We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
Why Did Jesus Cry Out that God Had Forsaken Him?
At the climax of Jesus’ suffering on the cross, Jesus cries out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46) It’s a jarring moment in the narrative. To forsake is to abandon. Did Jesus really believe that God had abandoned him? Was Jesus right about this? If he was right, what does that say about God? If he was wrong, what does that say about his connection with the father (about his standing within the trinity)?
Jesus had committed himself to doing the Father’s will, even though he anticipated it would involve a cup of great suffering (Mt 26:39). Paul tells us that, on the cross, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us” (2 Cor 5:21). This means that, on Calvary, the all-holy God was totally saturated in our sin! Not only that, but Paul also teaches that, on the cross, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Gal 3:13). One who is cursed is estranged from God, which is why, when Jesus took on with our cursed state, he cried out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46). Jesus experienced the separation from God that we deserved, while experiencing abandonment on an infinitely more profound level than we could ever experience. And this means that, on Calvary, God, whose very nature is the perfect, loving union of Father, Son and Spirit, experienced the profound disruption of our God-forsakenness.
Yes, Jesus was abandoned, but the abandonment was a momentary horror that Jesus offered himself into. Furthermore, it was a rupture that overthrew Satan (1 John 3:8), and established our salvation (Hebrews 9:27-28). It was, to summarize, the greatest possible act of love.
Category: General
Tags: Cross, Crucifixion, The Cross
Verse: Matthew 27
Related Reading
The Cross and The Trinity
Out of love for humankind, Scripture tells us, Jesus emptied himself of his divine prerogatives, set aside the glory he had with the Father from before the foundation of the world, became a human being and bore our sin as he died a God-forsaken death on Calvary (Phil 2:5-7). Though Jesus remained fully God, he…
The Cruciform Trinity
As paradoxical as it sounds, if God is supremely revealed when he stoops to the infinite extremity of becoming his own antithesis on the cross, then we must conclude that stooping to this extremity out of love must, in some sense, be intrinsic to who God eternally is. And rendering this coherent necessitates that we…
Podcast: Does the Resurrection Diminish the Sacrifice of Jesus?
Greg discusses God’s sacrifice, the nature of separation from God, and shares a powerful story from his time in Cambodia, and offers this as an analogy for Christ’s inner sacrifice. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0155.mp3
Redefining Omnipotence
Traditional, classical theology has equated divine power with God causing and determining all things to exist. God supposedly acts on everything as their cause, but nothing in any way acts on him. Yet, these assumptions about how God causes things to exist starts in the wrong place. If we start with reason, it causes us…
Crucifying Transcendence
The classical view of God’s transcendence in theology is in large borrowed from a major strand within Hellenistic philosophy. In sharp contrast to ancient Israelites, whose conception of God was entirely based on their experience of God acting dynamically and in self-revelatory ways in history, the concept of God at work in ancient Greek philosophy…
The Cross is Revelation and Salvation
The way Christ saved us from the curse of the law was “by becoming a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13). So too, the way Christ freed us from the condemnation of sin and enabled us to “become the righteousness of God” was by becoming sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21). Getting this point is crucial…