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

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…

How Much Does the Cross Really Matter?
The cross is as foolishness and weakness to nonbelievers, but Paul wrote that to those who are being saved it is both “the power” and “wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:18, 24). In sharp contrast to the controlling power and wisdom that has been ascribed to God or the gods throughout history—including in much of…

10 Problems with the Penal Substitution View of the Atonement
If asked what Jesus came to do and how he did it, most contemporary Western Christians would automatically say something like, “Jesus took the punishment from God that I deserved.” This is what’s usually called the “Penal Substitution” view of the atonement, for it emphasizes that Jesus was punished by God in our place. His…

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…

Nothing but Christ Crucified
One of the most remarkable expressions of the all-encompassing nature of the cross is reflected in an incidental, but extremely important, comment that Paul made in his First Letter to the Corinthians. He noted that when he brought “the testimony of God” to Corinth, he hadn’t come “with eloquence or human wisdom”. He instead “resolved…

Knowing the Eternal God
If all our knowledge about God is to be oriented around the cross, as I argue in many places (see this post for instance), what does this mean for how we reflect on God’s transcendence? In other words, how can we speak of God’s eternal being since there obviously was no cross within God prior…