Was Jesus Forsaken By His Father?
From these words that Jesus uttered on the cross people are told that God forsook Jesus at the hour in His greatest time of loneliness and utter despair. What was happening between our loving Father and the Son at that precise moment?
Was the faithful One unfaithful to His Son in His darkest moment? Jesus said to His disciples that they would all leave Him alone...then, did He not say that He would not be alone for the Father was with Him. If Jesus were speaking the truth, which He was, how could His loving Father forsake Him? I don’t believe for a moment that Father God forsook His Son. Could it be that there is a difference here in what God the Father did and what Jesus perceived Him as doing? Did Jesus feel forsaken? Yes...but though feeling forsaken doesn’t mean that He actually was forsaken.
When Jesus became sin for us, He entered into the full shame, darkness and bondage of that sin. It is possible that at the moment on the cross when God’s wrath was consuming the sin He had become, He couldn’t even see the Father with whom He had shared fellowship with during eternity. Sin blinded Him and He felt as if God had forsaken Him. But that is difference between our perception that sin reveals and the reality of God.
I am sure that most of us have felt abandoned by God while going through some of our darkest moments. But that doesn’t mean that He left us...it only means that we can’t see Him thorough the pain. The fact is though, God was right there with us going through the tough times, never turning His face from us His beloved children. To believe He did forsake His Son Jesus is unthinkable.
That Jesus felt abandoned and alone shows the depth that He felt our sin. He entered into it fully and for a brief time in eternity the Son knew what it was like to experience fatherlessness...not because His Father forsook Him, but because He was in such agony He could not feel His Father's presence.
Unseen though He was, His Father was there in the same measure He always had been. But having become sin itself Jesus could no longer sense His Father’s presence. Perception became its own reality to Jesus as He shared in the emptiness and loneliness beyond what we could even fathom. In allowing sin to touch the Godhead, a rift was created in the divine community. The price of our sin was borne in their wounding. Oh...oh, how Jesus’ cry must have torn the Father’s heart by Jesus thinking He Himself the object of separation rather than love.
Shortly after the cry of abandonment He cried the greatest cry of trust that ever could be demonstrated to His Father Whom He could not see or feel. “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit”.
The cross stands as the undeniable proof that we ALL are loved children of god. God demonstrated His love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.
On RESURRECTION morning, He broke the bars of the grave, of death and of hell's hold on humanity. Death could not hold Him, He arose triumph and gave us freedom to be His temple and be in a relational journey with Him as His Community of the Redeemed to bring the Good News Gospel to His loved Community of Humanity.
Now we can live has a loved people never to be abandoned by God for He will never leave us or forsake us. We are free to live in His love and set free from the need to appease Him. We are set free to love Him and love people as He does.
Comments
Post a Comment