Question:  Dear Greg,

            I was asked to explain about what Jesus said while on the cross, whether the translations are accurate.  In Matthew 27:46 where Jesus said, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” I believe that in his humanity, while being tortured and beaten and spat upon, he must have felt that the Father had forsaken him.  But on studying the matter further, I believe that the Father did, for a short time, forsake His Son.  What is your take on this hard saying?

            Tom

Answer:  Dear Tom,

            You are correct.  This is a “hard saying.”  Some observations:

1.      We should not try to read too much into this statement—some have, constructing psychological and theological insights.  Why?  See the next point.

2.      This statement is a direct quote from Psalm 22:1.  Psalm 22, which begins with a cry of despair, actually is a psalm of faith and trust—for the help from God actually comes.  And it is not just verse one of this psalm that predicts the cross of Christ.  It could be, therefore, that verse one was not all that Jesus uttered, but is all that Matthew and Mark record.  For example, the book of Hebrews records other verses from Psalm 22 as being quoted by Christ—see Hebrews 2:12; 5:7-9; 7:16; 13:20.

3.      The whole testimony of the New Testament speaks against Christ protesting that he is not being treated fairly—or that he is being deserted.  Over and over again Scripture speaks of Christ as voluntarily subjecting himself to the cross, the Lamb of God who willingly gave himself for us, etc.  So to isolate this one statement, as if Christ was protesting some injustice, is to proof-text, and ignore the rest of Scripture.

            On the other hand:

4.      Jesus is actually living out the suffering noted in Psalm 22, and embodies all the pain and frustrations of mankind.  Yes there is some truth that he was experiencing something in his flesh that he obviously was not in his divinity, for he was very man and very God, human yet divine, flesh without diminishing divinity.  He expressed his feelings in biblical language, quoting the Psalm, as we might quote a poet or writer.

5.      So, while on the one hand we should not read too much into this verse, we should look at the “other side” of the coin, for there is some theological reality going on here.  Therefore, in his humanity, as he bore the sins of the world, there was a time when all of the weight of the past, present, and future sin came down upon him, and as sin-bearer—as the atonement, he experienced the ugly and evil power of all of that sin.  He accepted it, and he bore it.  In so doing he experienced, in his humanity, some kind of separation from God—solely because of bearing the sins of the world.  “Cursed is anyone who hangs on a cross” is part of what was happening—see Deuteronomy 21:23, Galatians 3:13, and 2 Corinthians 5:21.  This was the sinless Son of God experiencing the sinner’s death in order that we might be saved.