My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
I can’t stop thinking about these words of Jesus’ spoken on the cross. Much has been speculated about this. Some say God abandoned him, turned away from Jesus, because he could not be in the presence of sin. That, as Jesus bore our sins on the cross, God had to leave him, covered in our sin.
But I don’t know if I can wrap my mind around that.
I feel like maybe it had to do with the reality that Jesus was fully God and fully Man. He was human til the end. And just as we do sometimes, he felt betrayed by his Father, even though he wasn’t. God never left him, just like he never leaves us nor forsakes us.
Jesus knew God, Jesus was God, yet he felt forsaken by God. Because in his humanity, in such a horrible situation, it seemed he had been abandoned. And he knew we would, at times, feel abandoned by God too. That there would be times when we couldn’t really see God working in our lives. And these would be those ‘darkest before the dawn’ moments. Like that day on the cross.
Did God turn away as his Son was mocked, beaten, bloodied, tortured, disfigured, totally dismissed, disbelieved and disregarded…?
No…
I believe He stayed. He watched. He strengthened his Son….His own flesh and blood. It pierced his heart to see what his own could do to his Own. It still does today…
When we mistreat one another, disregard our fellow man… do unspeakable things to God’s other children. Our own spiritual siblings. In big and small ways. From violent crimes and horrible offenses, to emotional abuse and neglect, to simply dismissing, ignoring or belittling another human being. It’s like watching your own kids treating each other badly, really not getting along. It hurts. Deeply at times.
No. God may have turned his face away from the sin but not from the Son. And because we are joint heirs with Christ when we accept him as our Lord and Savior, God never turns away from us either. Because we are not our sin. He may well look away when we choose to sin. But God is always there for us, he’s always accessible. He’s always waiting for us to turn away from our own sin and towards him, in repentance. And he’s more than ready, more than eager, more than excited to welcome us back to him. Nothing you’ve ever done could cause God to turn away from you when you turn towards him. At any point in your life that you become ready to accept him and turn towards him, he’ll be there.
Maybe God does look away when we are sinning. But he never leaves us. And to know that even Jesus, while on the cross, felt like God left him… I think that speaks to Jesus’ humanness. And perhaps he said those words because he knew we would feel the same way at times. What a comfort it is to know that Jesus can relate. I think it helps us to really believe that God is always there. He really never leaves, no matter how terrible things are, no matter how bad it gets.
No matter how alone we feel, we never really are.