My God, my God!
Why have you
forsaken me?
Psalm 22:1
From the cross, Jesus cried out in anguish, “My God, my God!”
Indeed, he quoted and cried the opening words of this powerful Psalm.
Have you ever stopped to think about the God-forsaken anguish that Jesus must have felt in this moment?
When our Lord came down from heaven, he emptied himself (see Philippians 2:5-8). Totally. He took off his robes of light. Stripped himself of his divinity. And became fully human.
He walked like us. Talked like us. Wet his diapers like us – which is part of the Christmas story. He was fully human.
Nevertheless and throughout his life, Jesus knew (and had only known) God's powerful, personal, and intimate presence. Why? Because the human Jesus fostered this connection. (Jesus’ life shows that for humans an intimate connection to God is available for all people, but only Jesus nurtured this relationship is such a powerful, personal, and intimate way.)
Jesus knew the Father … through the human activity of prayer. Furthermore, at his baptism, the Holy Spirit came upon him in power. (This indwelling presence in Jesus’ life prefigured the Pentecost gift of the Holy Spirit that would be available to all would follow the Son of God and believe in his name.)
The point is this: God was powerfully, personally, and intimately connected with Jesus and no human ever had experienced the closeness of God as Jesus did!
Therefore, with these words from the cross, we feel Jesus’ moment of agony God when God removed his presence from Jesus. It was necessary. The Savior came to understand, to die for, and to conquer all that life without God was like. And it must have felt like a vacuum in Jesus’ heart … a black hole which was collapsing in on itself. The weight of the entire world shrunk down to this moment in the heart of this man. And God allowing his Son to be crushed for our iniquities.
“My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me.”
Jesus may have come for this moment … he may have willingly undertaken this destiny … but nothing could have prepared him for having the weight of the world hung upon … along with the suffocating absence of God.
“My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me.”
In Christ’s Love,
a guy who cries with him today
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