Meditation on the Cross

Jesus cries out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why? How could the Father turn away from the Son? What could cause this break, this anguish for both Son and Father? It is the falling gavel of the Judge pronouncing the guilty verdict on the Son: you are guilty! The Lord has laid on the Suffering Servant, his beloved Son, the iniquity of us all. He has crushed him and caused him to suffer as a guilt offering for us (cf. Isaiah 53).

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It is happening now upon the cross. This is not a myth to illustrate God’s sacrificial love. The sacrifice is literally true. Jesus is really dying, really suffering, really experiencing the anger of his Father. He is an abhorrence to God, whose just wrath is now bearing down upon him.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? How can God do this to Jesus? How can the Father bring his wrath upon his Son? Because somehow, somewhere in the inscrutable mystery of the Godhead – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – there lies a merciful love that moves both Father and Son to bear incomprehensible agony to spare us. Parents, you know that the Father’s agony, if anything, was greater than the Son’s.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Those ought to have been our words: He was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities (Isaiah 53:5).

From "Meditations on Christ's Death." Click here to read more.