Worship Initiative | Last Words of JesusSample

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

“And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ Which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:33-34)

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.” (Psalm 22:1-2)

Is this the cry of your heart today? Has it been before? Have you said with Christ, with David, and with many others before you, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

You are neither alone nor terminally unique, and God is not finished yet.

It is common to feel fearful or insecure when we find ourselves asking this question. We begin to wonder if we are straying from God, if our faith is disingenuous, or if we will ever be rescued. These questions, too, are safe to bring before the Father; they are a burden he can carry.

After all, we have said it ourselves in the asking: “My God, my God…” He is our God – your God. You are not dealing with one who is distant, impersonal, and unaware. Your God is the God of nearness – he who is intimately acquainted with all of your ways, who sees in secret and stores up your every tear.

Because of this, we can be sure that we are safe to approach him. We can be sure that God will not scorn us, but embrace us. For what thought has ever passed through our mind that he has not heard? What question have we buried in the depths of our heart that he has not known? There is none.

Certainly our safety with God does not depend on the perfection of our thoughts and our hearts. It depends on the very work Christ Jesus was accomplishing when he uttered the words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Drenched in the sin of the world, drinking full the cup of God’s wrath, and drowning in the agony of death, Jesus cried out to his Father, “why have you forsaken me?”

He had always known this moment would come; he had chosen it himself – born in the likeness of man for this very purpose. And yet, when it came time to suffer the reality, Jesus felt the depth of its darkness in a way we cannot understand; he was forsaken.

He was forsaken so that we would never have to be. Christ became sin and, in doing so, he accepted the turning away of God the Father – even if only for a moment – so that we could be invited to draw near to him forever. God will never turn from us, even in our sin, because Christ has taken on the wrath and forsaking that our sin merits – once and for all.

This was an immeasurably painful moment for Jesus – the feeling of being forsaken by his Father with whom he had only ever known perfect union. When Jesus asked, “why have you forsaken me”, it was not because he had forgotten what he came to do, or the good and glory that would come on the other side. It was a very real part of the experience of bearing sin and death in a vulnerable human body – that which Christ took on for our sake.

But these were not his final words. They were a part of Jesus’s story, but the story did not end there. Instead, it ended with “It is finished” and “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” – words of power, surrender, and trust.

Today, fellow believer, continue to walk the footsteps of Christ. Speak honestly to your Father when you feel forsaken, and know that your life and works are in his hands. Say with David these words of faith:

“Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.In you our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them. To you they cried and were rescued; in you they trusted and were not put to shame…For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him.” (Psalm 22:3-5, 24)