27. The Word of Dereliction
“My God, My God, Why?”
4. The Word of Dereliction
JESUS CRIED WITH A LOUD VOICE, SAYING,
ELI, ELI, LAMA SABACHTHANI? THAT IS TO SAY, MY GOD, MY GOD,
WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME?(Matthew 27:46).IT IS RECORDED of Martin Luther that he once set himself to a study of this profound saying of Jesus. For a long time he continued without food, in deepest meditation and in one position on his chair. When at length he rose from his thoughts, he was heard to exclaim with amazement, “God forsaken of God! Who can understand that?”
Our familiarity with these words tends to rob them of their stark tragedy. We need the Spirit’s enlightenment if we are to enter into their sacred mystery.
The first three words from the cross were addressed to men. Now Jesus addresses Himself to God. For the previous three hours His Father had shrouded the sun in kindly darkness. His body had been exposed to the burning rays of the pitiless Eastern sun. During the three hours of darkness His soul had been exposed to the merciless assaults of the powers of evil. Worse, infinitely worse than that, He had for the first time experienced the averted face of His Father. At the end of the sixth hour, the moment when He reached the very nadir of His misery, He broke the silence with the shuddering cry of desolation, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”
The Mysterious Darkness
The darkness was not caused by an eclipse of the sun. The Passover was celebrated at the time of full moon, when the moon is opposite the sun.
The experience of an eclipse by a Norwegian astronomer brought home to him something of the poignancy of the Lord’s experience in the darkness.
I watched the instantaneous extinction of the light, and saw the glorious scene on which I had been gazing turned into darkness. All the horizon seemed to speak of terror, death and judgment; and overhead sat, not the clean flood of light which a starry night sends down, but there hung over me dark and leaden blackness, which seemed as if it would crush me into the earth.
As I beheld it I thought, how miserable is the soul to whom Christ is eclipsed! The thought was answered by a voice; for a fierce and powerful seabird which had been sweeping around us, apparently infuriated by our intrusion into its domain, poured out a scream of despairing agony in the darkness. It is the picture of an eclipsed God and a lost soul; it is the hour and the power of darkness: the hosts of hell filled it, and the opaque sins of a world thickened it: it is Jesus bearing MY sin in His own body on the tree. It is Jesus taking the place of a lost soul.
Lo, the land is whelmed in darkness;
Nature cannot bide the sight;
But upon His anguished spirit
Falls a deeper, denser night,
Whence He cries in agony,
Why hast Thou forsaken Me?T. O. CHISHOLM
With F. W. Robertson, “we will not pretend to be wiser than what is written, endeavouring to comprehend where the human is mingled with the divine.” But we will devote reverent thought to the words of this saying, each of which is pregnant with meaning.
My God, My God
In His prayers, Jesus almost invariably addressed God as His Father, but here He does not say, “My Father,” but, “My God.” In this we discern the triumph of a sublime faith. Though forsaken by God, His faith did not suffer an eclipse, but rather laid firmer hold on the eternal. “Feeling forsaken of God, He rushed into the arms of God and these arms closed round Him in loving protection.”
The consciousness of His personal relation to God never for a moment left Him—”My God, My God,” was His cry. In the gloom of His tragedy Job cried, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him” (Job 13:15), and the divine Lord does not fall behind His creature in the sublimity of His faith.
Why?
Never before had this word, cry of a baffled heart, crossed His lips, nor did it ever again. This was an experience unique and unparalleled.
“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 … when I am asked for a theory of the atonement, I reply that in the midst of the mighty movement the Lord Himself said, ‘why?’ and if He asked that question, I dare not imagine that I can ever explain the deep central verities of His mystery of pain.”
But we can find in part the answer to His question in the very psalm from which He quoted (Psalm 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.
Hast (or Didst)
The exact time of the uttering of this saying is not absolutely clear. It is possible that these words were uttered not during the hours of darkness, but immediately at their close—if indeed they did not terminate them. The word “hast” could appropriately be rendered “didst.” With the agony of desolation past, “the Sufferer casts one long shuddering glance back into the abyss of woe into which He had sunk.”
We should never think that this was not an actual experience of the Christ of God. He could redeem us from the curse of the law only by “being made a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). This necessarily involved His being forsaken by the God who “hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6).
Thou
It was no new experience for the Lord to find Himself forsaken. His own brothers neither believed in Him nor followed Him. His fellow-citizens in Nazareth had tried to kill Him. The nation to which He came would not receive Him. Many of His disciples went back and walked no more with Him. Judas betrayed Him. Peter denied Him. “They all forsook Him and fled.”
But in this cry it is as though He was saying, “I can understand my kinsmen and fellow-citizens and my nation forsaking Me, for darkness has no fellowship with light. I can even understand My own disciples, because of the weakness of the flesh, forsaking Me. But this is My agonizing problem, “Why didst THOU forsake me?’”
Up till this moment, when He was forsaken by men He had been able to turn to His Father, but now even that refuge is denied Him, and He is absolutely ALONE. Who can plumb the depths of that anguish?
Forsaken
When an expression is sought to describe a scene of utmost desolation, it is termed “God-forsaken.” The word means the forsaking of someone in a state of defeat or helplessness, in the midst of hostile circumstances. Who can assess the content of that word when applied to our Lord? A child forsaken by its parents, a friend forsaken by a friend in the hour of need—those are poignant enough sorrows. But a man forsaken by his God! And what shall we say of the sinless Son of Man when He was forsaken by the God with whom He had enjoyed eternal fellowship?
For the first time, an eternity of communion had been broken. The wrath of hell had already broken upon His soul in wave upon wave, but now it is the wrath of heaven! The psalmist claimed, “I have not seen the righteous forsaken” (Psalm 37:25), but the only One who was truly righteous is now forsaken. Ineffable love made Him willing to endure even this desolation of soul for our salvation.
Silent through those three dread hours, Wrestling with the evil powers,
Left alone with human sin,
Gloom around Thee and within,
Till the appointed time is nigh,
Till the Lamb of God may die.J. ELLERTON
Me
Personal grief wrung from Him this personal cry. In this word of two letters lies the mystery of the cross. There would be no mystery in God’s forsaking us, for we would be receiving only “the due reward of our deeds.” But why should God forsake His son who “knew no sin,” “did no sin,” “in whom was no sin,” the Son in whom He testified that He found perfect delight? There is only one explanation. He was taking my place—and yours. He was being forsaken that we might be forgiven.
While the gospel story was being told to a South African tribe, the chief listened with intense interest. He called for a repetition of the story of the cross. While the speaker was again preaching the cross, the chief rushed forward crying, “Hold on! Hold on! Take Jesus down from the cross—I belong on that cross!”
Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani! What words are these?
Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani! Grief’s mysteries,
O Christ, forsaken in
Thy time of need, Thy deepest hour of agony we plead.
Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani! Deep-echoed woe,
Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani! O, who can know,
Or who the depth of anguish can divine,
That broken heart, that thrilling cry of Thine?
Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani! O bleeding Lamb,
Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani! Redeemed I am;
Thy wounded soul from light and joy shut in,
Is bearing there the bitter curse of sin.
Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani! My soul is free,
Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani! Love’s victory,
Forsaken Thou, that I might never cry
Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani.ALBERT MIDLANE
I thirst! I thirst! the Saviour cried
With burning lips before He died;
A cooling draught He asked of those
Who mocking looked upon His throes.
Angelic hosts from heaven’s height
In sorrow gaze upon the sight;
But yet the sky no water drips
To cool the Saviour’s parched lips.
A thousand fountains flowed that day,
A river flowed not far away;
But not one cup by friend or foe
Was brought to mitigate His woe.
He suffered thirst on Calvary’s hill
That He our thirsty hearts might fill,
To open wide a fount of grace
For all who seek the Saviour’s face.
“O come!” we hear the Saviour call—
The invitation is for all:
“Ho, all ye souls athirst, come ye,
And drink the living water free.”AUTHOR UNKNOWN