Sermon: Did God the Father Forsake Jesus Christ?

#1683A
David C. Grabbe
Given 03-Dec-22; 37 minutes

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Hebrews 11—the Faith Chapter—tells us that faith is a foundation. However, Romans 10:17 teaches that faith has its own foundation. It does not say that directly, but it says that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. This means that faith depends on believing and trusting in something that has been said by the Spokesman—by Jesus Christ. The foundation of our faith is what God has said and recorded for us.

Sometimes trusting in the revealed Word can challenge us. Because we cannot physically see God, and we do not hear His voice with our ears, our concept of Him is vague in areas. We have a tendency to create God in our image, or to use ourselves as a reference point for understanding Him. Because of this, there are statements in His Word that may be difficult for us to reconcile because our thoughts are so much lower than His, and sometimes our minds rebel at what He says. Yet if we are going to live by faith, we must allow God’s Word to change us.

Today, we will look at something Jesus said, as well as some linked passages, that may stretch our understanding of God. These are not easy passages. They have been the subject of much discussion and exposition over the centuries as men have grappled with what they say, and what they mean. We will begin in Matthew 27:

Matthew 27:45-46 Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

Nearly every parent has a loving instinct toward his or her children that makes us recoil at the idea of forsaking a child. Every child shudders at the thought of a father turning away at the child’s darkest hour. The circumstances in these powerful verses, and the profound feeling in the anguished cry here, cannot help but stab at our hearts. The agony in this cry brings up questions, such as: Did the Father really forsake His Son? And if so, why? And if not, why would Jesus utter this as almost His last statement before death?

This topic goes beyond just the Father-Son relationship at the end of Christ’s physical life. It touches on God’s nature, His holiness, and aspects of His love that may not conform to our concepts. It teaches us about the nature of sin—how destructive it is, and how seriously God takes it compared to how lightly we take it.

If we step back from the evident suffering here, we can recognize that the questions about this verse typically arise from emotion rather than theological necessity. It isn’t that Scripture would be broken if Jesus meant exactly what He said here. Instead, we simply don’t like how the idea of Christ being forsaken makes us feel. It is easier to find a different way to look at this than to acknowledge that God acts in ways and for reasons that we may not be able to wrap our minds around in this short and limited life.

Yet we must remember our place before God and be careful not to impose our ideals and sense of righteousness upon Him. We must be aware that humanism has invaded Christianity, and it will influence us if we are not vigilant. Humanism in Christianity gives more gravity to man than to the Creator. It sees the human perspective first, and God’s perspective second, if at all. If we do not begin with God’s Word and approach His Word with a true fear of what He says, our conclusions will be skewed.

As a warm-up exercise in stretching our concept of God, consider what it says in Isaiah 53:10, which is a Messianic prophecy. In the KJV and the NKJV, Isaiah 53:10 says it pleased the Eternal to bruise the Messiah. The NASB says the Eternal was pleased to crush Him. The NET Bible says the Eternal desired to crush Him. This can be troubling because of what it seems to imply about what God values and takes delight in, and thus, how to understand His love.

That prophecy does not mean that God is cruel, but it certainly does show that He looks at things differently than we do. Part of the great difference is that He is eternal, and He sees the end from the beginning. What gives Him pleasure is how things will work out in the end, even though in the present or the short term, it may look like someone is getting a raw deal. However, focusing on a short span of time is a symptom of humanism.

When we look at a snapshot of our life, maybe we see a catastrophe of some sort. God sees that same snapshot, but He also sees the result that He is actively bringing to pass, and He says the catastrophe works for good if He has called us and we love Him. What may humanly look like a lack of love from God is only because the human perspective is severely limited. Instead of imposing our concept of love on what God does, we must begin with what God does to form a proper definition of His love. In this light, it pleased the Father to bruise or crush the Messiah because of what it would accomplish eternally.

What Jesus cried out here is a quotation of Psalm 22:

Psalm 22:1 My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me, and from the words of My groaning?

Jesus quoted a passage the Jews knew quite well and which they understood to be Messianic. In quoting the beginning of this psalm, He was telling the Jews that this psalm was being fulfilled before their eyes, and thus, that He was the Messiah.

We find key aspects of the crucifixion within this psalm, but it is also important to note that this psalm is not strictly sequential in terms of its later fulfillment. Jesus quotes verse 1, the beginning, after He had been ridiculed (mentioned in verses 6-8), and after His clothes had been divided (mentioned in verse 18), after His bones were out of joint and made visible (going back to verses 14 and 17), and so on. His quotation of verse 1 was practically His final saying after almost everything else had already taken place.

However, the psalm does have sections, and verse 21 is the turning point. It says, “You have answered Me.” This coincides with Hebrews 5:7:

Hebrews 5:7 who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear,

The Father heard Christ, and the Father’s answer was death. That may seem contradictory, because it says that the Father was able to save Him from death, and the Father heard His cries. But He died anyway. Yet what it says here does not mean that the Father would keep Christ from dying, but rather that He would save Christ out from death. In other words, the Father delivered Him from the grave instead of allowing the grave to hold Him. God didn’t keep Him from dying, but He saved Him from death, from the grave, by resurrecting Him.

Now, did Jesus really apply this verse about being forsaken to Himself? Or did He quote it only to show that a Messianic psalm was being fulfilled in Him? One interpreter suggests that the first few verses applied only to the psalmist and not to the Messiah. That is one way out of the dilemma, but it does not explain why the Son of God would quote the one part of a Messianic prophecy that allegedly did not apply to the Messiah.

We need to understand the word “forsaken.” The Hebrew word translated “forsaken” is azab (Strong’s #5800), and its basic meaning is “to depart from something” or “to leave.” It can mean “to let go,” “to withdraw,” and a variety of similar actions. We often view forsaking in terms of absolute abandonment, and at times it can mean that, but at other times its meaning is far less severe.

It is important to understand that there are types and degrees of forsaking. We tend to focus on the first part of verse 1, but the rest of verse 1 explains the immediate usage. The first line is coupled with, “Why are You so far from helping Me, and from the words of My groaning?” This second question helps us to understand the scope of the first question. In other words, at least part of the “forsaking” has to do with God refraining from intervening.

Verse 2 continues the theme, which is also about prayer that is not answered as quickly as the Petitioner would like. Christ prayed through the morning of His crucifixion, and He prayed in the dark of the afternoon, as verse 2 says. It does not indicate absolute abandonment, but rather not receiving an answer for what seems like eternity, to which we can all relate. Yet Christ eventually does receive an answer. God answers and gives deliverance from the suffering. But there was a period of time when God did not immediately respond. There was a distance, as we would say, and thus a forsaking, even though it was temporary.

But there is still more to the story. Again, the thought of God forsaking makes us uncomfortable, and so we take comfort in the verses that show God not forsaking. He told Jacob, “I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you.” That was a guarantee, and God fulfilled it. God later told Israel (when He commanded them to take the Promised Land) that He would not forsake them, and He was true to His word. The Israelites failed in taking the land because they stopped trying, not because God forsook them.

On the other hand, there are also verses where God either warns of forsaking, or else He does forsake or turn away, and these must be part of our consideration as well. I read one explanation that claimed, “God has never forsaken His people because of their sins, so why would He do so with His own Son?” Well, we must be using different Bibles. What we will see is that it is within God’s nature to forsake as a righteous, reciprocal response.

Deuteronomy 31:16-18 And the LORD said to Moses: “Behold, you will rest with your fathers; and this people will rise and play the harlot with the gods of the foreigners of the land, where they go to be among them, and they will forsake Me and break My covenant which I have made with them. Then My anger shall be aroused against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide My face from them, and they shall be devoured. And many evils and troubles shall befall them, so that they will say in that day, ‘Have not these evils come upon us because our God is not among us?’ And I will surely hide My face in that day because of all the evil which they have done, in that they have turned to other gods.

Here God predicts Israel’s future rebellion, and He says that when they forsake the covenant, He will hide His face and forsake them. He says He will depart or leave, which is what happened. As their moral condition worsened, and they turned away from Him to serve other gods, His glory departed, and He turned away from them. Yet we know from the book of Romans that God’s rejection of Israel is neither absolute nor permanent. Even now, God is still watching over and even blessing Israel far above what she deserves. But God is not in modern Israel or Judah the way He was when this was written. He has forsaken her to a degree.

There is well-known statement made to King Asa that shows this cause-and-effect relationship:

II Chronicles 15:1-2 Now the Spirit of God came upon Azariah the son of Oded. And he went out to meet Asa, and said to him: “Hear me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin. The LORD is with you while you are with Him. If you seek Him, He will be found by you; but if you forsake Him, He will forsake you.

God does not forsake because of unfaithfulness on His part, but because of human sin. When mankind does violence to the relationship, God pulls back.

Significantly, there is also a record of God forsaking or withdrawing, not because of sin, but for the purpose of testing, and this is important to understand:

II Chronicles 32:30-31 This same Hezekiah also stopped the water outlet of Upper Gihon, and brought the water by tunnel to the west side of the City of David. Hezekiah prospered in all his works. However, regarding the ambassadors of the princes of Babylon, whom they sent to him to inquire about the wonder that was done in the land, God withdrew from him, in order to test him, that He might know all that was in his heart.

The Hebrew word translated “withdrew” is the same one translated “forsaken” in the other verses we have seen. The reason this is significant is that Jesus was tested in all points that we are, yet without sin. This means that if God withdraws from His people on occasion to test them and to see what is in their heart—as He did here—then Jesus must have been tested in this way as well. So, we can plug that principle back into the crucifixion. It was necessary that the Father withdraw so that what was in Christ’s heart could also be manifest, and so His experience as a Man could be complete. He had to go through that test as well. Yet even when God withdrew, Jesus did not turn aside from the Father’s purpose.

There are numerous other examples that contain the same themes of God forsaking, withdrawing, or turning away. During the time of Manasseh, God promised, “So I will forsake the remnant of My inheritance and deliver them into the hand of their enemies . . ..” (II Kings 21:14). Psalm 78:60 says that He forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh. In Isaiah 2:6, the prophet says, “For You have forsaken Your people, the house of Jacob, because they are filled with eastern ways. . .” (see also II Chronicles 24:20; Jeremiah 7:29; 12:7; 23:33, 39; Amos 5:2; Psalm 43:2; 44:9; 60:1). Similarly, there are abundant references to God hiding His eyes, or hiding His face—far too many to go through (see Isaiah 1:15; Deuteronomy 32:20; Job 13:24; 34:29; Psalm 13:1; 27:9; 44:24; 69:17; 88:14; 102:2; 104:29; Isaiah 8:17). All these verses speak to God’s transcendent purity, and His absolute holiness. They demonstrate that unholiness and impurity repel Him. He is merciful and forbearing, but the Scriptures are clear that when a threshold is reached, He withdraws, leaves, or turns His face away from what is in opposition to Him.

Let’s look at a mention of forsaking that shows God’s tenderness even in forsaking:

Isaiah 54:7-8 “For a mere moment I have forsaken you, but with great mercies I will gather you. With a little wrath I hid My face from you for a moment; but with everlasting kindness I will have mercy on you,” says the LORD, your Redeemer.

These are God’s words to Israel, and we see that His forsaking, His wrath, and His hiding of His face are not permanent. God righteously forsook Israel, but He says it is “for a mere moment.” When Israel is restored, God’s blessings will overwhelm the memory of her estrangement. But what is undeniable is that God does forsake because of the sins of men.

Now, Jesus was crucified because of the sins of men, and this gives another reason for the Father’s forsaking Him. Recall from the Messianic prophecy in Isaiah 53:6 that the Eternal laid on the Messiah the iniquity of us all. He became a substitute, taking on the sins and their penalties. Please turn to Galatians 3:13:

Galatians 3:13 Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”)

Paul says that Christ became a curse for us, and he gets his authority from Deuteronomy 21:23, which says, “he who is hanged is accursed of God.” The instructions there concern burying a criminal on the day of his execution because he had been cursed by God, and to leave an accursed thing hanging would defile God’s land. God requires distance from cursed things because of His holiness. Paul applies this to Jesus and concludes that because He was hanged on a tree, He was cursed.

Now, we are going to go on a necessary tangent. Because we don’t like to think of Jesus in this light, it is not uncommon to search for another way to explain this. Yet we must tremble before God’s Word and treat it with the utmost care, fearing to misrepresent it in our desire for comfort. We don’t want to be guilty of translation shopping, looking for a rendering that makes us feel better, even though it does not accurately reflect the original text.

As an example, nearly all the translations say that Jesus became a curse, or was made a curse. The New Living Translation is an exception. The New Living Translation says that Christ “took upon [H]imself the curse for our wrongdoing.” That is more palatable, but we must be careful about trying to support anything of substance with the New Living Translation. It can be helpful in adding a less literal or even poetic flavor to a passage, as Martin used it last week, but as he explained, it is a paraphrase. Its stated goal is to translate thoughts rather than words, and it is aimed at the “modern reader,” it says. This means it presents the theology of the interpreters rather than an accurate rendering of the original language, so it must be used with care.

The Greek in Galatians 3:13 does not say anything about Christ “taking upon Himself the curse.” It says He became a curse or was made a curse. In addition, the verse in Deuteronomy that Paul uses as a parallel doesn’t say the criminal takes upon himself the curse, but rather that the man himself is cursed. His being hanged on the tree is evidence that he has been cursed by God. That is what Paul applies to Jesus Christ. So, the New Living paraphrase falls short both in its rendering of the Greek as well as its implication.

II Corinthians 5:21 also describes what happened to Christ at the crucifixion:

II 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.

Paul uses a comparison here that involves sin and righteousness. One explanation on a very popular evangelical website is that it means that our sin was imputed to Christ even as His righteousness is imputed to us. But there is a difficulty with that. The Greek verb translated “might become” is in the subjunctive mood. The subjunctive mood means the verb refers to a possibility or something in the future rather than a present reality. So, it says “might become” instead of “have become.” In other words, this is not talking about imputed righteousness, which we already have, but rather the possibility of having God’s own righteousness developed in us through the sanctification process. That state of personal righteousness has not happened yet, but when it does happen, it will be real, not imputed. Now, if the possible righteousness in this verse is real and not imputed, the sin mentioned in this verse is not imputed, either.

Some commentators, as well as The New Living Translation, try a different angle. They suggest that what Paul really meant is that God made Christ to be a sin offering, but not sin. This idea stems from the fact that in Hebrew, the word for sin is also the word for sin offering. Some interpreters apply the Hebrew principle to the Greek word, and suggest that Paul means the Christ became a sin offering, but He didn’t become sin.

However, the word for “sin” here is hamartia (Strong’s #266). In the 170-plus places that hamartia is used, nowhere else does it unquestionably stand for a sin offering. It stands for sin. There are Greek words for offerings that Paul uses elsewhere when talking about sin offerings, but they don’t appear here. He is talking about sin.

Even so, let’s say Paul really meant a sin offering here instead of sin, and follow it through. In a sin offering, the animal symbolically becomes the sin for which it is atoning. This is why the same Hebrew word is used for both. The sin offering is equivalent to, or represents, or essentially becomes the sin though the laying on of hands. The sin offering is not simply a neat and tidy payment. It is a substitute. What the sinner deserved was given to the animal instead. So, even if Paul meant here that Christ became a sin offering, the result is the same: The sinless Messiah became a representation of sin. He became identified with sin. Vine’s suggests that the Father dealt with Christ as He must deal with sin.

Now, Jesus received more than the death penalty. He did not just die for us. He suffered for us because sin’s effects include more than the death penalty. Thus, to be the substitute, Christ had to experience the full range of what we deserve when we sin. So, He was wounded. He was bruised. He was pierced. He received stripes, and He was shamed. In becoming a representation of sin, He had to undergo all that we earn when we sin, and the effects of sin include separation from God, and being forsaken, and God turning away. Romans 8:32 says God did not spare His own Son. The Messiah had to experience it all.

Please turn to John 19, and we will look at some of the timing and events of the crucifixion:

John 19:1-2 So then Pilate took Jesus and scourged Him. And the soldiers twisted a crown of thorns and put it on His head, and they put on Him a purple robe.

The soldiers forced a crown of thorns on Christ’s head, and we will focus on that for a moment. Thorns first appear in God’s curse because of Adam’s sin. Genesis 3:17-18 says, “Cursed is the ground for your sake . . .. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you. . ..” Throughout Scripture, thorns indicate a hard and difficult life because of disobedience (Joshua 23:13; Judges 2:3; 8:7; II Samuel 23:6; Proverbs 15:19; 22:5; 24:31; Isaiah 5:6; 7:23-25; Jeremiah 12:13; Hosea 2:6). In Hebrews 6:8, thorns are a symbol of rejection and being cursed, which fits with what we have seen. Thus, thorns remind mankind of sin entering the world through Adam, and the effects of sin in general, which include separation.

The soldiers pressed a crown of thorns onto Christ’s head to mock the idea that He was a King, but in doing so, they also symbolically demonstrated the laying of iniquities and their piercing effects on the Messiah. We will pick it up in verse 14:

John 19:14-16 Now it was the Preparation Day of the Passover, and about the sixth hour. And he said to the Jews, “Behold your King!” But they cried out, “Away with Him, away with Him! Crucify Him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar!” Then he delivered Him to them to be crucified. Then they took Jesus and led Him away.

After the crown of thorns was put on His head, Christ was led away. Verse 14 says that this was about the sixth hour (or, noon), which is significant. Please turn to Luke 23:

Luke 23:44 “Now it was about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour.”

So, if you are following the sequence, the thorns were laid on Him, He was led away. The whole land, the whole earth, was in darkness while He became a curse for us, while He was made to be a flesh-and-blood representation of all the sins of humanity, and while He was bearing those sins and all their effects, one of which is separation or forsaking by God. And after hanging on the tree in the dark for hours, He finally cried out around 3:pm, and died shortly thereafter.

Now, we will turn our focus to the three hours of darkness. Darkness is used in a variety of ways in Scripture, some of which may seem to be contradictory. There are several places where it says that God was in thick darkness, such as in the pillar of cloud, or at Mt. Sinai. That could support the idea that the Father was there with Christ, even after the iniquities were laid on Him, and He was shown to be cursed by being hanged on a tree. However, in those references, the darkness was localized to where God was. The darkness surrounded God, perhaps so His light would not obliterate the people He was dealing with.

In other places, particularly where darkness is widespread, it is a symbol of God withdrawing His light and all that light stands for. It indicates a lack of what is good, and thus, it is a symbol of judgement. The ninth judgment plague on Egypt was darkness over the whole land, darkness that lasted for three days. And in Amos 8, where God declares His judgement on Israel, He says in verse 9, “’And it shall come to pass in that day,’ says the Lord GOD, ‘That I will make the sun go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in broad daylight.’” Well, that describes what happened when the iniquities were laid on the Messiah. It wasn’t a localized darkness like what God wrapped Himself in at Sinai. This darkness was over all the earth, Luke says.

Within this picture, the darkness is a fitting representation of the Father withdrawing so that His justice could be satisfied, and so His Son could perfectly finish His course as a Man.

Consider, for a moment, that this was the one time in all of time when all the sins of humanity were in the balance. This was the time when all the defilement, all the abominations, all the ugliness, everything that God finds detestable, was laid on the divine Substitute. Everything that would cause God to forsake a human being, and to hide His face-all of that was before God and laid on the Messiah. It was entirely fitting for God to forsake, to hide His face, to cause all the earth to go dark as He withdrew because of His transcendent purity and because of how seriously He takes transgressions of His law. This forsaking impresses upon us that sin is not merely disappointing to God. Sin is diametrically opposed to what He is, and He is diametrically opposed to sin, even when His own Son becomes THE representation of it.

Jesus took the sins to the land of forgetfulness—to the grave. God’s curse was carried out, His justice was satisfied, and the darkness lifted. And Hebrews 9:28 says that when Jesus appears the second time, it will be apart from sin. The sins have been removed.

We began with a question about whether a loving Father would forsake His Son. We can find an answer by similarly asking whether a loving Father would cause His Son to go through all the pain and anguish that Christ suffered. We know that He did. On some level, we understand that the brutality had to happen for us to be reconciled, and that it does not diminish God’s glory. It was the awesome price of God’s love for His people.

The Father never stopped loving Christ, in the same way that we don’t stop loving our children, even though there may be times we must allow consequences to fall in a way that may be quite painful. Love and hardship are in no way mutually exclusive, because what may be best ultimately may also be excruciating in the short term. In the same way, and to a far greater degree, Jesus took the worst of the effects of our actions, and one of the worst effects of sin is separation from God, the source of all good, including life itself. Jesus was not separated from the Father because He had sinned; He was separated because we sin, and He took our place to overcome that separation. We should thank God that He did.

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