References describing the whole person according to his humanity but predicated of both natures:And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" that is, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46; God cannot leave or abandon God. In his whole person Jesus is on the cross, yet the Father temporarily abandons him according to his humanity. As the God-man, Jesus dies with respect to his humanity, for the divine nature cannot die.) [They are referencing John F. Walvoord, Jesus Christ Our Lord, pages 116-118] (Page 267)
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A petition to the Father: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46).
No man can fully fathom the significance of this cry from Jesus's lips. Herein lies the mystery of the hypostatic union . . . The presence of darkness (Matt. 27:45) symbolized both the loss of fellowship's light and the reality of abandonment.
The Father and the Son were not separated in their being or in their essence through this experience. The unity of the Trinity remained intact. The three-hour darkness occurred due to the wrath of the omnipresent Father who acted faithfully in his role to bring about the completion of Christ's perfect, substitutionary sacrifice . . . All of mankind's worst fears about the horrors of hell were realized by Jesus as he received the due penalty for the sins of all who would believe in him. In that period of darkness, in some incomprehensible way, the Father had abandoned him. "Though there was surely no interruption in the Father's love for Him as a Son, God nonetheless turned away from Him and forsook Him as our Substitute." (MacArthur, Murder of Jesus, 221).
This substitutionary aspect of Christ's death does not rest on his physical death alone. Christ had to bear the outpouring of God's unmitigated wrath against sin in order to satisfy justice completely. True substitutionary atonement therefore involved a painful sense of estrangement from the Father, expressed by Christ in his heart-felt petition in Matthew 27:46 - "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Although it was temporary, the agony Christ experienced in absorbing the Father's wrath was the full equivalent of hell.
This is the suffering that Jesus anticipated in the garden of Gethsemane when he prayed, "Let this cup pass from me" (Matt. 26:39). The "cup" refers to the greatest of all suffering for the perfectly sinless God-man - the wrath of God poured out on him when he was made to be a sin offering. A cup is often the symbol of divine wrath against sin in the Old Testament (Isa. 51:17, 22; Jer. 25:15-17, 27-29; Lam. 4:21-22; Ezek. 23:31-34; Hab. 2:16). Christ would "bear the sins of many" (Heb. 9:28), and the fullness of divine wrath would fall on him (Isa. 53:10-11; 2 Cor. 5:21). This was the price of the sin he bore, which he paid in full . . . Jesus's suffering thus included his temporary separation from the Father (pictured by the three hours of darkness on the cross) while experiencing the fullness of divine wrath prior to his physical death. (Pages 302-303)
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Finally, Jesus perfectly fulfills the scapegoat as well. The imputation of sin from Israel to the scapegoat is epitomized by the Father laying on him the iniquity of us all (Isa. 53:6), reckoning him to be sin on our behalf (2 Cor. 5:21), so that he has borne our sins in his body on the tree (1 Pet. 2:24). As the midday sun was shrouded in darkness, the Father was, as it were, laying his hands on the head of the Son and confessing over him the sins of his people. As a result of bearing their sin, the Son was banished from the presence of the Father, leaving him to suffer outside the gate (Heb. 13:12) and to experience the terrifying abandonment of his Father (Matt. 27:46). (Footnote 40: This abandonment is the mystery of mysteries. Jesus's cry of dereliction is, as Albert Martin has preached, the utterance that eternity will never exegete for us. Yet we must note that this separation between the Father and the Son was a relational separation, not an ontological one. The Son could never be ontologically separated from the essence of the Trinity, for then the triune God would cease to be. Christ remained God; the Trinity remained unbroken and unchanged. Nevertheless, in a way our minds cannot fully comprehend, God the Father forsook God the Son as he laid upon Christ the iniquity of us all, abandoning him to bear his unleashed fury against the sins of his people.) "Outside the camp," away from the presence of the Lord and of his people, was where the sacrifices were to be disposed of (Lev. 4:12, 21; 6:11; 8:17; 9:11; 16:27; cf. Heb. 13:11); it was that lonely place where the leper was isolated to bear his shame (Lev. 13:46) and where the blasphemer was to be stoned (Lev. 24:14, 23). And it is to that place of shame and isolation that the Son of God was banished so that we might be welcomed into the holy presence of God. (Pages 527-528)
Hallelujah! What a Savior!
God And The Gospel
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