John MacArthur On The Forsakenness Of Jesus On The Cross

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:

1. A Concern About The Way Pastor Kevin DeYoung Writes About The Cross In His New Daily Doctrine Book

2. The Bible Says The Father Turned His Face Away From Jesus On The Cross

3. Forsaken, Or Felt Forsaken

4. More Thoughts On Being God-Forsaken

5. The Sufferings Of The LORD Jesus Christ On The Cross

6. Forsaken: A Very Unhelpful Chapter On The Cross

7. Did The Father Turn His Away From Jesus On That Cross?

8. A Satanic Reading Of Psalm 22 That Should Be Forsaken

9. MacArthur And Mayhue On The Forsakenness Of Jesus On That Cross

God And The Gospel

To learn more about the great and true Triune God, the God-Man, Jesus Christ, His cross, and His glorious Gospel message and everlasting Kingship, please watch American Gospel: Christ Alone. You can watch the full documentary here and here for free!

Christ Jesus Is God’s Son Foreknown!

Christ Jesus Is God’s Son Foreknown

Beloved God-Man, Precious Stone

Filled With God’s Spirit, Grace Unknown

Perfect Obedience He’s Shown

Yet God Made All Our Sin His Own

God Crushed And Cursed Him To Atone

He Died And Rose To Death Dethrone

We’re Justified By Faith Alone

For We’re In Him, Beloved Foreknown

The Spirit Sanctifies His Own

Now We Obey His Word Alone

We’re Sprinkled With His Blood Atone

Grace And Peace Flow From His Throne

For Christ Is All Who Was Foreknown!

God And The Gospel

To learn more about the great and true Triune God, the God-Man, Jesus Christ, His cross, and His glorious Gospel message and everlasting Kingship, please watch American Gospel: Christ Alone. You can watch the full documentary here and here for free!

A. W. Tozer On The Forsakenness Of Jesus On The Cross

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:

1. A Concern About The Way Pastor Kevin DeYoung Writes About The Cross In His New Daily Doctrine Book

2. The Bible Says The Father Turned His Face Away From Jesus On The Cross

3. Forsaken, Or Felt Forsaken

4. More Thoughts On Being God-Forsaken

5. The Sufferings Of The LORD Jesus Christ On The Cross

6. Forsaken: A Very Unhelpful Chapter On The Cross

7. Did The Father Turn His Away From Jesus On That Cross?

8. A Satanic Reading Of Psalm 22 That Should Be Forsaken

God And The Gospel

To learn more about the great and true Triune God, the God-Man, Jesus Christ, His cross, and His glorious Gospel message and everlasting Kingship, please watch American Gospel: Christ Alone. You can watch the full documentary here and here for free!

To The Elect Dear Peter Wrote!

To The Elect Dear Peter Wrote

Christ Died For Them As God’s Scapegoat

Then Rose Alive And Slit Death’s Throat

You’re Chosen, Loved God Will Devote

All His Power To Promote

Humility And End Pride’s Gloat

Our God We Praise Oh World Take Note!

God And The Gospel

To learn more about the great and true Triune God, the God-Man, Jesus Christ, His cross, and His glorious Gospel message and everlasting Kingship, please watch American Gospel: Christ Alone. You can watch the full documentary here and here for free!

Charles Spurgeon On The Forsakenness Of Jesus On That Cross

Charles Spurgeon got the forsakenness of Jesus on the cross right. Come and see from his various sermons and writings:

Then comes the "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Here we behold His human soul in anguish, His inmost heart overwhelmed by the withdrawing of Jehovah's face, and made to cry out as if in perplexity and amazement. (Christ's Words From The Cross, Page 6)

The comfortable presence of God, which had all his life long sustained him, began to withdraw from him in the garden, and appeared to be quite gone when he was just in the article of death upon the cross; and meanwhile the waves of God's wrath on account of sin began to break over his spirit, and he was in the condition of a soul deserted by God . . . But though God be angry, as it were, yet he crieth, "My God." (Our Lord's Solemn Enquiry)

Christ in that hour took all our sins, past, present, and to come, and was punished for them all there and then, that we might never be punished, because he suffered in our stead. Do you see, then, how it was that God the Father bruised him? Unless he had so done the agonies of Christ could not have been an equivalent for our sufferings; for hell consists in the hiding of God's face from sinners, and if God had not hidden his face from Christ, Christ could not – I see not how he could – have endured any suffering that could have been accepted as an equivalent for the woes and agonies of his people (The Death Of Christ) 

As to my sin, I hear its harsh accusings no more when I hear Jesus cry, "Why have you forsaken me?" I know that I deserve the deepest Hell at the hand of God's vengeance; but I am not afraid. He will never forsake me, for He forsook His Son on my behalf. (Christ's Words From The Cross, Page 57)

“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Psalm 22:1; We here behold the Saviour in the depth of his sorrows. No other place so well shows the griefs of Christ as Calvary, and no other moment at Calvary is so full of agony as that in which his cry rends the air—“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” At this moment physical weakness was united with acute mental torture from the shame and ignominy through which he had to pass; and to make his grief culminate with emphasis, he suffered spiritual agony surpassing all expression, resulting from the departure of his Father’s presence. This was the black midnight of his horror; then it was that he descended the abyss of suffering. No man can enter into the full meaning of these words. Some of us think at times that we could cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” There are seasons when the brightness of our Father’s smile is eclipsed by clouds and darkness; but let us remember that God never does really forsake us. It is only a seeming forsaking with us, but in Christ’s case it was a real forsaking. We grieve at a little withdrawal of our Father’s love; but the real turning away of God’s face from his Son, who shall calculate how deep the agony which it caused him? In our case, our cry is often dictated by unbelief: in his case, it was the utterance of a dreadful fact, for God had really turned away from him for a season. O thou poor, distressed soul, who once lived in the sunshine of God’s face, but art now in darkness, remember that he has not really forsaken thee. God in the clouds is as much our God as when he shines forth in all the lustre of his grace; but since even the thought that he has forsaken us gives us agony, what must the woe of the Saviour have been when he exclaimed, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Morning And Evening, April 15th, Morning) 

By the help of the Holy Spirit, let us first dwell upon THE FACT; or, what our Lord suffered. God had forsaken him . . . The desertion was real. Though under some aspects our Lord could say, “The Father is with me”; yet was it solemnly true that God did forsake him. It was not a failure of faith on his part which led him to imagine what was not actual fact. Our faith fails us, and then we think that God has forsaken us; but our Lord’s faith did not for a moment falter, for he says twice, “My God, my God.” Oh, the mighty double grip of his unhesitating faith! He seems to say, “Even if thou hast forsaken me, I have not forsaken thee.” . . . This stroke has cut him to the quick: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” It was no phantom of the gloom; it was a real absence which he mourned . . . His Father, at that time, gave him no open acknowledgment. On certain other occasions a voice had been heard, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”; but now, when such a testimony seemed most of all required, the oracle was dumb. He was hung up as an accursed thing upon the cross; for he was “made a curse for us, as it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree”; and the Lord his God did not own him before men . . . But this was not all. His Father now dried up that sacred stream of peaceful communion and loving fellowship which had flowed hitherto throughout his whole earthly life. (“Lama Sabachthani?”)

He said himself, as you remember, “Ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.” Here was his constant comfort: but all comfort from this source was to be withdrawn. The divine Spirit did not minister to his human spirit. No communications with his Father’s love poured into his heart. It was not possible that the Judge should smile upon one who represented the prisoner at the bar. Our Lord’s faith did not fail him, as I have already shown you, for he said, “My God, my God”: yet no sensible supports were given to his heart, and no comforts were poured into his mind . . . To our Lord, the Father’s love was the foundation of everything; and when that was gone, all was gone. Nothing remained, within, without, above, when his own God, the God of his entire confidence, turned from him. Yes, God in very deed forsook our Saviour . . . To be forsaken of God was much more a source of anguish to Jesus than it would be to us. “Oh,” say you, “how is that?” I answer, because he was perfectly holy. A rupture between a perfectly holy being and the thrice holy God must be in the highest degree strange, abnormal, perplexing, and painful. If any man here, who is not at peace with God, could only know his true condition, he would swoon with fright. If you unforgiven ones only knew where you are, and what you are at this moment in the sight of God, you would never smile again till you were reconciled to him. Alas! we are insensible, hardened by the deceitfulness of sin, and therefore we do not feel our true condition. His perfect holiness made it to our Lord a dreadful calamity to be forsaken of the thrice holy God . . .  Do not forget that he was such a One that to him to be without God must have been an overwhelming calamity . . . Our Lord’s heart, and all his nature were, morally and spiritually, so delicately formed, so sensitive, so tender, that to be without God, was to him a grief which could not be weighed. I see him in the text bearing desertion, and yet I perceive that he cannot bear it. I know not how to express my meaning except by such a paradox. He cannot endure to be without God. He had surrendered himself to be left of God, as the representative of sinners must be, but his pure and holy nature, after three hours of silence, finds the position unendurable to love and purity; and breaking forth from it, now that the hour was over, he exclaims, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” (“Lama Sabachthani?”)

Bethink you, for a moment, that the Lord God, in the broadest and most unreserved sense, could never, in very deed, have forsaken his most obedient Son. He was ever with him in the grand design of salvation. Towards the Lord Jesus, personally, God himself, personally, must ever have stood on terms of infinite love. Truly the Only Begotten was never more lovely to the Father than when he was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross! But we must look upon God here as the Judge of all the earth, and we must look upon the Lord Jesus also in his official capacity, as the Surety of the covenant, and the Sacrifice for sin. The great Judge of all cannot smile upon him who has become the substitute for the guilty. Sin is loathed of God; and if, in order to its removal, his own Son is made to bear it, yet, as sin, it is still loathsome, and he who bears it cannot be in happy communion with God. This was the dread necessity of expiation; but in the essence of things the love of the great Father to his Son never ceased, nor ever knew a diminution. Restrained in its flow it must be, but lessened at its fountain-head it could not be. Therefore, wonder not at the question, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” . . . Why, then, did God forsake his Son? I cannot conceive any other answer than this – he stood in our stead . . . He bore the sinner’s sin, and he had to be treated, therefore, as though he were a sinner, though sinner he could never be. With his own full consent he suffered as though he had committed the transgressions which were laid on him. Our sin, and his taking it upon himself, is the answer to the question, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” . . . This was necessary for another reason: there could have been no laying on of suffering for sin without the forsaking of the vicarious Sacrifice by the Lord God. So long as the smile of God rests on the man the law is not afflicting him. The approving look of the great Judge cannot fall upon a man who is viewed as standing in the place of the guilty. Christ not only suffered from sin, but for sin. If God will cheer and sustain him, he is not suffering for sin. The Judge is not inflicting suffering for sin if he is manifestly succouring the smitten one. There could have been no vicarious suffering on the part of Christ for human guilt, if he had continued consciously to enjoy the full sunshine of the Father’s presence. It was essential to being a victim in our place that he should cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” . . . When Jesus bows his head to the stroke of the law, when he submissively consents that his Father shall turn away his face from him, then myriads of worlds are astonished at the perfect holiness and stern justice of the Lawgiver. There are, probably, worlds innumerable throughout the boundless creation of God, and all these will see, in the death of God’s dear Son, a declaration of his determination never to allow sin to be trifled with. If his own Son is brought before him, bearing the sin of others upon him, he will hide his face from him, as well as from the actually guilty. In God infinite love shines over all, but it does not eclipse his absolute justice any more than his justice is permitted to destroy his love. God hath all perfections in perfection, and in Christ Jesus we see the reflection of them. Beloved, this is a wonderful theme! (“Lama Sabachthani?”)

And O my brethren, does it not show us what a real man the Christ of God was, that he could, he forsaken of his God? We might have supposed that, Christ being Emmanuel, — God with us, — the Godhead and the manhood being indissolubly united in one person, it would have been impossible for him to be forsaken of God. We might also have inferred, for the same reason, that it would have been impossible for him to have been scourged, and spit upon, and especially that it would not have been possible for him to die. Yet all these things were made, not only possible, but also sacredly certain. In order to complete the redemption of his chosen people, it was necessary for him to be both God’s well-beloved Son, and to be forsaken of his Father (The Saddest Cry From The Cross)

And, another thing, it did not arise from a mistake. I have known believers, in sore trouble, make great blunders concerning what God was doing with them. They have thought that he had forsaken them, for they misinterpreted certain signs, and dealings of God, and they said, “All these things are against us; the hand of God has gone out against us to destroy us.” But Christ made no mistake about this matter, for God had forsaken him. It was really so. When he said, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” he spoke infallible truth, and his mind was under no cloud whatsoever. He knew what he was saying, and he was right in what he said, for his Father had forsaken him for the time. (The Saddest Cry From The Cross)

He rightly felt that his Father had withdrawn the comfortable light of his countenance, that he had, for the time being, lost the sense of his Father’s favour, — not the favour itself, but the consciousness of that divine aid and succour which he had formerly enjoyed; — so he felt himself like a man left all alone; and he was not only left all alone by his friends, but also by his God. (The Saddest Cry From The Cross)

Can we at all imagine the state of mind in which our Lord was when he cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” No; that is not possible, yet I will try to help you to understand it. Can you imagine the misery of a lost soul in hell, — one who is forsaken of God, and who cries, in bitterest agony, “God will never look upon me in mercy, or delight, or favour,” — can you picture that sad state? Well, if you can, you will not, even then, have got anywhere near the position of Christ, because that soul in hell does not want God’s favour, and does not seek it, or ask for it. That lost soul is so hardened in sin that it never troubles about whether God would receive it if it repented; the truth is, that it does not want to repent. The misery, that men will suffer in the world to come, will be self-created misery arising out of the fact that they loved sin so much that they brought eternal sorrow upon themselves. It must be an awful thing for a soul, in the next world, to be without God; but, as far as its own consciousness is concerned, it will be so hardened that it will abide without God, yet not realizing all that it has lost because it is itself incapable of knowing the beauty of holiness, and the perfection of the God from whom it is separated for ever. Yet how different was the case of our Lord Jesus Christ when upon the cross! He knew, as no mere man could ever know, what separation from God meant. (The Saddest Cry From The Cross)

But, my dear brethren, you have not got the whole truth yet, for no saint knows the presence of God as Christ knew it. No saint has, to the full, enjoyed the love of God as Christ enjoyed it; and, consequently, if he does lose it, he only seems to lose the moonlight whereas Christ lost the sunlight when, for a time, the face of his Father was withdrawn from him. Only think what must have been the anguish of the Saviour, especially as contrasted with his former enjoyment. Never did any mere human being know so much and enjoy so much of the love of God as Christ had done. He had lived in it, basked in it; there had never been any interruption to it. “I do always those things that please him,” said he, concerning his Father; and his Father twice said, concerning him, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Now, as our Lord Jesus Christ had enjoyed the love of God to the very full, think what it must have been for him to lose the conscious enjoyment of it. You know that you may go into a room, and blow out the candle, but the blind people will not miss it. They miss the light most who have enjoyed it most; and Christ missed the light of God’s countenance most because he had enjoyed it most. Then, reflect upon his intense love to God. Jesus Christ — the man Christ Jesus — loved God with all his heart, and mind, and soul, and strength, as you and I have never yet been able to do. The love of Christ towards his Father was boundless. Well, then, for a frown to be upon his Father’s face, or for the light of that Fathers face to be taken away from him, must have made it correspondingly dark and terrible to him. (The Saddest Cry From The Cross)

After all, beloved, the only solution of the mystery is this; Jesus Christ was forsaken of God because we deserved to be forsaken of God. He was there, on the cross, in our room, and place, and stead, and as the sinner, by reason of his sin, deserves not to enjoy the favor of God, so Jesus Christ, standing in the place of the sinner, and enduring that which would vindicate the justice of God, had to come under the cloud, as the sinner must have come, if Christ had not taken his place. (The Saddest Cry From The Cross)

Since He, for a little while, was separated from His Father, we may boldly cry, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” and with the apostle Paul, we may confidently affirm that nothing in the whole universe “shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (The Saddest Cry From The Cross)

and as the culmination of his grief, he suffered spiritual agony which surpasses all expression, on account of the departure of his Father from him . . . By these words we are to understand that our blessed Lord and Saviour was at that moment forsaken by God in such a manner as he had never been before. (Cries From The Cross)

It was necessary that he should suffer, in the stead of sinners, just what sinners ought to have suffered. It would be difficult to conceive of punishment for sin apart from the frown of Deity. With crime we always associate anger, so that, when Christ died, “the Just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God,” — when our blessed Saviour became our Substitute, he became, for the time, the victim of his Father’s righteous wrath, seeing that our sins had been imputed to him, in order that his righteousness might be imputed to us. It was necessary that he should feel the loss of his Father’s smile, — for the condemned in hell must have tasted of that bitterness; — and therefore the Father closed the eye of his love, put the hand of justice before the smile of his face, and left his Son to cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Cries From The Cross)

There are seasons when the brightness of our Father’s smile is eclipsed by clouds and darkness. But let us remember that God never does really forsake us. It is only a seeming forsaking with us, but in Christ’s case it was a real forsaking. God only knows how much we grieve, sometimes, at a little withdrawal of our Father’s love; but the real turning away of God’s face from his Son, — who shall calculate how deep the agony which it caused him when he cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” In our case, this is the cry of unbelief; in his case, it was the utterance of a fact, for God had really turned away from him for a time. (Cries From The Cross)

Hitherto, God had helped his Son, but now he must tread the winepress alone, and even his own Father cannot be with him . . . We can scarcely guess what it was that our Saviour felt when he said, “Why art thou so far from helping me?” His work is one which none but a Divine Person could have accomplished, yet his Father’s eye was turned away from him! (Cries From The Cross)

Christ compares his prayers to those roarings, and complains that God is so far from him that he does not hear him. (Cries From The Cross)

Methinks I hear the Father say to Christ, “My Son, I forsake thee because thou standest in the sinner’s stead. As thou art holy, just, and true, I never would forsake thee; I would never turn away from thee; for, even as a man, thou hast been holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners; but on thy head doth rest the guilt of every penitent, transferred from him to thee; and thou must expiate it by thy blood. Because thou standest in the sinner’s stead, I will not look at thee till thou hast borne the full weight of my vengeance. Then, I will exalt thee on high, far above all principalities and powers.” (Cries From The Cross)

This turning away of the Divine Father from hearing his Son’s prayer, is just in keeping with his condition; as the sinner’s Surety, his prayer must not be heard; as the sinner’s Surety, he could say, “Now that I am here, dying in the sinner’s stead, thou sealest thine ears against my prayer.” God did not hear his Son, because he knew his Son was dying to bring us near to God, and the Son therefore cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Cries From 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:

1. A Concern About The Way Pastor Kevin DeYoung Writes About The Cross In His New Daily Doctrine Book

2. The Bible Says The Father Turned His Face Away From Jesus On The Cross

3. Forsaken, Or Felt Forsaken

4. More Thoughts On Being God-Forsaken

5. The Sufferings Of The LORD Jesus Christ On The Cross

6. Forsaken: A Very Unhelpful Chapter On The Cross

7. Did The Father Turn His Away From Jesus On That Cross?

8. A Satanic Reading Of Psalm 22 That Should Be Forsaken

God And The Gospel

To learn more about the great and true Triune God, the God-Man, Jesus Christ, His cross, and His glorious Gospel message and everlasting Kingship, please watch American Gospel: Christ Alone. You can watch the full documentary here and here for free!

Christ Jesus Is God’s Loved Elect!

Christ Jesus Is God’s Loved Elect

Chosen His Glory To Reflect

True God And Man In Each Aspect

The Devil’s Ways He Crushed And Wrecked

He Died As God’s Full Wrath Object

Then Rose, Killed Death, Life Resurrect

In Him We’re Chosen God’s Elect

Beloved Forever Retrospect

You His Child He Won’t Reject

Predestined, Loved, He Won’t Neglect

He’ll Hold You Fast Always Protect

For You Of All He Did Select!

God And The Gospel

To learn more about the great and true Triune God, the God-Man, Jesus Christ, His cross, and His glorious Gospel message and everlasting Kingship, please watch American Gospel: Christ Alone. You can watch the full documentary here and here for free!

John Flavel On The Forsakenness Of Jesus On The Cross

John Flavel:

. . . it was a penal desertion, inflicted on him for satisfaction for those sins of ours, which deserved that God should forsake us for ever, as the damned are forsaken by him. So that this cry (as one observes) was like the perpetual shriek of them that are cast away for ever: this was that hell, and the torments of it which Christ, our surety, suffered for us . . . It was a desertion that was real, and not fictitious. He does not personate a deserted soul, and speak as if God had withdrawn the comfortable sense and influence of his love from him; but the thing was so indeed . . . Did Christ never make such a sad complaint and outcry, till God hid his face from him? Then the hiding of God’s face is certainly the greatest misery that can possibly befall a gracious soul in this world. When they scourged, buffeted, and smote Christ, yea, when they nailed him to the tree, he opened not his mouth; but when his father hid his face from him, then he cried out; yea, his voice was the voice of roaring: this was more to him than a thousand crucifyings. (The Fourth Excellent Saying Of Christ Upon The Cross, Illustrated)

Get The Cross Right

We must get the cross right! For more on Christ's forsakenness on the cross, please read:

1. A Concern About The Way Pastor Kevin DeYoung Writes About The Cross In His New Daily Doctrine Book

2. The Bible Says The Father Turned His Face Away From Jesus On The Cross

3. Forsaken, Or Felt Forsaken

4. More Thoughts On Being God-Forsaken

5. The Sufferings Of The LORD Jesus Christ On The Cross

God And The Gospel

To learn more about the great and true Triune God, the God-Man, Jesus Christ, His cross, and His glorious Gospel message and everlasting Kingship, please watch American Gospel: Christ Alone. You can watch the full documentary here and here for free!

Martin Luther On The Forsakenness Of Jesus On The Cross

 

Martin Luther got the cross and forsakenness of Jesus right:

So then, gaze at the heavenly picture of Christ, who descended into hell [I Pet. 3:19] for your sake and was forsaken by God as one eternally damned when he spoke the words on the cross, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!" — "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" [Matt. 27:46]. In that picture your hell is defeated and your uncertain election is made sure. (Luther's Works, Vol. 42, Eds. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969), 105.)

[On the cross Christ] prepared himself as a threefold picture for us, to be held before the eyes of our faith against the three evil pictures with which the evil spirit and our nature would assail us to rob us of this faith. He is the living and immortal image against death, which he suffered, yet by his resurrection from the dead he vanquished death in his life. He is the image of the grace of God against sin, which he assumed, and yet overcame by his perfect obedience. He is the heavenly image, the one who was forsaken by God as damned, yet he conquered hell through his omnipotent love, thereby proving that he is the dearest Son, who gives this to us all if we but believe. (Luther's Works, Vol. 42, Eds. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969), 95–115.)

For even Christ suffered damnation and dereliction to a greater degree than all the saints. And his sufferings were not, as some imagine, easy for him. For he really and truly offered himself for us to eternal damnation to God the Father. And in his human nature, he behaved in no other way than as a man eternally damned to hell. Because he loved God in this way, God at once raised him from death and hell and thus devoured hell. (Lectures On Romans, Trans. and Ed. Wilhelm Pauck, (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1961, 2006), 263.)

The passion is threefold: 1. it cries out, because Christ is deserted by God. This is the greatest type of affliction - to feel the wrath of God and to be terrified before God, as if God were to abandon and condemn. These greatest sufferings of hell are often described in the psalms (See Psalm 6[:6-8]). Nevertheless, Christ was without sin, and yet he was a victim for our sins, just as Paul says, "he was made a curse for us," [Gal 3:15] and the scriptures testify that he bore those sufferings, Isaiah 53[:4]: "we esteemed him stricken by God." Again: He will count his own soul as sin, or for sin. And in 2 Cor 5[:21]: "God made him sin who knew no sin," i.e. Christ felt the wrath of God, as though he were scorned and condemned like sin. And he bore this wrath without sin, Heb 5[:4], and there was no one besides him. (Psalm 22: An Introduction by Martin Luther)

And yet, that we may not let so rich a verse as this first pass by entirely without some remarks, I will say a few words about this "being forsaken of God." — This we cannot understand better than by shewing first, what God is! God then, is life, light, wisdom, truth, righteousness, goodness, power, joy, glory, peace, blessedness, and all good! And therefore to be left of God, is to be involved in death, darkness, ignorance, lies, sin, malice, weakness, sorrow, confusion, dismay, desperation, damnation, and all evil. What, then, follows from this? Shall we make Christ, ignorant, a liar, a sinner, a bad person, in despair, and damned? This, as I observed before, is to come to conclusions that produce something difficult and abstruse to make it appear a something wonderful, like the characters above-mentioned. But do thou consider things thus. — It is granted by all that in Christ there were at the same time the greatest joy and the greatest sorrow, the greatest weakness and the greatest power, the greatest glory and the greatest confusion; and so also there were the greatest peace and the greatest trouble; and again, the greatest life and the greatest death: and all this is sufficiently shewn by the present verse: where Christ says, that he was forsaken of God, and yet calls God his God. For no one can say "My God, my God," who is wholly forsaken of God . . . What then shall we say here? Shall we not say that Christ at the same time was (as he stood in our stead) the most righteous person and the greatest sinner, of the greatest lies and the greatest truth, of the greatest glorying and the greatest desperation, the most truly blessed and the most utterly damned? For if we say not these things, I know not how he could be forsaken of God . . . And, as the striking of the Lord with which he strikes for sin is not only death, but also the dread and horror of a distressed conscience, which feels eternal wrath, and feels as if it were utterly forsaken to all eternity and cast off from the face of God, (as David confesses. Psalm xxxi. 22, "I said in my excess, I am cut off from before thine eyes;") — as this is the case, I say, it of necessity and evidently follows, that Christ himself suffered the dread and horror of a distressed conscience that tasted eternal wrath . . . But still, we do not by all these observations say that Christ did not suffer in a different way from us, and that he was not tortured and dismayed in soul differently from us, or different from what the damned feel in their dread of, and a fleeing from, God. For Christ even in his own eyes was like unto one forsaken, cursed, a sinner, a blasphemer, and one damned, though without sin. Because, it was not a matter of play, or jest, or hypocrisy, when he said, "Thou hast forsaken me:" for he then felt himself really forsaken in all things, even as a sinner is forsaken after he has sinned: though he was not in reality left as a sinner, because he was like the sinner before the commission of his sin. — All that Christ suffered he suffered indeed: there was truth in it all: nor are we to lessen or make void the meaning and force of the words of God. (Complete Commentary On The First Twenty-Two Psalms, Pages 359-365)

Here, therefore, we see that Christ suffered all the punishment properly due to sin, and tasted death and hell . . . And when he here mentions the praises of others, and not his own, he thereby shews how much he is like unto the accursed and the damned. And this is the very thing that increases his complaint and his grief, — that Israel, being so many times saved, praised the Lord, while he was utterly forsaken, and was in danger of never praising God at all, but of cursing him only. (Complete Commentary On The First Twenty-Two Psalms, Pages 372-373)

All the prophets well forsaw in the Spirit, that Christ, by imputation, would become the greatest sinner upon the face of the earth, and a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world; would be no more considered an innocent person and without sin, or the Son of God in glory, but a notorious sinner, and so be for awhile forsaken (Psal. viii.), and have lying upon his neck the sins of all mankind; the sins of St Paul who was a blasphemer of God, and a persecutor of his church; St Peter’s sins that denied Christ; David’s sins, who was an adulterer and a murderer, through whom the name of the Lord among the heathen was blasphemed. Therefore the law, which Moses gave to be executed upon all malefactors and murderers in general, took hold on Christ, finding him with and among sinners and murderers, though in his own person innocent. This manner of picturing Christ to us, the sophists, robbers of God, obscure and falsify; for they will not that Christ was made a curse for us, to the end he might deliver us from the curse of the law, nor that he has anything to do with sin and poor sinners; though for their sakes alone was he made man and died, but they set before us merely Christ’s examples, which they say we ought to imitate and follow; and thus they not only steal from Christ his proper name and title, but also make of him a severe and angry judge, a fearful and horrible tyrant, full of wrath against poor sinners, and bent on condemning them. (Table Talk, Page 73)

On Psalm 31:32 (I had said in my alarm, "I am cut off from your sight."), Luther commented:

This excess of mind is improperly interpreted as referring to Christ's death; it refers rather to that amazement into which, according to Hilary, Book 9, Christ was put when he cried in the supreme exultation of suffering: "Why hast Thou forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46). And this is what it means to be thrust away from God. (Luther's Works, Lectures On The Psalms, Page 144)

We Must Get The Cross Right

We must get the cross right! For more on Christ's forsakenness on the cross, please read:

1. A Concern About The Way Pastor Kevin DeYoung Writes About The Cross In His New Daily Doctrine Book

2. The Bible Says The Father Turned His Face Away From Jesus On The Cross

3. Forsaken, Or Felt Forsaken

4. More Thoughts On Being God-Forsaken

5. The Sufferings Of The LORD Jesus Christ On The Cross

6. Forsaken: A Very Unhelpful Chapter On The Cross

7. Did The Father Turn His Away From Jesus On That Cross?

God And The Gospel

To learn more about the great and true Triune God, the God-Man, Jesus Christ, His cross, and His glorious Gospel message and everlasting Kingship, please watch American Gospel: Christ Alone. You can watch the full documentary here and here for free!

Jesus The Apostle And High Priest Of Our Confession!

Jesus The Apostle And High Priest Of Our Confession

There’s No Messenger Like Him Without Any Question

He Took God’s Wrath For Our Every Transgression

Then Rose From The Dead To Crush Death’s Oppression

In Him There Is Mercy – He Makes Intercession

Even Peter Found Grace For His Sinful Regression

So Trust In The God-Man – Through Faith Make Profession

Like Peter You’ll Find Christ To Be Your Obsession!

God And The Gospel

To learn more about the great and true Triune God, the God-Man, Jesus Christ, His cross, and His glorious Gospel message and everlasting Kingship, please watch American Gospel: Christ Alone. You can watch the full documentary here and here for free!

Christ Jesus Is Generous – A Lavish Big Brother!

Christ Jesus Is Generous – A Lavish Big Brother

He Gives And He Gives And He Loves Like No Other

He Gave Everything And Took All God’s Curse

He Died And He Rose The Curse To Reverse

By Faith Alone Is Our Justification

His Spirit Now Works For Our Sanctification

We Listen And Learn In Humble Submission

Confess Our Sins And Repent In Holy Contrition

And Now We Are Generous And Give To The Needy

We Die To Ourselves And All That Is Greedy

For Christ Is Our All And Our Joy And Our King

We Give And We Give For He Makes Us Sing!

God And The Gospel

To learn more about the great and true Triune God, the God-Man, Jesus Christ, His cross, and His glorious Gospel message and everlasting Kingship, please watch American Gospel: Christ Alone. You can watch the full documentary here and here for free!