Morning By Morning #106

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Psalm 22:1

From the pen of Charles Spurgeon:

In this verse we see the Savior in the depth of His sorrows. No other place shows us the grief of Christ as well as Calvary, and no other moment at Calvary is as full of agony as the moment Jesus’ cry split the air—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46). At that moment His physical weakness was combined with the severe mental torture of the shame and dishonor through which He had to pass. What was even worse, and what marked the culmination of His grief, was the spiritual agony beyond all description He suffered as a result of the departure of His Father’s presence from Him. This was the darkest midnight of Jesus’ horror and the point He descended into the very abyss of suffering.

No mere human can fully comprehend the meaning of His words, although at times we find ourselves wanting to cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” There are seasons in our lives when the brightness of our Father’s smile is obscured by “clouds and thick darkness” (Ps. 97:2), but may we remember God never really forsakes us. In our experience it only feels as though He has forsaken us, but in Christ’s case He was actually forsaken. We distress over what feels like a slight turning away of our Father’s love from us, but God actually did turn His face away from His Son. Who could even estimate the tremendous agony that caused Him! In our case our pain is often caused by our own unbelief, but in His case it was the cry of a dreadful fact—God had actually turned away from Him for a time.

O poor distressed soul—you who once lived in the sunshine of God’s face but now find yourself in darkness, remember He has not actually forsaken you. God, obscured by clouds, is just as much our God as when He is shining in the full brilliance of His grace.

Yet, because even the mere thought that He may have forsaken us brings us great agony, we can only imagine the intense suffering of the Savior when He exclaimed, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

From the pen of Jim Reimann:

Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

Isaiah 53:4 – 5

Oh, how often I catch myself distressing over the hardships of this life, when Jesus suffered so much more on my behalf! Over time I have learned the Lord is using even my meager hardships to conform me to the image of His Son, but still I often complain.

Father, change my thinking! Help me to consider the sufferings of my Lord Jesus when I am tempted to complain. May I truly see how blessed I am to be counted worthy of “the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings” (Phil. 3:10).

“He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth” (Isa. 53:7).