When we read in the Gospels the circumstances surrounding the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, the intensity of his sufferings, both physical and emotional, stands out. The Lord had literally been slaughtered by Roman soldiers before reaching the cross.
And we cannot minimize the enormous emotional and mental suffering it must have been for Him to perceive human evil in all its rawness and ugliness.
But even though Christ was 100% human like you and me, and his nerve endings functioned like yours and mine, his most intense pain came from the most unexpected source.
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from my salvation, and from the words of my cry? (Ps. 22:1-2).
The words that head this Psalm were literally repeated by our Lord Jesus Christ shortly before his death, and they express one of the greatest mysteries in the entire Bible. The Holy Spirit was pleased to reveal to us that Christ was forsaken by his Father at the most terrible moment of all his ministry.
It was not simply a feeling of abandonment, as believers sometimes experience, especially when they are going through a strong period of affliction and do not perceive the presence of God in their lives. That feeling of abandonment does not correspond to reality.
The Word of God assures us that there is no created thing, neither in the physical world nor in the spiritual world, that can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, as Paul says in Romans 8:39. Our God is a faithful God, and He has promised that he will never leave us or forsake us.
But in the case of Christ when he was on the cross, abandonment was not a mere sensation. The abandonment of him was real. In fact, this is the only time recorded in Scripture that Christ did not address God as Father.
And the reason is clearly revealed in the Scriptures. The prophet Habakkuk says that God is very clear of eyes to see evil (1:13); and at that time Christ was bearing the sin of his people. In a dimension that we cannot understand, Christ was made sin, so that we could be justified.
“All of us have strayed like sheep, it says in Isaiah 53, each one has turned to his own way; but the Lord charged in him the iniquity of us all” (Is. 53:6).
That is the essence of the gospel message, that He “who knew no sin made him sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him” (2Cor. 5:21).
And when that was happening, when Christ was made sin out of love for His people, the perfectly holy and just God could not have with Him the delightful communion that He had always had from all eternity.
This is hard for us to understand, because we take sin so lightly. But to God sin is something so serious that in order to redeem the sinner, Someone right had to take the blame and pay for it. The second person of the Trinity became a man and died on a cross, because it was impossible to save man in any other way.
On the cross of Calvary Jesus Christ suffered the hell that all of us deserved because of our transgressions. All the wrath of a thrice holy God was poured out on him.
That is why the Scripture says that Christ is the propitiation for our sins, in other words, he took upon himself the just wrath of God because of our sins. And he did it voluntarily, out of love for us.
That cry of Christ on the cross that is expressed in Psalm 22 was not an expression of doubt, but of agony. Christ knew why he had been forsaken (comp. Vers. 3); He knew in advance that this was going to happen, and yet, out of love for us, he voluntarily decided to go through that valley of the shadow of death (comp. Mt. 16: 21-23; Jn. 12:27).
He knew that he had come to die, but he also knew that death would not have the last word over him. That is why he cries out to God, despite his helplessness, and appeals to the fact that he was still his God: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This seems paradoxical; If he felt helpless, why did God cry out?
Because the faith of Christ as Man was still intact. The mere fact of quoting this Psalm in that hour of agony was proof of that. The Lord knew Psalm 22 by heart and knew that it concludes with a song of victory, not a cry of frustration.
What, then, is the meaning of this question? The Psalm itself clarifies it in the rest of the stanza: “My God, I cry by day, and you do not answer; And at night, and there is no rest for me”.
One of the aspects that we must take into account when studying Hebrew poetry is the fact that it has a rhyme of thought: usually the second line somehow explains or complements the first.
And that is precisely what we have here. Christ is not asking the reason for his helplessness, but expressing his anguish over the lengthy duration of this agony: “by day…and by night” (probably referring to the darkness that had covered the earth).
We cannot forget that the human nature of Jesus was really human. And it is as Man that He is crying out here: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me for so long? How many more hours must I endure this agony?”
He had already been in this ordeal for almost six (6) hours, and he knew perfectly well that this was not going to end until he drank the last drop of that cup of divine wrath.
So this is not a cry of doubt, but the cry of Someone who is going through the most intense suffering that man has ever experienced. That is why he continues to fight this battle in prayer, crying out to that same God who had forsaken him.
That is one of the most impressive features of Psalm 22; It begins with a cry of helplessness, but each stanza of the Psalm describing the sufferings of the Savior is immediately followed by a prayer to God:
“But you are holy, you who dwell among the praises of Israel. In you our fathers waited; they waited, and you delivered them. They cried out to you, and were delivered; they trusted in you, and were not ashamed” (vers. 3-5).
The Lord is appealing here to the character of God, in a particular way to his holiness and faithfulness. Because God is holy, he has always shown himself to be a faithful God to those who have put their trust in him.
Although at that moment his prayer did not seem to be being heard, he knew that God had a good reason for his delay, and that in due time he would be delivered, as he did his people on so many occasions.
And His prayer was answered. On the third day he rose victorious from the grave and today he is seated at the right hand of God interceding for His own, awaiting the arrival of that day when he will return victorious to establish his kingdom of peace and justice. Yes we must meditate on the death of our Savior, but not to look at him with pity. We must be infinitely grateful for his love, but at the same time confident that we follow a King whose kingdom will never end.
© By Sugel Michelen. All thought captive. You can reproduce and distribute this material, as long as it is not for profit, without altering its content and acknowledging its author and origin.