My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (An Extended Good Friday Meditation)
The general consensus of the whole world is that 2000 years ago, a very good man was treated very unjustly and died a cruel and terrible death at the hands of his enemies. His name was Jesus, and his death is what Christians throughout the world commemorate on this day we have come to call “Good Friday.”
It's an ironic name to assign to this particular day to be sure, since a good man dying an unjust death seems anything to us but good. And yet, the name “Good Friday” has stuck for a very long time. So, it would at least appear that there was something good about the unjust death of Jesus. Or at least, that his followers believe there to be something good to be seen in it.
And certainly, you’ll get no argument about that here. There is very good reason Christians call Good Friday good.
But what was actually going on there on the Cross when Jesus died? What good did Jesus carry out by dying on the Cross so many years ago?
Admittedly, these are loaded questions, with a number of multi-faceted answers. This is why the followers of Jesus have spent the last two millennia plunging the depths of Scripture’s teaching on the accomplishment of the death of Christ on the Cross.
Nevertheless, when it comes to answering the question of what good Jesus accomplished in his death, some answers are more fundamental than others. I would like to reflect upon one of those more fundamental answers with you in this post.
The answer is found in Matthew’s narrative of Jesus’ crucifixion, in the Gospel of Matthew, in Matthew 27:45-46 which reads:
45 Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. 46 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 ESV)
The Darkness of God’s Judgment
Two details here in the text make it clear what is going on in this terrible moment on the Cross where Jesus died. Namely, the darkness of verse 45 and the cry of dereliction (as Christian theologians have called it over the years) of verse 46.
When Matthew tells us in verse 45 that from the sixth hour (i.e. 12 noon) until the ninth hour there was a darkness that fell on the land where Jesus was being crucified, he’s not merely reporting an interesting historical tidbit, he’s teaching us something of great importance. Darkness falling on the land where Jesus is dying is an entirely supernatural, even miraculous sort of event.
Specifically, darkness coming over the land is in the language of the Old Testament prophets a sign of God’s judgment coming to the world. Darkness coming upon the earth is one of the pictures God uses to describe the coming day of his final judgment of the wicked; what Scripture refers to as “the Day of the Lord.”
Consider the words of Isaiah 13:9-13, for instance:
9 Behold, the day of the LORD comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it. 10 For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be dark at its rising, and the moon will not shed its light. 11 I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will put an end to the pomp of the arrogant and lay low the pompous pride of the ruthless. (Isaiah 13:9-13 ESV)
This same sort of language is used in the prophet Joel:
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the LORD is coming; it is near, 2 a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness! Like blackness there is spread upon the mountains a great and powerful people...The sun and the moon are darkened, and the stars withdraw their shining. (Joel 2:1-2, 10 ESV)
It's the same picture presented in Joel 3:14-15, and in Amos 5:18, 5:20, and 8:9. And in Revelation 6:12 and 8:12.
So then why does the land go dark at the sixth hour as Jesus hangs on the Cross? It’s not for no reason. Darkness falls on the earth, as Jesus hangs on the Cross, because God’s judgment – his final, eternal, irreversible judgment – has come to the world. The judgment of the final day has come to the world at the Cross where Jesus hangs.
The question here though is: On whom does that judgment fall?
And the answer is: It falls on Jesus.
Now, how do we know this? Watch Jesus’ reaction to this darkness in the next verse (v. 46). His words from the Cross interpret the nature of this darkness for us.
The Cry of Dereliction
Just moments before Jesus breaths his last breath and gives up his spirit to God, he cries out the terrible words: "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" that is, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
What do these words mean?
Well, what’s interesting is that this is not the first time these words show up in Scripture. These are very old words, in fact. At least a thousand years old at the time Jesus utters them as he hangs on the Cross.
The words that come out of Jesus’ mouth here, come from Psalm 22; a psalm of desperation and discouragement and anxiety and worship.
Psalm 22 was written by King David at a terrible time in his life. A time for him of great suffering and sorrow. And it begins with these words. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1 ESV).
No one knows exactly what the circumstances were in David’s life that led to this psalm. But we can see God’s wisdom in this, because this psalm isn’t ultimately about David, or his sufferings, or his experiences at all (though David is most definitely in some serious pain and anguish as he composes this psalm). Psalm 22 is ultimately a song about Jesus.
We see this in the way Jesus & the writers of the NT use the words of the psalm. Both Matthew & Mark make it a point to write these words of Jesus down, showing that they are very meaningful and significant, surely because they come from earlier Scripture. And by doing that they are showing us that in some way, Psalm 22 is being fulfilled at the Cross.
Now in general terms, this first line of Psalm 22 – “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” – is “a cry of disorientation,” as one commentator explains it. He says it is “a cry of disorientation as God’s familiar, protective presence is withdrawn…and the enemy closes in.” (Derek Kidner, Psalms 73-150, p. 106). And that phrase “protective presence” is one of the keys to understanding what David was originally saying when he wrote the psalm, and more importantly, what is going on here at the Cross.
That’s because to be forsaken of God does not mean that God’s presence has literally left you. It means that God’s protective presence has been withdrawn. It’s very important for us to understand that God is still very much present at the here at the Cross, just as God was still there with David, since God is omnipresent, after all. But he is not here to protect Jesus. Not in this moment, at least.
When a person is forsaken of God in biblical and theological terms, the presence of God is manifested – just not through blessing and protection, but through punishment. It is not that God has left you, but that God is now working against you in some sense.
Notice, Jesus is speaking to the God, which means Jesus knows God has not “left the building,” so to speak. He’s still there.
Further, he addresses God with covenantal language. “My God, my God.” That is covenantal language showing an ongoing and unbreakable covenantal relationship.
So then, God is still very much present at the Cross. But he is not present – at least for this moment – to bless Jesus the man – but to judge him in blistering wrath. Darkness has fallen on the land, because the darkness of God’s judgment has fallen on Jesus. The darkness of God’s righteous judgment against sin. The darkness of Judgment Day. The darkness of God’s final judgment of the wicked. You could even say here, darkness of hell, has come to the world in this moment. And that darkness rains down upon Christ at the Cross.
So then, Jesus’ anguish here in this moment is not caused by physical suffering. His anguish is due to a real, spiritual suffering under the judgment of God. He’s not in anguish because people have rejected him, but that in these few hours his God, whom he loves, has come against him in judgment.
Some Needed Clarification
But at this point we need to be very careful. It’s as important to clarify what Jesus is not saying here, as it is to clarify what he is saying here. And it’s important for 2 big reasons.
The first reason is that Jesus is still here in this moment completely morally perfect. Which means that in this moment, Jesus is speaking the truth about God and about his experience. This is not simply how he feels (as some have suggested). It is what he is actually experiencing. It is what God is doing to him. Jesus is in no way mistaken about what is going on in this moment. He is hanging on the Cross forsaken of God.
The second reason this is important to clarify what Jesus means when speaking about God’s forsaking of him and what we mean when we talk about God pouring out his wrath on Jesus – is because Jesus is God in human flesh.
He possesses a true, perfect, and undiluted divine nature. He is truly God of truly God. Which means that whatever is happening here between God the Father and God the Son; the Trinity is not being ripped apart at the Cross. There is no conflict between the desire/will God the Father and God the Son in this moment. The Father and the Son and the Spirit are all working together as one God with one will toward the same goal in this moment, as they have been and will be from and for all eternity.
So, what exactly is going on here? God’s wrath toward sin is truly being poured out upon Christ the God-man, and yet the eternal communion of the Trinity is still fully intact, since God cannot cease to be God.
There is something very mysterious about this statement. And that is a vast understatement in itself.
One contemporary theologian said it well:
“Only one person has truly understood [these] words that Christ said on the cross…[and] That person was Christ himself. The rest of us are left to try our best in comprehending this heaven-rending, heart-melting loud cry. But we fall so very short in understanding this burden that was placed on Christ - a burden heavier than ten thousand crosses - that caused him to break out in a loud cry of dereliction that would have stunned heaven into silence.” (Mark Jones, “Christ’s Words of Dereliction,” https://www.reformation21.org/blogs/christs-words-of-dereliction.php)
But let us think together about these words a little more, and about why they are so important for us.
Why is this important?
Jesus is here crying out as a man, a human being like all of us, and as the God who loves us and desires to save us, as he experiences within himself the full depth and intensity and ferocity of suffering that sin and sinners deserve.
Jesus is here using the only words available to describe the horror and the pain and anguish and sorrow and torment of God’s just, measured, deliberate, righteous, wrathful punishment that our sins deserve.
Jesus is here crying out with something like the “shriek” of one who has been cast into hell forever (Mark Jones).
Or to put a sharper point on it – Jesus is here suffering under the judgment that we deserve because of our sin.
Our sins deserve God-forsakenness. Not distance from God. Not removal from God’s presence. But unending suffering under his just wrath forever, without end.
This is what our refusal to worship God humbly and with no strings attached deserves. This is what our worship of things other than God (our idolatry) deserves. This is what our disrespectful, irreverent, inaccurate speech about God and to God deserves. This is what our ingratitude to and refusal to trust God deserves.
It’s what our disobedience to and dishonoring of our parents deserves. It’s what our pride deserves. Our high thoughts of ourselves. It’s what our selfish anger deserves; what our lack of concern for others deserves. It’s what our dishonesty and lying deserves. It’s what our sexual perversity deserves; our promiscuities; our fornications; our adulteries. It’s what our lust deserves. It’s what our laziness and our self-indulgence and our gluttony and our lack of self-control deserves.
Our sin deserves nothing short of eternal God-forsakenness.
Why is that? Why does sin deserve an eternity of God forsakenness? Because God is our Creator. He is perfect. He is eternal. He is glorious. He is unchanging. He is awesome. He deserves our worship and obedience. He deserves our humble submission. He deserves our praise and adoration. He deserves our love.
We didn’t create the world from nothing; he did. We aren’t the ones who rule over the world; he is. We aren’t the ones that give life to all creatures. He is.
Sin is bad and serious and worthy of eternal judgment, because God is good and glorious and worthy of eternal praise.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? is the cry of one who is suffering under the just wrath of God toward sin.
And at this point the only reasonable question for the reader / hearer of these words to ask is, why is Jesus crying this cry, and not me? Why him and not us?
Why him and not me?
And this is where Jesus’ cry of dereliction on the Cross becomes so richly important to us. Because that is exactly the point.
The one thing we know – the one thing the whole world knows – is that Jesus is in no way suffering for his own sins here. But he is suffering for sins. Not his, but ours. Mine. Yours if you are one who trusts in him as your only Savior and Lord. Jesus is here suffering for every single sin that every one of his followers (past, present, and future) have ever committed.
God’s just wrath toward our sins is being poured out upon Jesus, because Jesus the perfect man is hanging upon the Cross for us as our substitute. Which is exactly what he came into the world to do and to be for us.
As God says through the prophet Isaiah, some seven full centuries before Jesus was born.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:5-6 ESV)
And Isaiah’s not the only one to say these things. Peter says it:
18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God. (1 Peter 3:18 ESV)
Paul says it:
21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV)
13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. (Galatians 3:13 ESV)
This is what happened at the Cross. The wrath of God toward sin was poured out upon Christ. God’s judgment fell on Jesus at the Cross.
And it fell on him, so that it would not ever fall on anyone who trusts in him.
Puritan John Flavel once wrote, that if Christ did not have this experience on the Cross and did not utter these terrible words on the Cross, "we must have howled out this hideous complaint in the lowest hell forever" (Flavel, Works, 1:411).
For Christ himself, these were the most terrible words he was ever brought to utter. But for his people, these words bring a comfort and a peace to the soul that cannot be surpassed, because what they tell us is that the wrath of God toward every Christian has already been spent and meted out. Christ drank the cup of God’s wrath for us. And there is nothing left in that cup to drink. Christ drank it dry.
It is on this ground, the ground of this terrible cry of Jesus from the Cross and all that it communicates that Paul can say what he does in Romans 8:1, that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
How much condemnation? Not much, but a little. A sip here, a hint there. No. None. No wrath whatsoever will ever be tasted from the hand of God, ever. And why not? Because Christ endured the God-forsakenness that our sins deserved, and he endured it to the end in those dreadful hours on that first Good Friday.
Jesus cried out on the Cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, so that all who trust in him to save them from sin and death can cry out, “My God, my God, how could you be so good to me?” Jesus cried out these words on the Cross, so that we would never have reason to say them ourselves.
Do you know that? Do you believe that? It’s all true.
The only way to escape the just wrath of God toward our sin, is to look to Christ. But if you have (or if you will down the road) look to him to save you, you will absolutely escape that wrath; because Jesus suffered it in your place in full. And you can bank your whole life and eternity on that.
Happy Good Friday, friend. I pray it will be a truly good Friday for you.
