“My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?”
4th last words of jesus christ:
“My god, My GOd,
why have you forsaken me?”
MATTHEW 27: 46; MARK 15: 34; PSALM 22: 1
Has anyone of you felt or experienced so much pain in your life and that made you say,
“God feels so far off and distant”
“It
is so difficult to feel the Presence of God”
“God
has forsaken me”
Many among you today have felt or experienced and uttered that same way once or maybe couple of times in their lives and that doesn’t exempt me, of course.
Why do you think is that?
It is because we are human. That is our nature. To utter our frustrations. Because we know that we are not good enough and we deserve it.
Do you agree with
that?
And Jesus also felt and experienced and uttered the same while He was hanging on the Cross.
About three in the afternoon, Jesus cried out in a loud voice,“ Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
MATTHEW 27: 46
These are the words that Jesus Christ uttered while He was on the Cross- the 4th of His 7 Last Words. These words offer a profound glimpse into His character - His utter humanity, His love for humanity by sacrificing His very own life and the fulfilment of His mission.
By examining Jesus Christ’s 4th of His 7 Last Words,
1.We will realize the power of sin in breaking our relationship to God but don’t lose hope because Jesus Christ experienced the same, and it is His mission to defeat that power of sin and restore our relationship with God.
2. We will discover the depth of Jesus Christ’s love to humanity by becoming human Himself and feel the pain and sorrow and lose the relationship with God, His Father, because of our sins and
3. We will be empowered to live lives that reflect Jesus Christ’s example.
So, this 4th Last Words of Jesus Christ: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” is taken by many as an abandonment of the Son by the Father.
But why? Why did God the Father “forsake” Jesus Christ during that crucial moment on the Cross?
On my personal reflections, I have found 5 strong reasons as to why.
1. SIN OF HUMANITY
In JOHN 8: 29 NIV, Jesus told the Pharisees:
“The
one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone,
for
I always do what pleases him.”
Jesus has never experienced the aloneness that comes from being cut off from God, but during that moment on the Cross, bearing the sins of the world, He felt that separation.
Jesus took to Himself the weight of all sins of humanity. As it is prophesied in ISAIAH 53: 6 NIV
“…and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
The sins of the world that have been casted to Jesus Christ on the Cross is a reminder that sin separates us from God, just like how Adam and Eve were separated to God when they committed the first sin.
That’s the number one power of sin on us- to distance us from God, but the Good News is that Jesus Christ bridged that gap through the Cross.
2. GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY
The Father had to turn away from the Son, because the Father is “of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong”. As it is written in HABAKKUK 1: 13 NIV
“Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrongdoing.”
During that moment on the Cross, Jesus Christ is crying out because he is experiencing separation from his Father for the first time, and we will also notice that this is the only time we have a record of Jesus not calling God as his "Father”. He cried: “My God, My God”, this is a declaration of God’s sovereignty over all the sinful humanity. We are all God’s children, but because of the sin, there becomes a gap between us and God, there was shame.
If you will allow me to ask and use as example, I, myself, is a father to a 5-year-old boy, and I will tell you all that if I don’t like what he is doing, I distance myself to him in a while, not because I don’t love him, but because I don’t like the wrongdoing. Then he starts to cry and does his best to come to me.
But of course, there is never a father’s heart that is stone-hard not to listen to a son’s cry, isn’t it?
God the Father let His Son, Jesus Christ cry out to make us humble amid our sins and to accept His sovereignty over us.
3. Utter Humanity” OF Jesus christ
Jesus Christ, as the Son of God needs to experience emotions, feel pain, and demonstrate vulnerability, even in the face of his own death. This demonstrates that while Jesus is divine, he was also fully human and could understand the human experience. That is His utter humanity.
PHILIPPIANS
2:7 NIV
rather,
he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of
a servant, being made in human likeness.
So,
if we will go back to my question before we started,
“Have
you ever felt alone or forsaken”?
When you are in that state, that is the best and perfect time to call on Jesus, because He knows that feeling, and He can give you the understanding and faith you need. So we must trust Him and call on Him- He is the best person to help us based on His experience.
Understanding Jesus Christ’s utter humanity is crucial for appreciating his ability to empathize with and understand human suffering. It also highlights the fact that Jesus was not just divine but also fully human, making him a relatable figure for all people.
4. FULFILLMENT OF THE PROPHECY
If we will go back to what happened before Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, earlier that day religious leaders, clearly rejected Him as their Savior and mocked Him with words from Psalm 22, without them realizing that it is the fulfilment of Messianic prophecy.
PSALM
22: 1; 7-8; 16-18NIV
1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from my cries of anguish?
shaking their heads. He trusts in the Lord,” they say,
“Let the Lord rescue him. Let him deliver him,
since he delights in him.”
16 Dogs surround me, a pack of villains encircles me; they pierce my hands and my feet. All my bones are on display; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment.
And in parallel to that, what happened in MATTHEW 27: 41-43 NIV
41 In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. 42 “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! He’s the king of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. 43 He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said,
‘I am the Son of God.’”
The Scriptures clearly speak the Truth, and we don’t need to explain it further. So, when Jesus Christ used this scripture back to them, He made a testimony that they were indeed crucifying the Messiah! Jesus Christ knew this psalm prophesied about Him; and though He anguished over being temporarily forsaken, He knew that God would answer. And that answer gives us the 5th reason why God has forsaken Jesus Christ:
5. HOPE FOR HUMANITY
Notice also, in asking, “Why have You forsaken Me?”, Jesus Christ merely posed a question but there was no questioning about God’s love, no doubting His promises. It was, as some have noted, “a cry of distress, not of distrust.” Jesus Christ’s words were not a cry against the Father, but a cry to Him. It was not a rebellion; it was an expression of dependence. There was a yearning.
He was not, in any moment, thinking that God had failed. He was simply recognizing the reality of what was happening as the sin of the world was poured upon Him — but there is hope that on fulfilment of His mission, the humanity will be saved.
If we will go back to what was prophesied in
PSALM
22: 24 NIV
For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the
afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him
but has listened to his cry for help.
So, brothers and sisters, there is hope in God strengthened by the death of Jesus Christ on the Cross.
If we feel alone and forsaken, cry out to God. Fighting with sin is the hardest battle we can face, we can not do it alone, but there is hope in Jesus Christ, and God will listen to the humblest cry He hears.
Jesus Christ was forsaken by God for a time, so that we will enjoy His presence forever. He was forsaken so that we will be forgiven. To accomplish the mission. That anguish of feeling forsaken was soon eclipsed by the loving welcome and glory our risen Savior received after 3 days.
Through His sacrifice, Jesus Christ made it possible for us also to enter the presence of God, no more gap, no more need for priestly intervention.
Let us remind ourselves:
MATTHEW 1: 23 NIV
23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”)
God is within us. He has not forsaken us, he never abandoned us. God’s presence and power is all over.
JOHN
3: 16 NIV
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
So today, my brothers and sisters, let us all ask ourselves:
“Are we ready to accept Jesus Christ in our lives to seal our
unbroken relationship with God?”
“Are we ready to distance ourselves from sin to draw us
closer to God so we will never utter again, “God has
forsaken me.”
JOHN
14: 6 NIV
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me.
God has said: “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”
God will never forsake us because the eternal promise of Jesus Christ is fulfilled through His death on the Cross and His resurrection. Amen!
Comments
Post a Comment