Ever felt forsaken? No doubt we all have at some time. Maybe many times. Maybe? Probably. Forsaken by friends, maybe by family. Maybe by God.
"My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" Jesus' words. On our lips? In our heart?
Jesus had been forsaken by humanity. But never by God. Nor have we. He is always there as our refuge, our help in time of need.
Jesus had never asked why before. He never did again. Yet this one time....
Why? "There is no experience of life through which men pass," wrote G. Campbell Morgan, "so terrible as that of silence and mystery, the hours of isolation and sorrow when there is no voice, no vision, no sympathy, no promise, no hope, no explanation; the hours in which the soul asks, why? There is no agony for the human soul like that of silence... "
But we can find in part the answer to His question in the very psalm from which He quoted (22:1, 3). The question of verse 1 is answered in verse 3: "But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel." He was forsaken that we might learn from the anguish of His experience the greatness of our sin that made it necessary, and that we might know how entirely He took it and bore it away. During the hours of darkness He "who knew no sin" was made sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21). That was the cause of His Father's averted face. It was not that God was ever hostile to His well-beloved Son--it was holiness turning away from sin.
~ J. Oswald Sanders, The Incomparable Christ
