Dear Christian friends:

See the Man on the cross! His body is contorted in agony, His ashen face is streaked with blood! His features reveal His extreme suffering! See the Man, His body nailed and suspended on the cross as a criminal between two other criminals! He is not a sinner such as we are; He is the Christ, the Son of God. Look at the cross: God is there! Only there can God be found!

Tonight we hear again His fearful cry: "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me?" What is the meaning of this cry? It is dreadful enough and hard to understand that the Son of God endured mockery, smiting, and the cross. But this cry is the ultimate of everything dreadful, far exceeding in frightfulness even the suffering of crucifixion. God forsakes His Son! Can this be true? Is there no way of escape from this cry?

If we examine what Bible scholars have said about this cry during the past two-thousand years, we find repeated attempts to escape from the stark horror of it. Some say: Jesus spoke these words for us; because He was never forsaken by God, but we were.

Others say: Jesus does not pray for Himself, but in place of the Jews, whom God has forsaken since they were responsible for His crucifixion. Another scholar, Thomas Aquinas says: The forsakenness applies only to His body.

All interpretations such as these are false. They are attempts to flee from the cross of Christ. If God had not really forsaken Jesus, He would not have cried out as He did. He did so deliberately and with a loud voice. Martin Luther says: "Christ was damned and abandoned more than all the saints." If we deny this fact, we turn away from the comfort of the cross and of grace altogether.

God forsook Jesus. He really did! But what does it mean, "God forsook Him?"

He who had said of Himself: "I and My Father are one," and "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father" (John 10:30, John 14:9) This Jesus no longer saw the Father, this Jesus was now without God altogether. Instead of divine strength, there was within Him only a wretched emptiness. In place of divine intimacy only an impenetrable wall. His prayer received no answer, His weeping no comfort. God had no relief for His Son.

Withdrawing His love, God turned all the more on Him with His terrible wrath. God deprived the innocent Christ of His own most proper right and cast Him away into guilt and perdition. We human beings have ridiculed and forsaken Christ (disciples, church, government). But God Himself was the cause of His most terrible abandonment. Even if men had wanted to, they could not have disturbed the communion between the Father and the Son. God Himself withdrew from Him. God intervened on Calvary that day long ago and made it the decisive event of all time.

But why did God forsake His Son? By forsaking Jesus God made Him like us in every way. True, He was like us in His body; He was like us also in His pain and suffering. But there is an agony far more terrible that these, the agony of being full and completely cut off from God. Even unbelievers in this life enjoy the mercy and kindness of God, "for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust." (Matthew 5:45)

God forsakes no one here on earth, not like He forsook Jesus on the cross; not like we really deserve by our sin and for our turning our backs on Him. By being fully and completely cut off from God on the cross Jesus took our place: He suffered all that was really ours.

He suffered the separation from God that hung over all of us sinners. The wrath under which we stand, the judgment pronounced upon our sins, strike Him. Our punishment is laid upon the Innocent One. When God forsook Jesus Christ, He "made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us." (2 Corinthians 5:21) Thus God makes His Son entirely like us.

When Christ cries out that God has forsaken Him, He really proclaims this message to us: People, hear this: God again turns to you and God punishes Me. He will not punish you, God crushes Me beneath His anger, but lifts you up in love.

Everything depends on this, that the Crucified One was really forsaken by God. Therefore this desperate cry: "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" is the most comforting of the seven words from the cross. Indeed, it probably is the most comforting word of the entire Bible. There is no comfort either in the Old or in the New Testament that does not have its ultimate foundation in this cry of agony. Even John 3:16, which many people consider the most comforting verse in the Bible has its basis in Jesus' cry of agony from the cross.

Therefore this is the wonderful truth: Since God forsook Christ, He need not forsake us or anyone. We think that God has forsaken us because we sometimes ask the same question: "Why God, why?" We can't understand why God permits some things to happen: a young son is killed in an auto accident and the parents ask, "Why? God, why?" A sweet little girl is kidnapped, abused and killed, and her heart-broken, devastated mother cries in anguish, "Why? God, why?" A fine, gifted middle-aged pastor becomes ill with cancer and dies. His wife, children and members of the congregation ask, "Why, God, why?"

Even when we are having good times and happy days, we are not fully, perfectly happy. We suspect that the good times will end. Every party ends. Time goes fast and we become old. We feel and fear a future doom. Today or tomorrow or later, each one of us will cry out, "Why, God, why?" Some of us have already asked that question.

So, when you are tempted to think that God has forsaken you, look again at the cross! Since Christ suffered the wrath of God, there is no longer a despair that can't be removed. If your quilt oppresses you and you fear your sin is so great that God can't forgive it, you are wrong, look at the crucifix again.

A deaf lady, now in heaven, a former member of our deaf congregation in Los Angeles told me about a witness she gave to another member of the congregation. This other member was terminally ill with cancer and was a patient at St. Vincent's Hospital, a Roman Catholic hospital. Each room has a crucifix hanging on the wall. One day the lady visited the sick friend and he said to her, "God doesn't care about me. I will go to hell." The lady said to him, "Don't say that! You are wrong." Then she pointed to the crucifix on the wall and said to him, "Look, see Jesus on the cross! He suffered and died for you! God has forgiven all your sins. You will go to heaven."

Thank Jesus for His suffering by believing the truth that all your troubles can no longer be the final and ultimate suffering! Before you ever lived, He took it from you and bore it. Your sin is forgiven, and your loneliness is ended.

Amen.