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
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
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
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