These 19 men are burning, shrieking, crying, moaning, and groaning in the fires of hell under the wrath, curse, judgement, and condemnation of God because they rejected the God-Man, the Lord Jesus Christ, and believed in a false religion, a false god, and a false prophet. They are also in hell because of all their other sins, including murdering thousands of innocent people on 9/11. They did this because their false prophet did it and commanded it:
Bukhari: 4.52.220: Muhammad said: "I have been made victorious with terror."
Surah 9:5: kill the infidel wherever you find them, seize them, besiege them
Jesus warns that unless you repent, you will all likewise perish:
Luke 13:1-5: There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." Jesus
Your only hope is to turn from your sins and trust in the God-Man, Jesus Christ, Who died on that cross for sinners where He endured the wrath, curse, judgement, forsakenness, and condemnation of God. Then He rose up from the dead and conquered sin, death, and hell - He ascended into heaven with all power and all authority to rule and reign forever. And soon He will come back to judge the living and the dead. Are you ready?
Hebrews 9:27: it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment
Romans 3:23: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
Romans 6:23: For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
John 3:16: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.
Romans 10:9: if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
Acts 16:31: Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved!
If R. C. Sproul were still alive today and saw what some are writing and preaching about Psalm 22:1 and the forsakenness of Christ on the cross, he would exclaim: "What's wrong with you people!?"
R. C. Sproul got the forsakenness of Jesus on the cross right:
His cry was not, as Albert Schweitzer opined, the cry of a disillusioned prophet who had believed that God was going to rescue him at the eleventh hour & then felt forsaken. He didn’t just feel forsaken; he was forsaken. For Jesus to become the curse, he had to be completely forsaken by the Father. (Far As The Curse Is Found and The Curse Motif of the Atonement)
Dr. Sproul even argued that to say Jesus only felt forsaken or that He wasn't forsaken on the cross is heresy:
Others, in fact, my favorite hymn, my ordination hymn, was "'Tis Midnight; And On Olive's Brow", and I love that hymn in spite of the fact that there is a statement in there of heresy. When it talks about Jesus, it says "was not forsaken by His God." And you see theologians say well Jesus, in His humanity, felt forsaken on the cross, but He wasn't really forsaken. Let me say this: if Jesus was not really forsaken on the cross, you are still in your sins. You have no redemption. You have no salvation. Because the whole point of the cross is that if Jesus is going to bear our sins and bear the sanctions of the covenant - let me ask you this: what was the sign of the old covenant? Circumcision . . . the cross is the supreme circumcision. Because when Jesus takes the curse, upon Himself - so identifies with our sin that He becomes a curse - God cuts Him off! . . . the Father, as it were, turns His back! He removes His face! He turns out the light! He cuts off His Son! . . . God forsakes Him . . . God turned His back on His Son. (The Cross Of Christ: Blessing Or Curse?)
See more excellent teaching from R. C. Sproul on the forsakenness of Jesus on the cross:
Nowhere in Scripture is the reality of God’s wrath more sharply manifested than in the forsaking of His Messiah. To be cursed of God is to be cut off from His presence and all of His benefits. The Incarnate Christ who enjoyed intimate personal fellowship with the Father, such as no man had ever enjoyed, was suddenly and completely cut off. Once the sin of man was imputed to Him, He became the virtual incarnation of evil. The load He carried was repugnant to the Father. God is too holy to even look at iniquity. God the Father turned His back upon the Son, cursing Him to the pit of hell while on the cross. Here was the Son’s "descent into hell." Here the fury of God raged against Him. His scream was the scream of the damned. For us. (Tabletalk Magazine, "My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?" (April 1990), Page 6)
When Jesus took the curse on Himself and so identified with our sin that He became a curse, God cut Him off, and justly so. At the moment when Christ took on Himself the sin of the world, His figure on the cross was the most grotesque, most obscene mass of concentrated sin in the history of the world. God is too holy to look on iniquity, so when Christ hung on the cross, the Father, as it were, turned His back. He averted His face and He cut off His Son. Jesus, Who, touching His human nature, had been in perfect, blessed relationship with God throughout His ministry, now bore the sin of God’s people, and so He was forsaken by God . . . He was overwhelmed by the outer darkness. On the cross, He was in hell, totally bereft of the grace and the presence of God, utterly separated from all blessedness of the Father. He became a curse for us so that we one day will be able to see the face of God. God turned His back on His Son so that the light of His countenance will fall on us. It’s no wonder Jesus screamed from the depths of His soul. (The Truth Of The Cross, Pages 133-135)
When Paul probes the depths of the atonement, he goes to the concept of curse . . . He had to be taken outside the camp, numbered among the Gentiles, and considered unclean, and God plunged the world into darkness while Christ was being crucified, indicating that the light of God's countenance had turned away. Christ cried out form the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46). He had to be forsaken because the penalty for sin is divine forsakenness. Jesus was cut off from the land of the living on our behalf, so that we would not be cut off. (Everyone's A Theologian: An Introduction To Systematic Theology, Page 165)
On the cross, our demerit was transferred or imputed to Christ. He bore all our demerit or sin by Himself. Christ became the most obscene, filthy object ever set before God's eyes. Christ took on Himself all our guilt and pollution and became a curse for us. We cannot grasp what was going on in that transaction. It is no wonder that Christ said on the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46). On that cross, in the sight of the Father, Christ was absolutely repugnant. (Truths We Confess: A Systematic Exposition of the Westminster Confession of Faith, Page 279)
It was as if there was a cry from heaven - excuse my language, but I can be no more accurate than to say - it was as if Jesus heard the words 'God Damn You.' Because that's what it meant to be cursed, to be damned, to be under the anathema of the Father. As I said, I don't understand that, but I know that it's true. (And God Cursed Him)
God is too holy to even look at iniquity. God the Father turned His back on the Son, cursing Him to the pit of hell while He hung on the cross. Here was the Son’s “descent into hell.” Here the fury of God raged against Him. His scream was the scream of the damned. For us. (Treasuring Redemption's Price)
The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
R. C. Sproul wrote:
The supreme malediction would read something like this:
"May the Lord curse you and abandon you. May the Lord keep you in darkness and give you only judgment without grace. May the Lord turn his back upon you and remove his peace from you forever."
When on the cross, not only was the Father's justice satisfied by the atoning work of the Son, but in bearing our sins the Lamb of God removed our sins from us as far as the east is from the west. He did it by being cursed.
God is too holy to look on iniquity, so when Christ hung on the cross, the Father, as it were, turned His back. He averted His face and He cut off His Son. Jesus, Who, touching His human nature, had been in a perfect, blessed relationship with God throughout His ministry, now bore the sin of God’s people, and so He was forsaken by God . . . On the cross, He was in hell, totally bereft of the grace and the presence of God, utterly separated from all blessedness of the Father. He became a curse for us so that we one day will be able to see the face of God. God turned His back on His Son so that the light of His countenance will fall on us. It’s no wonder Jesus screamed from the depths of His soul.
He drank the cup . . . only one went to the cross to be forsaken. Only one accepted the judgment of the full curse of God in behalf of other people. (The Atonement Of Jesus: The Curse Of The Cross)
. . . we are at enmity with God. And that enmity was mediated for us on the cross, so that Christ became an enemy of the Father . . . . (The Atonement (Mark 15:33-41)
Pulpit where Lloyd-Jones preached at Westminster Chapel
One of the first books I remember reading (besides the Bible) as a new, committed Christian was Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones book called The Cross. I am very thankful for this because early on in my Christian life, he showed me the true meaning of the cross according to the Bible.
[God] has made His Son the sacrifice; it is a substitutionary offering for your sins and mine. That was why He was there in the Garden sweating drops of blood, because He knew what it involved – it involved a separation from the face of the father. And that is why He cried out on the Cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Commentary on Romans 8:32).
The height of the paradox of this love, the thing that no human mind can encompass, is that when you stand at the foot of the Cross and listen, you hear these words being uttered: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Everyone else had forsaken Him, His disciples had fled and had left Him, but now He cries, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me"? The one who utters that cry is "the beloved", the one who had basked in the sunshine of the eternal love from eternity, without intermission. He reaches a point wherein even He has lost sight of the face and the smile of His Father. And He experienced that for you, for me. If He had shrunk from it we would not be saved, we would not be forgiven, we would not be Christians, we would not be children of the second birth. The "beloved" descended even to that degree of ignominy and died. His body was buried in a grave and a stone was rolled against its door. He descended into hell - "the beloved". He went "into the lowest parts of the earth" - He who had made everything out of nothing. And it was for us, and for our salvation. It is only as we realize who it is who is suffering in that manner that we realize the depth and the intensity of His love toward us. (Read: In The Beloved; Listen: In The Beloved)
He was delivered up by God the Father to bear the full wrath of God Himself against sin. He was delivered up to bear the full penalty of God's holy law upon sin and transgression. That's what He was delivered up to and nothing was withheld. Now, it's an extraordinary thing how people try to detract from this . . . Surely He hath put Him to grief. You can't take it out. If you do you miss the central glory of the cross. In other words we've got to realize this: that our Lord experienced there all the torment and the suffering and the agony that results from the punishment of sin . . . He knew that there was to be a moment when God, having made Him to be sin, God having put our sins upon Him, God His Father was going to smite Him. He was going to strike Him. He would avert His face from Him. And He who had ever looked into the face of His Father and loved Him from all eternity would be separated from Him. And would experience the agony of the grief and the suffering of any soul under the wrath of God against sin . . . God delivered Him up - He didn't spare Him anything. When He put our sins upon Him, though He was His own dearly beloved Son, He didn't withhold any part of the punishment. He poured it all upon Him. Everything that it deserved, He kept nothing back of it . . . He delivered Him up for us all. And He poured the vials of His wrath upon Him. He smote Him! He struck Him! He wounded Him! He bruised Him! He afflicted Him! He's put Him to grief! With nothing at all being kept back. Oh my friends! How important it is that we should take the Scripture as it is! And not allow our philosophies about the Person of the Son or that it was inconceivable that the Father, in His love, should ever do that to His Son, Who was innocent - that's their argument you see - they argue always from the love of God, and they think they understand it, and they think they're making the love of God bigger. Can't you see that they are making it very much smaller? The love of God is as great as this: that He did that to His Son for us! (The Sufferings Of Christ)
What killed Him? The separation from God. "My God, my God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?!" That broke His heart, literally, and He died. Men only crucified Him. What killed Him, what caused His death was the bearing of the punishment of your sin and mine . . . It's God who is doing it . . . to smite Him that we might be forgiven, that we might be reconciled, that we might become the sons of God. (The Mystery Of The Cross)
Have you seen that your sins were laid upon Him? That they were struck, that He was smitten, that God punished your sins in Him, that's why He died - He took upon Himself your sins, and God has dealt with them! He lost the face of God! He died! His heart was broken! Why? He was bearing the punishment of your sins! (Glory In The Cross Of Christ)
Death, let us never forget, is the punishment for sin. And all the pain involved in it is a part of the punishment of sin. All the anguish and the agony, all the sense of separation from God - it's a part of the punishment of sin . . . our Lord experienced that and felt its bitterness and its horror and its agony - absolutely, noting was withheld. You remember the cry: "My God, my God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?!" Forsaken of God! In physical agony - and torment and torture! The statement is that the Son of God there dying upon the cross experienced every section and part and portion of God's prescribed punishment for sin . . . He tasted death. He knew in His own body and in His own soul the final torment of the unbeliever. He passed through this phase of utter separation from God, and realizing all God's abomination and detestation of sin He felt it all in all its fullness that He might taste death for everyone. (The Cross Of Christ)
And He received the punishment that was due to you and to me. That is why He groaned in spirit at the grave of Lazarus. That is why He was sweating great drops of blood in Gethsemane. That is why He cries on the cross: "My God, my God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?!" He was experiencing the wrath of God! His Father's wrath upon your sins and mine was upon Him! The chastisement of our peace was upon Him! By His stripes we are healed! He there is purging sins! His blood is shed, let loose and it washes the sins away! . . . Is it conceivable that the almighty Father would have averted His gaze from His only begotten, dearly beloved Son and have allowed Him to pass through this agony and shame if there were any other way? . . . He turned to the Father and said, "Is this the only way?" He wasn't merely shrinking from physical death. He was shrinking from the bearing of the wrath and the punishment of God and God turning His face away. He said: "Is there no other way?" (The Wonder Of The Cross)
I've got to die! I've got to be separated from my Father! And He wept and He groaned in the spirit, we are told . . . He knows . . . in order to save mankind it means He's got to be temporarily separated from His Father. This is the mystery. (The Mystery Of The Death Of Christ)
But you notice what he says: 'He that spared not his own Son.' He means that God had made it very plain and clear that he was going to punish sin by pouring out upon sinners the vials of his wrath. He was going to punish sin in this way - that men should die. The wages of sin is death, and it means endless death and destruction. And what we are told there by the Apostle is that after he had laid our sins upon his own Son on that cross, he did not spare him ANY OF THE PUNISHMENT. HE DID NOT SAY, BECAUSE HE IS MY SON I WILL MODIFY THE PUNISHMENT. I WILL HOLD BACK A LITTLE, I CANNOT DO THAT TO MY OWN SON. I CANNOT REGARD HIM AS A SINNER. I CANNOT SMITE HIM, I CANNOT STRIKE HIM. HE DID NOT SAY THAT. HE DID EVERYTHING HE HAD SAID HE WOULD DO. HE DID NOT KEEP ANYTHING BACK. HE SPARED NOT HIS OWN SON. HE POURED OUT ALL HIS DIVINE WRATH UPON SIN, UPON HIS OWN DEARLY BELOVED SON. So you hear the Son crying out in his agony, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' and he literally died of a broken heart. John tells us that when the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, 'Forthwith came there out blood and water' (19:34). The heart had burst and the blood had clotted, and there it was - serum and blood clot, BECAUSE HIS HEART WAS LITERALLY RUPTURED BY THE AGONY OF THE WRATH OF GOD UPON HIM, AND BY THE SEPARATION FROM THE FACE OF HIS FATHER. That is the love of God. That, my friend, is the love of God to you, a sinner. Not that he looks passively and says: I forgive you though you have done this to my Son. NO, HE HIMSELF SMITES THE SON. HE DOES TO THE SON WHAT YOU AND I COULD NEVER DO. HE POURS OUT HIS ETERNAL WRATH UPON HIM, AND HIDES HIS FACE FROM HIM. His own dearly beloved, only begotten Son. And he did it in order that we should not receive that punishment and go to hell and spend there an eternity in misery, torment and unhappiness. THAT IS THE LOVE OF GOD. And that is the wonder and the marvel and the glory of the cross, God punishing his own Son, in order that he might not have to punish you and me. (Emphasis mine; The Cross, Pages 80-81)
Hallelujah! What a Savior!
Getting The Cross Right
We must get the cross right! For more on Christ's forsakenness on the cross, please read:
You can read what Dr. John MacArthur wrote about the forsakenness of Jesus on the cross in his systematic theology here. The material in this article is from his sermons and a Q and A session. John MacArthur got the forsakenness of Jesus on the cross right:
The darkness, then - listen - is not the absence of God, and it’s not the presence of Satan. The darkness is not the absence of God, it is the presence of God. It is God in full judgment vengeance, God in full judgment fury. It is infinite, wrath moved by infinite justice, releasing infinite punishment on the infinite Son, who could absorb all the tortures of eternities of hell and do it in three hours. It is in those three hours that He bore in His body our sins. It is in those three hours that He was made sin for us. It is in those three hours that He took the curse. And at the ninth hour, it ended. Three o’clock, it ended. And Mark records the fourth statement of our Lord, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is translated, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” - the first thing He said after the darkness ended. How are we to understand that? What does that mean? Didn’t we just say God was there? This is very difficult for us to understand, obviously, talking about a divine person. I’m convinced that what our Lord is saying there is expressing the sense that the judgment has ended, and He’s wanting the comfort. After the wrath is exhausted, when God in full presence and full vengeance has poured it out, the whole cup has been consumed, and the darkness is gone, so is God. Perhaps for that moment, He knew God was there in the punishment, but when the punishment ended, where was God? He seems to be experiencing the separation from God immediately after He has borne all the fury of His presence. He knew who was exploding judgment on Him. And maybe for just that moment, when He might have expected comfort and compassion and sweet fellowship in the unimaginable, incomprehensible exhaustion of just having suffered eternities of hell, in that moment, He says, “Where is God?” And His words were prophesied from Psalm 22:1. Psalm 22 begins, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It isn’t that God isn’t there in the punishment, it’s that He’s saying, “Where are you in the comfort?” This is a very, very important reminder to us that hell is the full fury of God’s personal punishment - listen - but He will never be there to comfort. Is our Lord given here a preview of hell? Punishment without comfort? Punishment without compassion? Punishment without sympathy? Punishment without relief? That’s what hell is. So even this is for Jesus to suffer all that hell is, all the wrath, all the presence of divine wrath, and all the absence of divine comfort. (God Visits Calvary)
After the darkness, verse 34, the ninth hour, the darkness ends, and “Jesus cries with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’ which is translated, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’” How are we to understand this? Because it’s clear that God was there, punishing Him in the darkness, so much darkness that virtually nothing else happened. Does this expression come after the wrath is done? God was there in full presence, pouring out fury. So when judgment ended and darkness dissipated, where was God? It seems as though it was only after the darkness that our Lord sensed separation from God. He was there in the darkness punishing His Son. Coming out of the darkness, think of it this way. His Son would have been looking for some comfort, some compassion, some sweet fellowship. I can’t begin to comprehend what it would be like to bear the fury of God on His Son. I can’t understand how the Son would feel bearing all the punishment for all the sins of all the people who would ever believe through all of human history. But in the moment when the darkness faded, He senses that God is gone. He was there in judgment, and now He’s gone. In a moment when He was exhausted with an exhaustion that’s incomprehensible to us—we could never comprehend it. Where is God? “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” And you have a prophecy of that very statement back in Psalm 22. What is going on here? This seems to be the final suffering and a reminder to all sinners that while hell is full of divine fury, there will never be comfort. This is the final taste of hell. Jesus tasted hell. And hell is the fury of God, but it is also the absence of God. He will never be there. He’ll never show up to comfort, to console, to love, to relieve. So all that hell is, Jesus experiences—the full fury of God, and His absence. (When God Brought Hell To Earth)
But notice verse 46, “And about the ninth hour” – that’s 3:00 P.M. in the midst of this darkness – “Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’” Now, there is a monumental miracle, a reality of truth beyond human reason. How can God and Christ be one and be forsaken? How can they be one and be separated? Notice verse 46 says it was the ninth hour, 3:00 P.M. The darkness reigned from noon to 3:00. So, the darkness has come to an end. And just at the ending of the darkness is also the ending of the life of Christ. The fury of God is spent. The judgment ends in death. His life is about to come to a close. And it says in verse 46, just at that time “Jesus screamed” is the term – “He screamed with a loud voice.” For six long hours He had been enduring immeasurable agony. Not only in the physical dimension – and it’s hard to conceive the pain of having nails hammered through your wrists and hammered through your feet, and then to be in that position for six hours while you are slumped in a position that suffocates your internal organs, and your muscles are taut and cramped, and you’re unable to move. And thorns are crushed into your brow, and blood runs down your face. There’s a cloak of flies, and you can’t scratch or move in any direction at all except to perhaps slightly reposition your anatomy. Because every one of your extremities is suspended by a nail. Hour upon hour of excruciating physical agony, to say nothing of the nakedness, the approach of mockery, sarcasm, hatred, venom being poured out upon Him. But far more than that physical and emotional trauma was the spiritual pain of feeling God’s furious anger over sin poured out totally on Him. It was as if God accumulated all of His anger against all of the sins of all of the ages and poured it all out on Christ. But as that sin-bearing judgment comes to a climax, He gathers His strength enough to cry out from His heart. And He cries out about a profound sense of alienation from God, of separation from God too deep for us to understand. “Eli, Eli,” the Hebrew for “My God, My God.” Mark says, “Eloi, Eloi,” uses the Aramaic. Matthew preserves it as Jesus said it and then gives a translation so that we will understand it, “My God, My God,” and there’s intimacy in that, and there’s tenderness in that, and there’s pathos in that, “My God, My God.” And He is saying, in effect, by the personal possessive pronoun, “You’re Mine; where did You go?” And then says it in “lama sabachthani,” “Why have You left Me? Why have You departed from Me?” That statement, by the way, is an exact duplicate of Psalm 22, verse 1, where the psalmist predicted that the Messiah in death would say that, and that’s exactly what He said. The cry demonstrates that He was separated from God. That’s a miracle in reverse. That’s a supernatural negative kind of miracle. You say, “Well, how was it? What happened? What is the mystery of the separation?” I, for one, do not know. And theologians have discussed and debated this through the centuries and we’ll never be able to explain this because we cannot explain what the essence of the union in the Trinity is, so how could we explain what the separation was? You say, “Did Jesus cease to become God?” No. “Did Jesus get cut off from the nature of God?” No. But did Jesus cease to have fellowship with God? Yes. Did He get cut off from the communion with God? Yes. Did He die physically? Yes. Did He die spiritually? Yes. He was separated from the fellowship of the Father, though not the nature of the Father. He was still God; He did not cease to be God, or He would have ceased to be anything or anyone. There’s no way you explain it. Maybe we’re helped a little bit to understand a little bit that even in His incarnation there was a separation. Did you know that? Because in John 17:5, He says, “Father, return Me to the glory I had with you before the world began.” So, there was some kind of relationship that He had before His incarnation that He wanted back. So, in the incarnation, there was some degree of separation, and now in His sin-bearing death, there is another degree of separation. He is separated from God, and when He cries out to God about the separation, that’s cause for the crowd to mock Him. (A Closer Look At The Cross)
As the darkness ended, so did the life of our Lord. The fury of God is almost spent, but the horror of the experience was not just the wrath of God, it was the absence of God. And Jesus cries with a loud voice; actually the word means He screamed. Six hours of agony, three of those hours in the darkness as He was bearing the fury of God against all the sins of all who would ever believe through human history. But as the sin-bearing judgment comes to its conclusion, He gathers all His strength and screams the deepest agony of His holy heart, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” And He quotes in saying that Psalm 22:1, messianic psalm. The cry reveals the separation from the Father that He was experiencing. He was not separated from the nature of the Father, but He was separated from fellowship with the Father. When He said that, the mockery that had already been going on at Calvary reached a new level. Verse 47, “Some of those who were standing there, when they heard it, began saying, ‘This man is calling for Elijah.’” Look, they knew Psalm 22. They knew the messianic promise, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” This is just malicious sarcasm. The people knew that the Old Testament promised Elijah also was to come before Messiah, according to Malachi 4, so they mock Him on the notion of the joke that He thinks He’s the Messiah. And at this point Jesus says, “I thirst.” That fulfills Psalm 69:21. In response to that cry, verse 48 says, “One of them ran, took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, put it on a reed, and gave Him to drink.” Gave Him a drink of cheap wine, probably the kind the soldiers had. But the rest of them said, “Let us see whether Elijah will come to save Him.” This is sarcasm, this is mockery, this is scorn. And here you have the second profound, divine commentary by God on the death of His Son, and it is this: God must separate Himself. He must forsake Jesus, because God is holy, and Jesus is carrying all the sins of His people to the cross. This is what hell is, just as hell is the separation of the sinner from God, Jesus is experiencing hell, bearing our sins, separated from God, fellowship broken; and Jesus longs for that fellowship to be restored. The point of the separation is to prove that Jesus was bearing sin. God would never have separated from Him if He hadn’t borne our guilt. Separation proves that our sins were placed on Him. Even as He bears the curse for His people, He longs for it to end and fellowship to be restored to the Father. (God's Own Commentary On The Cross)
Hallelujah! What a Savior!
Getting The Cross Right
We must get the cross right! For more on Christ's forsakenness on the cross, please read:
A. W. Tozer got the forsakenness of Jesus on the cross and penal substitution right - he affirmed Jesus was forsaken by God on the cross. In some of his statements, I would say it a bit differently. For example, he wrote:
But it was the Man who cried, why hath Thou forsaken me. It was Mary's son who cried. It was the body which God gave Him. It was the Lamb about to die. It was the sacrifice that cried. It was the human Jesus. It was the Son of Man that cried. But the ancient and timeless Deity was never separated. (The Word Made Flesh - The Mystery of It)
It's very important to make clear it was the Person Christ Jesus who was forsaken according to His human nature because natures can't be forsaken. The God-Man was forsaken according to His human nature. As Wilhelmus à Brakel stated:
Additional Objection: Christ’s human nature, in which He suffered, was finite and thus was not capable of bearing infinite wrath. Consequently His suffering was not sufficient to atone for sin which merits eternal punishment. Answer: We cannot determine to what degree Christ’s human nature was fortified, but it always remained finite. In this nature Christ endured a total being forsaken by, and the full wrath of, the infinite God against whom the elect had sinned. One should note, however, that it was not the human nature which suffered, but the Person according to this nature, and since the Person is infinite, all that He suffered was of infinite efficacy and value. (à Brakel, The Christian's Reasonable Service, 1.592)
Consider Tozer on the forsakenness of Jesus Christ and penal substitution:
The cross is the lightning rod of grace, which short-circuits God's wrath to Christ - so that only the light of His love remains for believers. (Treasures From Tozer)
But even while He walked on the earth, He was within an unbroken fellowship with His Father. For it's impossible that the Father and the Son should ever cease in the ancient sea of the Godhead to be joined together as One. But the man Christ Jesus cried, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me? And as pertaining to His manhood, He was forsaken of the Father. As pertaining to His deity, forsaking would be impossible. For we cannot divide the Deity or separate the Persons of the Holy Trinity. (Commentary on the Nature of the Triune Godhead)
And have you noticed friends that at the cross were present all the evidences of the great alienation? First, there was the hate and the tyranny, and the antagonisms of men were all there around the cross. There were the thorns upon his brow, symbolic of all that it was wrong with the diseased and fallen nature. There was the suffering too great to name or describe, symbolic of all suffering from the hour that Eve looked at her murdered son and burst into her first tears. There was darkness symbolic of all the night of hell that settles around the world. And there was separation, bleak, grim separation when He cried, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me? And there was death. There are the marks of the alienation, hate and thorns and suffering and darkness and separation and death, and they were all there. When God pulled the curtain down, He did something there between Him and His God. It meant propitiation and the alienation was ended. (Alienation, Propitiation and Reconciliation)
It's the language of continuous and even when He hung on the cross, He did not leave the bosom of the Father. You say, how then, Mr. Tozer? How could He cry, my God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? Was He frightened? Was He mistaken? Never, never. He was never mistaken about anything. Then what was it? You say He never left the bosom of the Father. And He said, why hast Thou forsaken me? The answer is very plain. The answer is this, that even when Christ died on the unholy, fly-infested cross for mankind, He never divided the Godhead. You cannot, says the old theologians, divide the substance. Not all of the swords of Nero could ever cut down through the substance of the Godhead, to cut off the Father from the Son. But it was the Man who cried, why hath Thou forsaken me. It was Mary's son who cried. It was the body which God gave Him. It was the Lamb about to die. It was the sacrifice that cried. It was the human Jesus. It was the Son of Man that cried. But the ancient and timeless Deity was never separated. And He was still in the bosom of the Father when He cried, into Thy hands I commend my spirit. For, Father, Son and the Holy Ghost are forever one, inseparable, indivisible and can never be anything else. So, the Eternal Father never turned his back on the Eternal Word, for He was always in the bosom of the Father. But the Eternal Father turned His back on the Son, the Son of Man, the Sacrifice, the Lamb to be slain. And in the blind terror and pain of it all, the Sacrifice, the Lamb temporarily become sin for us, knew Himself forsaken. God dumped all that vast, bubbling, boiling, seething, dirty, slimy mess of human sin on the soul of His Son and then backed away. And in that moment of anguish, He cried, why have You forsaken me? But in the next breath, He could say, Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit. (The Word Made Flesh - The Mystery of It)
Israel's great burden and great blunder was that she felt that this wounded one on the hillside there was being punished for His own sin. We thought, says the Jew, in confession, we thought He was smitten of God. We thought that God was punishing Him for His iniquity, but we didn't know then that God was punishing Him for our iniquity. (What Jesus Endured for Our Sake)
Hallelujah! What a Savior!
Getting The Cross Right
We must get the cross right! For more on Christ's forsakenness on the cross, please read:
