My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?
Forsaken of God
One thing we know, He was alone; He had reached the climax of that loneliness in which His whole earthly work had been carried on. It is hardly possible for us to understand the nature of the solitude of the life of Christ. “It was not the solitude of the hermit or monk; He ever lived among his fellow men; not the solitude of pride, sullenly refusing all sympathy and aid; not the solitude of selfishness, creating around its icy centre a cold, bleak, barren wilderness; not the solitude of sickly sentimentality, forever crying out that it can find no one to understand or appreciate; but the solitude of a pure, holy, heavenly spirit, into all whose deeper thoughts there was not a single human being near Him, or around Him, who could enter; with all whose deeper feelings there was not one who could sympathize; whose truest, deepest motives, ends, and objects, in living and dying as He did, not one could comprehend. Spiritually, and all throughout, the loneliest man that ever lived was Jesus Christ.” (Hanna.) Yet there were times when this loneliness deepened on His soul. Again and again, when in this place or that, “He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.” But one other stage was reached of yet more utter solitude when, in the darkness of that most mysterious noonday that veiled the scene of Calvary, and in the grossest darkness of unfathomable anguish that enveloped the human soul of Jesus, He trod the winepress of the wrath and justice of God alone, and entered that last stage of solitude in which He could no longer say, “I am not alone, because the Father is with Me,” but uttered that hitter cry-a cry from the darkest, deepest, dreariest loneliness into which a pure and holy spirit ever passed-“My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” We may in reverence consider three causes which seem to have produced this element of the Sacred Passion. The first cause of this awful desolation was the fact of the accumulated sin of the whole world, from the disobedience of Eden down to the last intention of sin that shall be disturbed by the archangel’s trumpet, resting upon one Human Soul, to whom the faintest shadow of sin was intolerable. The second cause was the gathering of the hosts of darkness, vanquished in the wilderness, and in the garden, and in many of the souls they had possessed, but now, rallied and marshalled, and massed for one last supreme effort, hurling themselves with the fury of despair and hate upon their Vanquisher. The third cause was the hiding of the Father’s face. He who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity could not look even upon His beloved Son, when deluged thus in our sin. Beloved, out of the depths of this most bitter woe of the passion of Jesus there comes some solid comfort for us. He endured that utter loneliness that we might never be alone. (Henry S. Miles, M. A.)
Eclipse of the face of God
The black mephitic cloud of a world’s sin came between God and Christ. Necessarily there was an eclipse of the face of God. An eclipse of the sun is caused, as you are all aware, by that opaque body the moon coming between the earth and it. That preternatural darkness of which we read in the preceding verse, was caused by some thick veil of sulphurous clouds being drawn across the face of the sun-the sun veiling his face, that he might not witness the perpetration of the blackest crime ever perpetrated on even our sin-cursed earth-a crime that made even incarnate nature shudder to its innermost core. So when this opaque body of our sins came between Christ and God, when that dark sulphurous cloud of a world’s sins enwrapped the being of Christ like some great funereal pall, necessarily there was an eclipse of the loving face of God, who is light. Necessarily there was, on the part of Christ, spiritual darkness, and desertion, and loneliness-a darkness, and desertion, and loneliness which found expression in the wailing cry, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (J. Black.)
The presence of God the support of the martyrs
What was it that enabled Ignatius, waiting to be thrown to the lions, to say-“Let me be food for the wild beasts, if only God be glorified;” that enabled the aged Polycarp, the flames lapping his body, to cry-“I thank Thee, O Father, that Thou hast numbered me among the martyrs;” that enabled Latimer, under the same circumstances, to say-“Be of good cheer, Brother Ridley”-What but the feeling of His nearness to them; the thought of His approving smile; and that though they were hated and persecuted by men, they were not forsaken of God. But Christ, in His hour of deepest need-He is robbed of that all and alone sufficient help. When He most needs the presence of God, just then God forsakes Him. Friends! we are here brought face to face with a great mystery. Christ Himself feels that. His words, if they, mean anything, mean that. “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (J. Black.)
The cry of the forsaken
one:-
I. And first, let us not forget that this cry was a pang put into Old Testament words. To be perfectly fair in any consideration of the phase of anguish expressed by them, we must look to the twenty-second Psalm, where the words first of all occur. Let us read a verse or two of the Psalm. Take verses 7, 8, “All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, He trusted on the Lord that He would deliver him: let Him deliver him, seeing he delighted in Him;” almost the very cry of the railing passers by. Verse sixteen is yet more remarkable in its application: “They pierced my hands and my feet.” Equally so is the eighteenth verse: “They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.” If the Psalm had been written after the occurrences of that day, it might almost have been given as an historical record of them in these particulars. But I want you to think of the possibility-nay, extreme probability-that while our Lord’s mind in that dark hour rested upon these portions of the Psalm, it would also recall other portions of it. For mark how from the cry of the twenty-first verse there arises a strong hope: “Save me from the lion’s mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns. I will declare Thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise Thee.” From these words forth there is no longer any sense of desolation. “For He hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath He hid His face from him; but when he cried unto Him, He heard.” Now, I say, we ought to remember this in our endeavour to interpret the cry. Heavy enough indeed, with all the suffering it involved, was the hand of God that day as it rested upon the patient Sufferer; and life was ebbing out even while the cry came forth. And yet surely the blessed Saviour was not long bereft of consolation. Did He cling only to the first cry of the Psalm? Was this all? Was there no mounting aloft into the blessed heights of faith and of hope and of praise? I would believe there was; and this, though it may not deprive the scene of all its mysteriousness, helps me somewhat to apprehend its significance, which, as I have already intimated, is about all I thought we could attempt to do-all we purposed to attempt.
II. Next, we will view the words as the revelation of a great anguish. And yet, when we began to think a little more about this, Christ’s sense of utter desertion and loneliness, in the light especially of His relation to our race as its true head and High Priest; we should find ourselves ready to admit some sort of a congruousness in the fact. For we know that this experience, a sense of God-desertion, is one of the most real of men’s troubles. And there seems a fitness in the ordination of the Redemptive scheme which allows a place for this sense of God-desertion in those sufferings by which that Redemption was secured and ratified. So far as we have any knowledge of Christ’s inner experience during the years before, we fail to discern any trace of this God-desertion. On the contrary, it was the one sweetness and light of His life, even when He thought and told of the coming desertion of His chosen ones, that still amid all circumstances the Father was with Him. It was not always so in the case of the Old Testament saints and worthies. They had, as we have, intervals, when the clear shining of the Divine face is interfered with, and the summer of the soul ceases awhile. When God is nigh, when we feel able to say, “The Lord is at my right hand,” we can add, “I shall not be greatly moved.” But up comes the mist from the rolling sea of passion and self-will and pride and human weaknesses, and we find that the light of our life is awhile quenched. Many days we may have lost sight of land and sun and star, and God appears to hide Himself, until the soul cries out passionately, “Where is thy God-where?” And the tempter echoes and re-echoes the dreary desolate cry, “Where, ah, where indeed?” And anyone who has ever found himself in such darkness knows that it is most profound; he who has felt such a distance between God and him knows it is most terrible and dreary. He who perfectly fulfilled the Eternal Will, and who was at that very moment fulfilling its more mysterious ordinations, cannot wholly escape this bitterness. And yet, I say, never was Christ more truly fulfilling the Divine Will than now. Never was the Father more delighted in the blessed Son than now. Why, it was the suffering of a perfect sacrifice. It was a true self offering. If Christ had been dragged to this tree against His will, if Christ had tried to escape from the hands of his tormentors, it would have been different. O, my brethren, instead of trying to build upon this cry of the Saviour’s any strange theory, let us rather think how much of real and abiding comfort we may draw from it. You and I may often have had to pass through the gloomy way unrelieved by any of heaven’s sunshine. It may seem to us that everything has conspired against us, and that the very heavens are sealed against our cry. Our prayers may seem to return to us unanswered. All may appear to be lost, even God. Let us but at such moments look at the blessed Christ. Let us think how God put His best beloved One through the hottest fires and the most searching tests. He knew once what it was to have the heavens above Him darkened. And yet the Eternal Father loved Him. May He not love you too?
III. And now we come to these words from another point of view. We have seen in them the utterance of a great anguish; let us look at them as the expression of a clinging faith and love. You will perceive why we called attention to the twenty-second Psalm. That Psalm shows us one who felt himself forsaken, and who was by no means actually forsaken; and the words used by Christ may serve also to show us how very close Christ was to the Eternal heart when He uttered them. “My God”-O, if we can only say this, “My God.” It matters little what we may say afterward. If we can only say “My God,” the darkness will not long brood upon our souls. They are words of faith and love, which, when truly spoken, must bring in the daylight. In the battle of the Christian faith and life, the victory is more than half won when we can say, “My God.” No soul that is lost can say, “My God.” I turn again to the real comfort wrapped up within the very words which expressed the Saviour’s agony. How often is this the case. The very words by which we express our sorrow, our trouble, are themselves often charged with deep and true solace and refreshment. We know not how long this cloud rested over the Saviour. I do not think it could be for long. Presently, we know, the Father was looking upon Him with shining, unveiled face; for calmly and restfully He breathed forth the dying sigh of thousands since, “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.” (C. J. Proctor, B. A.)
Jesus, throwing Himself into the bosom of His Father, implores consolation
This Scripture leads our thoughts to the desolation of our Jesus; to inquiry after the cause; and to the exclamation that passed from His lips, through the intense suffering of His heart.
I. First, the desolation of Jesus. It was not unforeseen. With regard to the desolation of Him, whose love undertook our cause; that we may understand the meaning of the term He used, it becomes us to enter on a clear, a Scriptural view of His person, and of the intimate relation which subsisted between the Father and Himself. He was emphatically “the Word,” that was “in the beginning,” eternal, before all time, before the glowing sun came forth from his chamber, as a bridegroom, and rejoiced as a giant to run his course. He “was with God”-distinct in His Person; and He “was God”-self-existent in nature or essence. “All things were made by Him;” then He is the mighty Creator of the universe, of which we form an insignificant part; and “without Him was not anything made that was made.” As to the nature, then, of this forsaking, of which the lips of Jesus utter lamentation, it is clear, to him who receives the word of Scripture in simplicity, that there was no desertion of His humanity by the Word. This Eternal Word took His human flesh and reasonable soul into union with itself; and that union was never dissolved. By this oneness, the body never saw corruption, although, after death, it was laid in Joseph’s tomb: nor was it separated from the reasonable soul in Paradise. By this Godhead body and soul were reunited on the morning of the Resurrection; that union is preserved to the present, and will be after that wondrous prediction shall be accomplished, that all things having been subdued unto Him, the Son, the Mediator, the ancient Daysman, shall Himself be subject unto Him that put all things under Him; that God may be all in all. We are instructed likewise by Holy Scripture, as to the nature of that intimate and mysterious relationship that subsisted between the Father and the Son, co-equal, co-eternal. What testimony can be plainer than the words of Christ Jesus, written in St. John 10:37-38? “If I do not,” says He, “the works of My Father, believe Me not. But if I do, though ye believe not Me, behove the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in Me, and I in Him.” He entreats, with an earnestness His own, that all the children of faith may be one: as “Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us.” If the Word forsook not the humanity, it follows that the Father essentially deserted not the same, because the Father and the Son are One in nature, eternally, inseparably. Hence, then, the question, What are we to understand by the complaint of being forsaken? That He was bereft of the countenance, the comforts, the consolations of the Father, in which He had rejoiced.
II. We have viewed the first part of our subject, namely, Christ forsaken; and come to the cause, which was asked by His lips. The Father gives the answer to this interrogation-“Why?” Because you have become the Bondsman of sinners, have consented to stand in their stead; therefore, as at your hands, I look for a continual and perfect obedience to the law in its exceeding breadth, so, in your person, I exact the penalty to its utmost tittle.” Here Isaiah, who seems to look upon the scene before us: “the Lord hath lain on Him the iniquity of us all.” Be attentive to Paul: “He made Him to be sin for us,” therefore to bleed and die, “that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” Little did the Jews imagine, when they exulted in the ignominy of Jesus, who was without sin, and lived without guile, that in gratifying their malice, they were but dealing the second blow; that the first was dealt by a secret, powerful, invisible hand; yet such was the fact, according to the testimony of prophets and apostles. St. Peter, addressing the men of Israel at Jerusalem concerning Israel, says, “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God”-there is the secret purpose-“ye have taken, and by wicked hands crucified and slain;” there is the resulting blow. In a Psalm of the passion (69:26) we read, “They persecute Him” (the second blow), “whom Thou hast smitten” (the first stroke), “and they talk to the grief of those whom Thou hast wounded.” That secret blow was the fruit of sin, which covered perfect innocence with confusion. Thus Jesus speaks, in the seventh verse, “Shame hath covered My face.” “Why?” As there was no impatience under the blow, there was no ignorance of the cause. Jesus asks, not for knowledge, but to call our notice to the fearful cause. Himself gives the answer, as me have it in the Vulgate. “Far from My deliverance is the matter of My sins.”
III. Thirdly, we look at the exclamation that passed through His lips, arising from the intense suffering of the heart. Jesus at this time does not simply speak; and who can imagine the bitterness of that cry-it pierced the heavens-He cried-“He cried with a loud voice.” It before was the sweet word “Father,” but not so now. Is He forsaken? why should we wonder at the hiding of Heaven’s countenance? Jesus in His agony, inquires, “Why?” Is it not our wisdom to say, “Is there not a cause?”-to search it out and expose our sore to the pitying eye of a Father? Jesus was made desolate by that Father, that we might be supported, comforted, delivered. Jesus instructs us for a dying hour: He turns from creatures, and occupies Himself with God. Be this our happiness, as it is our privilege; and when heart and flesh both fail, the Lord will be the strength of our heart, and our portion forever. (Thomas Ward, M. A.)