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!
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
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