sinners so He could restore us and glorify us to be the holy people God intended us to be from the beginning.
Jesus endured God’s wrath over sin as He hung there on the cross. He felt the sting of sin like no one on earth has ever felt. The Father treated Jesus like the worst sinner in the world – like the only sinner in the world. All His wrath was poured out on Jesus, so there would be no anger left for you, and you would be forgiven. Jesus endured God’s wrath, and never lost His love for the Father, or for you. Yet, in the depth of His torment He had to cry out, “My God, why have You forsaken me?” He truly suffered the wrath of God over the sin of the world, yet, God was still His God, and if it was the Father’s will for Him to suffer and die, then He would endure it to the end and die trusting that God’s will is best even if it meant that He would suffer hell all alone on the cross and then die. As a man, Jesus had to live by faith, trusting God’s word in the Scriptures that this pleased the Father, and that God would make everything work out for the best – for Jesus Himself, and for all the rest of us, who benefit from the suffering and death of Jesus. He was forsaken by the Father, so you will never have to go through the hell that Jesus endured.
Articles in this series:
Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.
I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.
Woman behold your son. Son, behold your mother.
My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?
I thirst.
It is finished.
Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.
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