“My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?”

Have you ever gone through an intense period of suffering and thought that maybe God had abandoned you? Maybe it was the death of a loved one. Or maybe some sort of extreme trial in school. Often we are faced with situations and life’s difficulties and it feels like God has abandoned us. Or worse yet, that He’s punishing us by withdrawing His presence from us. That’s not the case; God hasn’t abandoned or forsaken us. But there was a point in salvation history when God had hidden His face from Jesus. And it was in that moment of suffering that Jesus underwent the intensely just and righteous wrath of God, separate from relationship for the first time since eternity past. It was in his brokenness that Jesus cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” the fourth of his seven cries from the cross.

Read Mark 15:33-41

For the first time ever, as a result of taking on the sin of the world and trading his righteousness for our sinfulness, Jesus experienced separation from the Father. God poured out His wrath on Jesus in that moment and Jesus echoes one of David’s psalms in his cry to God. It wasn’t that Jesus didn’t understand why God poured out His wrath on him, he knew full well that God’s plan from the beginning of time was for Jesus to give his life for the world. Instead, Jesus was expressing what he was feeling in that moment of suffering, the fact that God had abandoned him. The significant thing about the Psalm that Jesus quoted from was that in it, while David acknowledges his feelings of hopelessness, the Psalm is largely about God’s ability to save.

Read Psalm 22

In the same way that David knew God’s plan for salvation, Jesus knew that death could not hold him, and the Father would act in divine intervention for him, raising him from the dead. Not only raising him from physical death, but restoring Jesus to relationship within the Godhead. All that from four words in the original language, translated “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Spend some time this morning reflecting on the immensity of what Jesus did for you on the cross. It wasn’t just a physical death that Christ experienced for you, but it was the complete abandonment by God, something he’d never felt before. It was in that moment that God poured out all of His righteous wrath on Jesus. The justice necessary for every sin. Every lie. Every murder. Every rape. Every gossip. Every moment of selfishness and pride. For everything in between the Fall and the day he comes again, Jesus bore it. That moment, he satisfied the wrath of God. For you.

On the cross, Jesus cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” so that you would never have to.