Did God really forsake His Son on the Cross and if He did, what’s to say that He won’t do the same to us when we sin? With Easter approaching, soon there will be many sermons preached about the crucifixion of Jesus and many preachers will say that God turned His back on Jesus as He died on the cross. They will say that “God can’t look at sin and forsook Jesus on the cross”. Some will even say that God killed His son on the cross. The cross was not God performing child sacrifice, nor was it God turning His back on His son. Jesus said in (John 10:18), that no one takes His life from Him and that He had the power to lay it down, and the power to take it again. No one, not even God, took the life of Jesus. He laid down His life freely. So, who killed Jesus? The better question is, what killed Jesus? Sin killed Jesus, not His father. We must remember that on the cross Jesus became sin.
2 Corinthians 5:21 For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
Someone once said, “Don’t marvel that you have become righteous. Marvel that Jesus became sin.” It’s a great wonder. I can’t explain it, I just believe it. The sinless Son somehow become sin and therefore bore the penalty of sin which is death. The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Was God angry with Jesus? No of course not. That could never happen! God the Father and His Son Jesus were working together with God the Holy Spirit to rid humanity of the disease of sin. God was with and in Jesus on the cross.
2 Corinthians 5:18-19 (NKJV)
18 Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, 19 that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
We have this idea that God was up there while Jesus was down here, but Paul understood that God was in Christ the entire time. Some say, “God turned His back on Jesus, because Jesus became sin and God is holy and cannot look upon sin”. I’ve heard this preached all my life. You may say, “But didn’t Jesus say God had forsaken him?” Yes, but notice He didn’t say, “My Father has forsaken me”, he says “My God”.
Mark 15:34 (NKJV)
And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
This is the only time that Jesus ever called His Father, GOD/Elohim, which means God or judge. In (Romans 8:3) we see that Jesus came in the “likeness” of sinful flesh. Some say that maybe Jesus felt forsaken, but I do not believe that. Why? Because the 22nd Psalm is a Messianic Prophetic Psalm of David where he saw the crucifixion hundreds of years before it was even invented by the Persians and perfected by the Romans. The Jews knew this Psalm well, just like most of us know and had heard of the 23rd Psalm before we were believers. Psalms 22, 23 and 24 form a “Messianic Trilogy,” one that virtually every Israelite knew by heart. Psalm 22 is a detailed account of the crucifixion, the 23rd Psalm shows Him as our shepherd and us as His sheep. Psalm 24 shows us the King of Glory and His Kingdom and us as the gates and everlasting doors. Let me ask you this. Did Jesus know the 22nd Psalm? Did the Word know the word? If the answer is yes, then that means He also knew verse 24:
Psalm 22:24 For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; Nor has He hidden His face from Him;
Verse twenty-four says that God would not hide His face from Him. Jesus therefore, would have known that His Father would not forsake Him. So why did He cry out, “why have you forsaken me?” It was not a cry of despair at being forsaken by God, but rather a cry of proclamation to those Jews gathered at Golgotha that what was taking place before their eyes was the fulfillment of the Messianic prophecy in the 22nd Psalm, and that he really was who he said he was. As you read the entire 22nd Psalm, you see that it was a prophetic detailed account of the crucifixion:
Psalm 22:1
My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me, And from the words of My groaning?
Psalm 22:16-18
16 For dogs have surrounded Me; The congregation of the wicked has enclosed Me. They pierced My hands and My feet;
17 I can count all My bones. They look and stare at Me.
18 They divide My garments among them, And for My clothing they cast lots.
Psalm 22:24
24 For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; Nor has He hidden His face from Him; But when He cried to Him, He heard.
Psalm 22:30-31
30 A posterity shall serve Him. It will be recounted of the Lord to the next generation,
31 They will come and declare His righteousness to a people who will be born, That He has done this.
Notice verse thirty-one says, “that He has done” or “It is finished.
Psalm 22:31 in the (GW) translation reads: They will tell people yet to be born about his righteousness— that he has finished it.
Do you see that? “It is finished!” God by His very nature, our heavenly Father could not turn away from His only begotten Son, especially at the moment for which God has been preparing him all of his life. Jesus Christ was the one upon whose shoulders the salvation of mankind was resting, the one who trusted his Father step by step all the way to this defining moment of His- story. And then God forsook him? No way!
Isn’t it something that after Adam sinned in the garden, that God did not forsake him, but came walking to him and called out to him. Cain sinned by murdering his brother, yet God did not forsake him either.
The truth is that God has never forsaken His people because of their sin, so why would He do so with His own Son? If God forsook Jesus on the cross because He became sin, what will God do when you and I sin? He would have to do the same thing to us. He would have to turn His face away from our sin, and from us, but that is not how our heavenly Father is, nor what He does.
Jesus was not forsaken by God on the cross and you will never be forsaken by Him either!
Amen!!!