{{item.title | uppercase}}

“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
Mt. 27:46 (ESV)

I can imagine those words resounding in anguish throughout the unseen world, echoing from a single source, a maligned and misunderstood man hanging on a cross. He was a man of mercy, healing, strength and power–all submitted in obedience to the Father, all submitted for love of us in the person of Jesus.

FORSAKEN.

Have you felt forsaken in suffering? There is One who understands.

It means a lot to me to know that Jesus felt that startling realization of, “I am alone.” The context of this experience for Him is very different, as different as the relationship, but it is still that experience. You’ve had it, and I’ve had it. It is a stunning reality. “I am alone.”

I hope as we explore Christ’s experience, our ability to relate to Him will deepen.

During Christ’s ministry, while walking in the temple, the Jews gathered to ask him to plainly acknowledge if He was the Christ. His answer was, “I and the Father are one.” – John 10:30 (ESV)

Yet, “For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
2 Cor. 5:21 (ESV)

One solitary man–our Lord–experienced all the world’s miserable payload of sin on Himself, for love of us. While Jesus assumed the penalty for our sin, His Father could not remain in unity with Him. Sin separates us from God. Likewise sin separated Christ from His Father as He took our sin on Himself.

It is staggering to consider the pain to Father and Son when their loving communion was interrupted by the cavernous collection of humanity’s sin. I wonder if Jesus felt the shame, hatred, envy, the combined sickening toll of sin emotionally and mentally. Scripture doesn’t tell us, but we know as the Word made flesh, by whom creation exists, He was largely rejected of men and forsaken by His Father as nails alone suspended him. Who can capture the utter isolation Christ must have felt?

Even crucified in unimaginable physical agony, it was God’s love for us that placed Jesus with arms outstretched to all the world, symbolic of His love. Christ’s sacrifice, accepted by faith in our lives, obliterates the division between us and God. We can exhale into His grace.

At the time of Christ’s death, the earth He spoke into existence quaked.
John 1:3,14

“And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life.”
Mt. 27:50-52 (NIV)

We have a Savior and Lord who knew sorrow and grief, separation and isolation, alienation and abandonment, without rival in all of history. Only He bore the comprehensive sin of the entire world on Himself, felt the unprecedented break in the community of love with His Father, and the rejection by all but a few who remained to witness His crucifixion.

Christ knew heart-penetrating pain. He knows how lonely separation can feel, and how isolating. He gets us. Whatever it is that troubles us, HE knows and has compassion. Furthermore we have a promise from God’s Word,

I will never leave you nor forsake you.
Hebrews 13:5 (ESV)

Dear Lord, my life isn’t where I expected it to be. You know that I have wrestled, shed many tears and questioned. You know me more intimately than I do myself, becoming sin for my sake and for all who would believe. What You endured for love of me frames this life differently. Whatever days and years remain for me, I am yours. Thank You for your painful sacrifice to offer eternal life. I love You, Lord. In Jesus’ name. Amen.