Never Forsaken
From “The Seven Last Words of Jesus”
The crucifixion of Jesus is not about paying and thereby appeasing an angry (pagan) god; rather it is the One-God’s way of both revealing and providing forgiveness for the sin so clearly seen in a wicked world where injustice reigns. The first words Jesus speaks from the cross underscore this truth as he petitions the Father to forgive the very men (religious leaders at that) responsible for putting him there.
Our sin, all of us, put Jesus on the cross. Paul reminds us in Romans that there is “none righteous,” and the Greek word “righteous” may also be translated “just.” Justice and righteousness are intertwined, and as much as we might like to point the finger at the obvious lawbreakers, criminals, and rebels, we are all guilty of injustice (unrighteousness) to one degree or another. It seems to me that this is reflected by the fact that it was those considered the most righteous among us (the religious leaders of God’s chosen people, Israel) who planned and carried out the crucifixion of their promised Messiah. We say, “Justice is blind.” So is injustice, just in an entirely different way.
In my previous post, I made it clear that God didn’t kill Jesus, sin did, injustice did. And it is this truth that helps answer the question - How can a good and loving God allow such rampant injustice and suffering in our world?
As the morning light became afternoon darkness, as midday became midnight, Jesus hung on Calvary’s cross in an eerie, foreboding silence before speaking his final words in rapid succession. The first of those words shed a great deal of light on the darkness surrounding our Lord. Jesus, quoting the first words of David found in Psalm 22, cries out in Aramaic, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”1
The lineage of God’s promised Messiah is traced back to David. Because of this, we can be confident that Jesus knew the life and psalms of David, especially Psalm 22.
We don’t know the exact circumstances of this psalm, but it reflects much of David’s life. Overlooked by his father when the prophet, Samuel, asked to see his sons, despised by his brothers after arriving at the valley of Elah, where he would take on and defeat the giant standing between Israel and freedom, David’s young life was merely a taste of the injustice and mistreatment that would come. Running and hiding in the wilderness from King Saul, to whom he had been intensely loyal, but whose jealousy (much like those of Israel’s religious leaders of Jesus) led him to seek to kill an innocent man, David refused to kill Saul when he had the chance in the cave at En Gedi. Like Jesus’s temptations in the wilderness, David rejected the world’s way for God’s way.
The first twenty-one verses of Psalm 22 mirror the events of the crucifixion in the most remarkable way. I’ve placed just a few of the verses below.
All who see me mock me;
they hurl insults, shaking their heads.
“He trusts in the LORD,” they say,
“let the LORD rescue him.
Let him deliver him,
since he delights in him.” (7-8)
All my bones are on display;
people stare and gloat over me.
They divide my clothes among them
and cast lots for my garment. (17-18)
It’s hard to imagine that Jesus was not only aware of these words, and like most Jewish boys of his day could quote them from memory, but for our Lord, they were personally prophetic. As he grew and lived out his life in the light of this psalm, the reality to which its words pointed followed him to that night in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he wrestled with the bitter cup to which they pointed.
As Brueggemann and Bellinger explain, “(The) abandonment of Jesus on the cross - given voice through the psalm - is congruent with the bereftness of every righteous sufferer.”2
They continue by quoting Moltmann, who links the cry of the Son to the Father -
“Psalm 22 is a legal plea. Jesus is not calling for the compassion of God upon his own person, but for the revelation of the righteousness of the God who promised “not to forsake the work of his hands.” Abandoned by God, the righteous man sees God’s deity itself at stake, for he himself is the faithfulness and honour of God in the world.”3
I can’t explain it any better, so once again listen to Moltmann -
“The only way past protest atheism is through a theology of the cross which understands God as the suffering God in the suffering of Christ and which cries out with the godforsaken God, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” For this theology, God and suffering are no longer contradictions, as in theism and atheism, but God’s being is in suffering and the suffering is in God’s being itself, because God is love.”4
These words hark back to an earlier post in which I asked whether the Trinity was broken that day on Calvary. Is it possible for the Triune God (Hear O Israel the Lord: The Lord our God is one.5) to be separated into distinct parts in actual opposition to one another? If Jesus’s cry of forsakenness means that God the Father broke eternal fellowship with him, this is precisely what we must conclude.
If, however, we understand the cry of Jesus to reflect the cry of all who have suffered in an unjust and sinful world (and I am not discounting the truth that we are all guilty to some degree), then we are able to clearly see and give glory to our loving Creator, who absorbed and extinguished it through the cross.
Consider the final verses of Psalm 22 -
The poor will eat and be satisfied;
those who seek the LORD will praise him—
may your hearts live forever!
All the ends of the earth
will remember and turn to the LORD,
and all the families of the nations
will bow down before him,
for dominion belongs to the LORD
and he rules over the nations.
All the rich of the earth will feast and worship;
all who go down to the dust will kneel before him—
those who cannot keep themselves alive.
Posterity will serve him;
future generations will be told about the Lord.
They will proclaim his righteousness,
declaring to a people yet unborn:
He has done it!6
Or, to quote Jesus from the cross, and Paul regarding that cross -
It is Finished!7
And,
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.8
Is there an answer to the question, “How can a good and loving God allow injustice and suffering in the world?” Yes, there is, but it is an answer that cannot be known through worldly wisdom or knowledge, rather only by faith (trust and loyalty, for the word translated faith, means both of these things) in a Creator who absorbed it all into His eternal being and who will someday turn our faith into sight.
Even in the darkest and most hopeless of times (and perhaps in these times more than ever), this is the ultimate reality that gives followers of Jesus the courage and strength to look injustice in the eye and say, “I keep my eyes always on the LORD. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.”9
In Christ,
Dan
Listen to the messages on “The Seven Last Words of Jesus” here.
Mark 15:34.
Walter Brueggemann and William H. Bellinger Jr., “Psalms,” (New Cambridge Bible Commentary), location 3453 of 18889.
Ibid, location 3453 of 18889.
Ibid, location 3464 of 18889.
Deuteronomy 6:4.
Psalm 22: 26-31.
John 19:30.
Philippians 2:10-11.
Notice the connection between “He has done it!” in the psalm, and “It is finished!” from John 19:30 describing Jesus cry of triumph from the cross.
”Every knee will bow” as Paul writes, and “all who go down to the dust will kneel before him” as Psalm 22 asserts.
Psalm 16:8.