44 The robbers who had been crucified with Him were also insulting Him with the same words. 45 Now from the sixth hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour. 46 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?” 47 And some of those who were standing there, when they heard it, began saying, “This man is calling for Elijah.” 48 Immediately one of them ran, and taking a sponge, he filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed, and gave Him a drink. 49 But the rest of them said, “Let us see whether Elijah will come to save Him.”
At the crucifixion occurred the most incomprehensible (to our human minds) of all God’s activities in His creation. How could there possibly be a breach within the Godhead? Traditionally, theologians have embraced what is called “the unity of God,” that is, He is indivisible. There are no parts to Him, for He is a complete whole. Jesus had earlier proclaimed, “I am my Father are one.” And also, “If you have seen me you have seen the Father.” Yet, He had also said, “Not My will but Yours be done,” implying some hint of a distinction, of a separation. How can we understand, then, this separation, the forsaking, that took place on the cross?
The answer to this is fully understood only in the inner council of the infinite mind of God. This should not surprise us. It makes perfectly good sense that at the point of incarnation anomalies, or tensions, should take place—things that make no sense to our lower dimension. For the mystery of the incarnation, the intersecting of the infinite with the finite, the Creator becoming a participant in His own creation, is beyond human comprehension, limited as we are to the dimensions of finite creation. The anomalies are exacerbated at the point of the incarnation’s greatest tension, the crucifixion. The purpose of God was to solve the separation of humans because of sin from the One Whose image they were patterned after. In the crucifixion, He Who was the perfect “image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15) and Who is “… the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature…” (Heb 1:3)—that One became separated from the Father. How can mere human intellect ever understand that consequence of the infinite purpose of God invading the finite world.
Notwithstanding the mystery of the crucifixion, there are some things we can know. Jesus was not primarily expressing ignorance, though this could be included with the discussion of the Son not knowing what the Father knows (Matt 24:36). He was drawing attention to Psalm 22, the first part of which describes well His sufferings. Yet, the conclusion of the matter is found in the middle of verse 21, “Save me from the lion’s mouth; From the horns of the wild oxen You answer me.” The verse begins with a plea for salvation, and ends with a statement of fact. The answer, as it turns out, is the resurrection. Jesus was separated from the Father, so that He could be “the resurrection and the life” so that sinners separated from a holy God could be united in holiness forever.
Yet, at another level, the cry of our Lord reflected the anguish of bearing not just the physical pain of suffering, but also the weight of the sin of the world! His suffering was not a cake-walk but an agony at the deepest level.
Lord, I believe that Your Son truly did suffer in my place, the just for the unjust, to restore me to the One in Whose image I was created. Thank you.
0 Comments