Jesus's Cry on the Cross

[oswinium]

I was just wondering why Jesus cried out, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"
I don't understand in what way the Father did this? :S
Please shed some light on this matter

 

[agua]

Here are a few different ideas from Albert Barnes' notes on the bible. I tend to agree with #4.

My God, my God ... - This expression is one denoting intense suffering. It has been difficult to understand in what sense Jesus was “forsaken by God.” It is certain that God approved his work. It is certain that he was innocent. He had done nothing to forfeit the favor of God. As his own Son - holy, harmless, undefiled, and obedient - God still loved him. In either of these senses God could not have forsaken him. But the expression was probably used in reference to the following circumstances, namely:

1. His great bodily sufferings on the cross, greatly aggravated by his previous scourging, and by the want of sympathy, and by the revilings of his enemies on the cross. A person suffering thus might address God as if he was forsaken, or given up to extreme anguish.

2. He himself said that this was “the power of darkness,” Luk_22:53. It was the time when his enemies, including the Jews and Satan, were suffered to do their utmost. It was said of the serpent that he should bruise the heel of the seed of the woman, Gen_3:15. By that has been commonly understood to be meant that, though the Messiah would finally crush and destroy the power of Satan, yet he should himself suffer “through the power of the devil.” When he was tempted Luke 4, it was said that the tempter “departed from him for a season.” There is no improbability in supposing that he might be permitted to return at the time of his death, and exercise his power in increasing the sufferings of the Lord Jesus. In what way this might be done can be only conjectured. It might be by horrid thoughts; by temptation to despair, or to distrust God, who thus permitted his innocent Son to suffer; or by an increased horror of the pains of dying.

3. There might have been withheld from the Saviour those strong religious consolations, those clear views of the justice and goodness of God, which would have blunted his pains and soothed his agonies. Martyrs, under the influence of strong religious feeling, have gone triumphantly to the stake, but it is possible that those views might have been withheld from the Redeemer when he came to die. His sufferings were accumulated sufferings, and the design of the atonement seemed to require that he should suffer all that human nature “could be made to endure” in so short a time.

4. Yet we have reason to think that there was still something more than all this that produced this exclamation. Had there been no deeper and more awful sufferings, it would be difficult to see why Jesus should have shrunk from these sorrows and used such a remarkable expression. Isaiah tells us Isa_53:4-5 that “he bore our griefs and carried our sorrows; that he was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities; that the chastisement of our peace was laid upon him; that by his stripes we are healed.” He hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us Gal_3:13; he was made a sin-offering 2Co_5:21; he died in our place, on our account, that he might bring us near to God. It was this, doubtless, which caused his intense sufferings. It was the manifestation of God’s hatred of sin, in some way which he has not explained, that he experienced in that dread hour. It was suffering endured by Him that was due to us, and suffering by which, and by which alone, we can be saved from eternal death.

 

[james g]

Psalm 22 is both a cry of anguish and a song of praise from a suffering man.

It is a picture of our LORD's crucifixion, written a thousand years before the event.

The Psalm opens with one of the seven words from the Cross:
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Psalm 22:1).

In Matthew 27:46 we read that "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?."

In the consideration of these words, the question arises as to just why GOD did forsake His Son in that awful hour on the cross. The cry goes on: "why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent" (Psalm 22:1-2).

The answer to this question may be found in the words of verses 3 to 6:
"But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded. But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people" (Psalm 22:3-6).

The holiness of GOD forbade Him to hear the cry of the Sufferer on the Cross. Though that Sufferer was His own Son, and though the Son was doing the will of GOD in His suffering, yet the holy GOD could not look upon His own LAMB because that LAMB was there as a sin offering, and upon Him was laid the crushing burden of the sin of the world. The holy GOD cannot look upon sin with any degree of allowance:



Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity" (Habakkuk 1:13)and on the Cross the Son of GOD was made sin for us, though He knew no sin, that "we might be made the righteousness of God in him" (II Corinthians 5:21).

 

[RJ]

There is much about God that we dont fully understand and are not meant to; one of these was, at this time, Jesus was fully Man and at the same time full God.

It was Jesus the man that had to suffer, a "man" though without sin himself, became sin just prior to death, in order to fullfil God's purpose in him. At that very second that Jesus cried out, he was fully man.

God is the opposite of and void of sin and, at that very second, Jesus was totally alone, had to go it alone. The man ( fully man), without sin(fully God), was absent of God as he took on the horrible burden of the world's sin as fully man. God himself can not take on and be sin. It must have been a pain that we can never understand, to take on the worlds sin and be absent of the Father at the same moment.

Jesus, on top of everything else, was so overwhelmed at the reality of being separated from the Father that he cried out in despair but, like Jesus was to latter say: "fear not for I have overcome the world".

The fully man that was, at the same time, fully God became fully man in order to end up fully God!

 

[macca]

I was just wondering why Jesus cried out, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"
I don't understand in what way the Father did this? :S
Please shed some light on this matter

It seems to me that because Jesus took the sin of the world upon Himself, Father God could not have sin in His presence, so left His Son for a short time, until the sacrifice was finished and sin was dealt with.