“My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?”
Matthew 27:45-46
Matthew 27:45-46 Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?”
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… Toward the end of Matthew’s 26th chapter we read that Jesus had prayed alone in the Garden of Gethsemane. You will recall that He had told His disciples to wait for Him while he went on ahead and prayed to His Father. And while He poured out His heart to the Father, sweating as if great drops of blood, He prayed and even pleaded that, if it were possible, He would not have to suffer the horrors He knew were coming.
Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane is one of if not the most intense prayers in all of Scripture. And it would have been nice if His disciples were a bit more supportive. But every one of them zonked off and fell asleep – not once, not twice, but all three times that Jesus had gone off to pray.
When Jesus was arrested, it would have been nice if at least some of the disciples supported Him. But all the disciples forsook Him and fled; all of them. So much for loyalty. So much for supporting their dear friend in a time of great stress and need. So much for, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (Jn 6:68).
Now our Lord and Savior suffers alone. He is entirely by Himself. He is utterly abandoned. And as if that were not bad enough, we see from Jesus’ fourth word from His cross that things were much worse than they seemed. Based on what Jesus now says, we can see that Christ, the God-man was abandoned not only by man but even by God His Father. He cried out the horrifying words, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?”
We sometimes forget that Jesus’ suffering was more than just a physical ordeal. Indeed, He died one of the most physically excruciating and drawn-out forms of execution known to man. And it is a fact that a crucified person does not die from bleeding to death necessarily. A crucified person usually dies from suffocation as he hangs there under the weight of his own body as well as from the malfunction of the bodily organs under this intense duress.
You remember that when a spear was thrust into Jesus’ side after he died, blood and water flowed forth – coagulated blood no longer able to flow properly. And Jesus underwent all of this after having been flogged, after having been beaten, and after going without any sleep that night. I doubt that any of us would have lasted very long after suffering physically under those conditions.
But Jesus’ greater suffering was spiritual. Our Lord felt the full hurt and pain of Judas’ betrayal. His heart ached for comfort and friendship in His suffering, but He found none. And above all, as was said before, Jesus endured the inner anguish of being forsaken by His heavenly Father. God the Father Almighty had turned His back on Jesus and left Him totally alone in His agony. “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?”
Why did God the Father do this? Why did God the Father do this to the One He called His beloved Son in baptism? Why did God the Father do this to the One with whom He was well-pleased? The answer is that God did this out of love for you. God was willing to do this to His Son in order that you might become His children.
What Jesus was experiencing on the cross was literally hell itself. He wasn’t just experiencing temporary pain and affliction; He was experiencing the eternal judgment against all people of all time in His body and soul. That is what the darkness over the land was all about. Divine judgment against sin was coming at Jesus with full force. The powers of darkness and evil were given free reign to do their very worst to Him. The Father treated Christ as if He were guilty of every wickedness and every sin that there ever was. The whole world’s sin was bound up and put on Christ, and He received the penalty of it in His own flesh and spirit.
And that penalty is hell. And hell is more than just flames of fire, as bad as that is. Hell is total and complete separation from God and from all that is good. It is to be utterly cut off and isolated and left alone in emptiness and hollowness where there is no life, no joy, no pleasure, and no hope. It is an existence where there is only despair and anger and misery and torment. A whole eternity of that is what Jesus was going through in these final hours on the cross – full-fledged hell in both body and soul. “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?”
Learn from this the great dreadfulness of your sin. Too often we rationalize and downplay our sin as if it were no big deal. “Sure, I’m not perfect, but my sin isn’t all that big a deal.” Here on the cross, though, we see what a big deal it is. Sin brings separation and brokenness – between us and others, and mostly between us and God. Here at Calvary, we see what it cost and what we deserve because of it: nothing short of hell.
However, it is most important to learn from Jesus’ words that hell’s fury has now been steered away from you. Christ drank this fiery liquid all into His flesh and then He put it to death. Hell burned itself out on Him so that you would not even be the least bit singed. God damned His Son so that you would not be damned but saved forever. This is what Paul speaks of in his second letter to the Church at Corinth: “God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” This is what Luther called the “happy exchange.” Christ exchanged His righteousness and holiness for our guilt and sin. He took our hell and gave us His heaven. That is the only way we could be saved. The sentence for sin had to be carried out.
A holy God cannot simply look at sin and say, “Oh, that’s OK.” And so out of love for you, Jesus received your sentence as your substitute. Jesus set you free from the curse of the Law by becoming a curse in your place on the tree of the cross. Because of that and by faith alone you are now set free from hell and darkness and judgment forever.
The whole world’s punishment has been taken by Christ. He has atoned for all the world’s sin through His suffering and death on the cross. Not one sin ever has been left unatoned for. The power of hell was utterly defeated by Christ.
People go to hell because they insist upon doing so; they insist on trying to gain eternal life their own way, by their own works, and by their own efforts. In other words, people who go to hell absolutely insist on separating themselves from God and from the saving power of Christ’s cross. They refuse to believe and accept God’s offer of free forgiveness in Jesus. They trust in other gods and other philosophies; they make themselves to be their own god. And thus, they have hell; they have what they wanted in this life – separation from the true God.
But that is not so for you, for the Spirit of the living God has brought you to believe the truth of Christ. He has brought you to know that in Jesus your salvation is complete and sure. You are not separated from God but in full fellowship with Him through your baptism into Christ’s body. Jesus was separated from the Father on the cross so that you never would be. He experienced the fullness of hell so that you would experience the fullness of heaven.
Christ was forsaken in His suffering so that you would not be forsaken in yours. Jesus suffered for you, and now He suffers with you to bring you through your trials to the victory of Easter.
There may be times when you want to cry out like Jesus, “My God, My God, why . . .?” And there doesn’t seem to be any answer; there doesn’t seem to be any reason for the overwhelming troubles or afflictions. But ultimately, all of your “why” questions have been absorbed into Jesus’ great “why” question; ultimately, they have all been answered for you on the cross.
It is in the cross that you find hope and comfort, for there is where Jesus took all your suffering on Himself. And He has shown you that, in the end, all suffering in Him gives way to resurrection and wholeness and life. You are never alone. God is with you always in Christ the crucified.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
