Theme of the Week: Seven Sayings from the Cross
Saying 4: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Matthew 27:46
Scripture Reading: 2 Corinthians 51:21
I wonder if, like me, you’ve never empathized so much with Christ than this moment.
“Why have you forsaken me?”
This moment is so confounding: Why would Jesus, a portion of the Trinity, three-in-one, feel forsaken?
The answer lies in what’s taking place in the spiritual world; here, the sinless Messiah is taking on the punishment of our sins, paying our debt in full, the cost of which is, for the first time, Christ experiencing separation from the Father.
As it says in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”
It’s shocking and disturbing to see how Jesus responds to this reality.
Do you feel the hollowness of trying to use money, cars, women, movies, or video games, to fill this void? The disconnection with God makes us starved creatures roaming barren lands. Nothing satisfies. Nothing satiates or dulls the feeling of being incomplete.
While Jesus never tried or needed to fill that void with anything, he can empathize with the pain of separation; as Jesus received the wrath of God’s judgement over our sin, Jesus knew the sin that ultimately separates us from intimacy with God. You can hear it in His desperate cry: “My God, my God, why have I forsaken You?”
Today, know that your Savior has felt the emptiness. He’s been disconnected and forsaken. And only He can bring you back into the wholeness we long for.
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