Posted on 03/31/2015 2:13:21 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
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from Joel Beeke Mar 30, 2015 Category: Articles
“And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”(Matt. 27:46, KJV).
It is noon, and Jesus has been on the cross for three pain-filled hours. Suddenly, darkness falls on Calvary and “over all the land” (v. 45). By a miraculous act of Almighty God, midday becomes midnight.
This supernatural darkness is a symbol of God’s judgment on sin. The physical darkness signals a deeper and more fearsome darkness.
The great High Priest enters Golgotha’s Holy of Holies without friends or enemies. The Son of God is alone on the cross for three final hours, enduring what defies our imagination. Experiencing the full brunt of His Father’s wrath, Jesus cannot stay silent. He cries out: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
This phrase represents the nadir, the lowest point, of Jesus’ sufferings. Here Jesus descends into the essence of hell, the most extreme suffering ever experienced. It is a time so compacted, so infinite, so horrendous as to be incomprehensible and, seemingly, unsustainable.
Jesus’ cry does not in any way diminish His deity. Jesus does not cease being God before, during, or after this. Jesus’ cry does not divide His human nature from His divine person or destroy the Trinity. Nor does it detach Him from the Holy Spirit. The Son lacks the comforts of the Spirit, but He does not lose the holiness of the Spirit. And finally, it does not cause Him to disavow His mission. Both the Father and Son knew from all eternity that Jesus would become the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world (Acts 15:18). It is unthinkable that the Son of God might question what is happening or be perplexed when His Father’s loving presence departs.
Jesus is expressing the agony of unanswered supplication (Ps. 22:1–2). Unanswered, Jesus feels forgotten of God. He is also expressing the agony of unbearable stress. It is the kind of “roaring” mentioned in Psalm 22: the roar of desperate agony without rebellion. It is the hellish cry uttered when the undiluted wrath of God overwhelms the soul. It is heart-piercing, heaven-piercing, and hell-piercing. Further, Jesus is expressing the agony of unmitigated sin. All the sins of the elect, and the hell that they deserve for eternity, are laid upon Him. And Jesus is expressing the agony of unassisted solitariness. In His hour of greatest need comes a pain unlike anything the Son has ever experienced: His Father’s abandonment. When Jesus most needs encouragement, no voice cries from heaven, “This is my beloved Son.” No angel is sent to strengthen Him; no “well done, thou good and faithful servant” resounds in His ears. The women who supported Him are silent. The disciples, cowardly and terrified, have fled. Feeling disowned by all, Jesus endures the way of suffering alone, deserted, and forsaken in utter darkness. Every detail of this horrific abandonment declares the heinous character of our sins!
But why would God bruise His own Son (Isa. 53:10)? The Father is not capricious, malicious, or being merely didactic. The real purpose is penal; it is the just punishment for the sin of Christ’s people. “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. 5:21).
Christ was made sin for us, dear believers. Among all the mysteries of salvation, this little word “for” exceeds all. This small word illuminates our darkness and unites Jesus Christ with sinners. Christ was acting on behalf of His people as their representative and for their benefit.
With Jesus as our substitute, God’s wrath is satisfied and God can justify those who believe in Jesus (Rom. 3:26). Christ’s penal suffering, therefore, is vicarious — He suffered on our behalf. He did not simply share our forsakenness, but He saved us from it. He endured it for us, not with us. You are immune to condemnation (Rom. 8:1) and to God’s anathema (Gal. 3:13) because Christ bore it for you in that outer darkness. Golgotha secured our immunity, not mere sympathy.
This explains the hours of darkness and the roar of dereliction. God’s people experience just a taste of this when they are brought by the Holy Spirit before the Judge of heaven and earth, only to experience that they are not consumed for Christ’s sake. They come out of darkness, confessing, “Because Immanuel has descended into the lowest hell for us, God is with us in the darkness, under the darkness, through the darkness — and we are not consumed!”
How stupendous is the love of God! Indeed, our hearts so overflow with love that we respond, “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
This post was originally published in Tabletalk magazine.
"...Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you."
--Isaiah 43:1b-2
Good Holy Week article. Reformation interest?
1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?
2 O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent.
3 Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the praise of Israel.
4 In you our fathers put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them.
5 They cried to you and were saved; in you they trusted and were not disappointed.
6 But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people.
7 All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads:
8 “He trusts in the LORD; let the LORD rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him.”
9 Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you even at my mother's breast.
10 From birth I was cast upon you; from my mother's womb you have been my God.
11 Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help.
12 Many bulls surround me; strong bulls of Bashan encircle me.
13 Roaring lions tearing their prey open their mouths wide against me.
14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted away within me.
15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death.
16 Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet.
17 I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me.
18 They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.
19 But you, O LORD, be not far off; O my Strength, come quickly to help me.
20 Deliver my life from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs.
21 Rescue me from the mouth of the lions; save me from the horns of the wild oxen.
22 I will declare your name to my brothers; in the congregation I will praise you.
23 You who fear the LORD, praise him! All you descendants of Jacob, honor him! Revere him, all you descendants of Israel!
24 For he has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.
25 From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly; before those who fear you will I fulfill my vows.
26 The poor will eat and be satisfied; they who seek the LORD will praise him— may your hearts live forever!
27 All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him,
28 for dominion belongs to the LORD and he rules over the nations.
29 All the rich of the earth will feast and worship; all who go down to the dust will kneel before him— those who cannot keep themselves alive.
30 Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord.
31 They will proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn— for he has done it.
Thank-you for posting this profoundly insightful article. Right here, “Both the Father and Son knew from all eternity that Jesus would become the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world (Acts 15:18)” is the complete refutation of evolutionary conceptions, that is, progressive creationism and evolutionary theism, which from the inner logic of their position make the Father responsible for death. If evolutionary theism and progressive creation are true, then millions of life-forms lived, suffered, and died long before the hominids appeared from which man supposedly evolved. Once more, if evolutionary conceptions applied to the Book of Beginnings are true, then man is not a sinner in need of salvation by Christ but rather he needs to save himself from the obviously inept Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the One God in three Persons responsible for sin and death.
The nuns repeated that phrase in parochial school during lent. The priest during Good Friday Mass during the Gospel.
Alway confusing for me, hearing God say those words. No convincing explanation, for me, for those words.
Thank You Lord.
With my little finite mind, and with all my eternal soul; the best way I know how, I love you back, and will eternally thank You for Your unspeakable gift.
We are redeemed - but none of us are saved until we pass our particular Judgement.
If we are with Christ then we shall indeed be saved. But what if we separate ourselves from Him? What if we are unrepentant murderers?
Or what if we refuse to love Christ, by ignoring the poor and hungry?
Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
This is a critical part of what it means to be with Christ - we must serve His poor.
If we refuse to live lives of active charity - in the fullest sense of that word - then we are likely to be in for an awful surpise when we come to our Judgement.
Merely insisting on the fact of our Baptism will do us no good, if we have not loved.
For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’.....Always wondered about this passage. The hungry are paid by my taxes and contributions. What else should I do ? I paid for your drinks by my taxes and contributions. No leeway there? I ain’t lettin’ anybody in my house unless you are poor family (which I have done MANY, MANY times. Am I off the hook? You needed clothes so I paid my taxes and made contributions. Check. You were in prison? If you were, you were the type of person who wouldn’t want my help and I’m paying to look after you. We good? Makes little sense to me from 4000 to 2000 years ago to today. Should I go to Saudi Arabia, Pakistan?
This statement by Jesus Christ is the most powerful of a slew that point out the idiocy of the Trinitarian position. How can God abandon God?
What you have is a subordinate son throughout the New Testament. Prior to the forcing of Trinitarianism on Christianity that was the correct interpretation of early Christians. Subordination was the original unpolluted doctrine.
Look up the original formulation of the Godhead: Subordination.
That's the socialist ideal - the idea that Government taking our money and doing 'good works' with it somehow acts as a substitute for loving the poor, the sick, the needy.
They do terrible, toxic things with our money and leave us less able to do good.
The key thing is to love our neighbor as ourselves.
For it is love that I seek, and not sacrifice; knowledge of God more than burnt offerings
And - fire drill. I'm off out.
what a beautiful post...
Amen.
Thanks to SoFloFreeper for posting this!
“Both the Father and Son knew”
It’s like saying “Both me and myself knew”.
“The hungry are paid by my taxes.”
No they aren’t. They go to pay the $288k relocation package for a mid level VA employee.
The key here seems to be Charity, by which I mean Caritas, actively and mercifully seeking the well-being of others - not just giving to a charity, still less having our money spent on toxic welfare by the Government.
A lot of the so-called poor in the US have larger TVs than I've ever seen in my life: their 'poor' status is just an artifact of government. Real poverty requires real need.
If you've opened your house to family members who were in trouble then I'd say you were doing pretty well.
If you've brought up children then I'd say you were doing pretty well.
If you've helped strangers injured or in need in the street then I'd say you were doing pretty well.
God desires us to show mercy.
Ok, stuck in meetings now. God bless.
I guess it can be expressed a few ways - I always thought that, sin being what separates us from God, and Jesus never being separated before, when He took on all the sins of the world, He was for the first time separated and not in total connection with God the Father -it must have been most agonizing to be imbued with the worst of our sins and to not feel that connection - it would have felt as if He had actually been forsaken.
Which words are you referring to - the words of Isaiah 43:1b-2 quoted by SoFloFreeper in #2?
Cordially,
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