On This Day: The Ultimate Father-Forsaking-Son Event

Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. 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?” (Matthew 27:45-46)

 

   It amazes me how God weaves his word into the life experiences of his children. For months I have been trudging down the garden path of a book of false teachings trying to help people see the poison-in-the-pudding. A major focus of the author has been to use Satan’s question from the Garden of Eden, “Did God actually say…?” to challenge whether Jesus truly suffered and died for our sins. For some reason, erasing the horrendous nature of sin, and the much-deserved wrath (judgment) of God against sin, is considered a good strategy for luring the unsuspecting off “the straight and narrow” as they say.

   So, when I came to Jesus’ heartwrenching words from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, the weight of being forsaken came pressing upon me. I do not in any way imagine that my experiences of rejections and disownings compare to what Jesus experienced on the cross, but there is a satisfaction in attaching to Jesus as “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” who knows the feeling of our sin. As Hebrews says, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).

   There is always a plumbline between the pendulum extremes. While some false teachers deny the suffering of Jesus as the “propitiation” for our sins (Jesus bearing the wrath of God against the sins of his people), there are others who try to explain everything in details that are not given to us in Scripture.

   Instead of ignoring Paul’s warning to “not to go beyond what is written” (I Corinthians 4:6), we can sit at the feet of Jesus with each thing that is written and simply worship him for what he did. We can let ourselves feel the “reverence and awe” of “acceptable worship” when we act like the children who don’t need to know everything he knows to love him and attach to him. It is enough to see what he did and how he felt.

   I encourage you to let yourself feel the wonder of what was happening between the Father and the Son when Jesus felt forsaken by his Father. Don’t pin it down. Don’t put it in a box. Don’t make it say something “beyond what is written”. Just let yourself attach to it. Talk to God about it. Admit your feelings, your thoughts, and then listen. Pray. Wait on the Lord. See what he shows you. Let the Triune be God.

   On the cross, “For our sake he (God) made him (Jesus) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we (believers) might become the righteousness of God” (II Corinthians 5:21). And when Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, we were given a front row seat to how that felt to our Savior. 

   So how does that make YOU feel?

 

© 2024 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)