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
A Cruciform Dialectic
One of the most important aspects of God’s action on Calvary, I believe, is this: God revealed himself not just by acting toward humans, but by allowing himself to be acted on by humans as well as the fallen Powers. God certainly took the initiative in devising the plan of salvation that included the Son…
Avoiding the “S” Word: Sin
In our culture today, we don’t like to talk about sin. While most of us have a deep sense that something is off, that something is wrong with ourselves and the world, and many know or feel that they are guilty of something, this kind of talk is avoided. Instead, we evaluate ourselves by our…
The Sine Qua Non of the Kingdom
In contrast to the habit of judgment which I challenged in the previous post, God calls his people to love the way that God loves. But what exactly does this mean? People have a lot of screwy ideas about “love” today. We use the word “love” to mean a lot of different things, from sexual…
The Heresy of “Just War”
Since the time when the Jesus-looking kingdom movement was transformed into the Caesar-looking “militant and triumphant” Church, there has been a tradition of Christians by-passing the enemy-loving, non-violent teachings of the NT and instead appealing to the precedent of divinely-sanctioned nationalism and violence in the OT whenever they felt the need to justify engaging in…
The Cleansing of the Temple and Non-Violence
Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple is the most commonly cited example of those who allege that he did not absolutize loving enemies or refraining from violence. I submit that this episode implies nothing of the sort. First, it is important that we understand that this episode was not an expression of unpremeditated anger on Jesus’…
What the Resurrection Says About the Cross
As with every other aspect of Jesus’ life and ministry, even the resurrection must be understood in light of the cross. This event was not just the resuscitation of a random corpse. It was the resurrection of the Incarnate Son of God who had fulfilled the human side of the God-human covenant by living a sinless…