Christ is All!: John Wesley On The Forsakenness Of Jesus On The Cross

Friday, September 25, 2026

John Wesley On The Forsakenness Of Jesus On The Cross

John Wesley got the forsakenness of Jesus on the cross right:

Forsaken - Withdrawn the light of thy countenance, the supports and comforts of thy spirit, and filled me with the terrors of thy wrath: this was in part verified in David, but much more fully in Christ. (Notes On Psalm 22:1)
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? - Our Lord hereby at once expresses his trust in God, and a most distressing sense of his letting loose the powers of darkness upon him, withdrawing the comfortable discoveries of his presence, and filling his soul with a terrible sense of the wrath due to the sins which he was bearing. Psalms 22:1. (Notes On Matthew 27:46)
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me - Thereby claiming God as his God; and yet lamenting his Father’s withdrawing the tokens of his love, and treating him as an enemy, while he bare our sins. (Notes On Mark 15:34)
God was the principal cause of all his sufferings, tho’ mens sins were the deserving cause. (Notes On Isaiah 53:10)
And he is the propitiation - The atoning sacrifice by which the wrath of God is appeased. (Notes On 1 John 2:2)
Our sins were the procuring cause of all his sufferings. His sufferings were the penal effects of our sins. "The chastisement of our peace," the punishment necessary to procure it, "was" laid "on him," freely submitting thereto: "And by his stripes" (a part of his sufferings again put for the whole) "we are healed"; pardon, sanctification, and final salvation, are all purchased and bestowed upon us. Every chastisement is for some fault. That laid on Christ was not for his own, but ours; and was needful to reconcile an offended Lawgiver, and offering guilty creatures, to each other. So ‘the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all’; that is, the punishment due to our iniquity. (The Doctrine Of Original Sin)
We see then, what unspeakable advantage we derive from the fall of our first parent with regard to faith; - Faith both in God the Father, who spared not his own Son, his only Son, but "wounded him for our transgressions," and "bruised him for our iniquities:" and in God the Son, who poured out his soul for us transgressors, and washed us in his own blood . . . For who does not apprehend the force of that inference drawn by the loving Apostle: "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another" If God SO loved us, - observe, the stress of the argument lies on this very point: SO loved us, as to deliver up his only Son to die a cursed death for our salvation. Beloved, what manner of love is this wherewith God hath loved us; so as to give his only Son, in glory equal with the Father, in Majesty co-eternal What manner of love is this wherewith the only-begotten Son of God hath loved us so as to empty himself, as far as possible . . . as to divest himself of that glory which he had with the Father before the world began; as to take upon him the form of a servant, being found in fashion as a man; and then, to humble himself still further, "being obedient unto death, even the death of the cross!" If God SO loved us, how ought we to love one another! But this motive to brotherly love had been totally wanting if Adam had not fallen. Consequently, we could not then have loved one another in so high a degree as we may now. Nor could there have been that height and depth in the command of our blessed Lord, "As I have loved you, So love one another." (God's Love To Fallen Man)