KJV Matthew 27:46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
NASB Matthew 27:46 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?”
Seven utterances are recorded as coming from the Lord while on the cross. The first three were in response to the needs of others. The last two will be an expression of His calm confidence and repose. The 4th and 5th give us some insight into His suffering. The 4th cry before us now reflects the suffering of His soul when made an offering for sin. His mention of thirst might reflect His physical agony, but may also point to a spiritual dimension of His suffering.
This is the longest cry from the cross and takes the form of a question. It was not a cry of ignorance. He knew the answer to the “why.” It was not a cry of insolence as though chaffing under the hand of God. Nor was it a cry of incredulity, as if, thinking of His faithfulness in His life, God was being unjust in forsaking Him.
His cry is one that gives us insight into the depths of Calvary. Who among us would ever have dared to think that God would forsake Christ on a cross when falsely accused and unjustly crucified? Who among us could conceive of a plan of salvation so incredible and so wondrous?
In Psalm 22, this cry is at the head of the Psalm as though to draw attention to it as the basis for all that follows. Here, at the cross, it is the central cry as if to suggest it is the crisis of His suffering. This One Who did always those things that pleased the Father (John 8:29) and Whose every cry the Father heard (John 11:42), and Whose presence was assured (16:32), now is forsaken.
Sin had brought distance between God and man. We were estranged, gone astray, walking after the course of this world. We had forsaken God. Sin’s ultimate penalty is not just (I say this carefully), the eternal enduring of hell and the Lake of fire, but to be forsaken entirely by God in those environs. It means to be abandoned with all the needs of our insecure beings, never to be satisfied.
The alcoholic will retain his thirst for drink, the gambler the dream of wealth, the power-hungry for satisfaction, the sexually immoral for his lust to be satisfied. No love, joy, satisfaction, hope will ever brighten that awful place. The individual who prides himself on his physique will never hear a compliment; the woman who lives for admiration for her beauty will never hear it praised. “Forsaken” is the lot of all who are eternally lost.
Sin’s awful judgment, if there was to be salvation, must be known by the Saviour. He must be forsaken at the cross by a holy and righteous God. He knew no comfort, no assuaging of judgment. He was bruised, crushed, and smitten. Though we are not told the character of the judgment He endured, the cessation of the enjoyment of a fellowship known for all eternity must have been a sorrow inexpressible and immeasurable. He was forsaken. Yet He Himself, in the prophetic utterance of Psalm 22, gives us the reason. “But Thou art Holy” (v 3). He vindicated God.
Some claim that Christ endured our “hell” for us on the cross, that what He experienced is what sinners will know eternally. I beg to differ. Although forsaken eternally under the judgment of God, no sinner has ever known the joy of divine fellowship that the Lord knew, and that was interrupted on the cross. He went from the heights of joy to the depths of sorrow. Sinners go from the emptiness of life, covered over by our toys, to the depths of being forsaken. Only He knew the joy of fellowship.
He was forsaken that you and I might never be forsaken (Heb 13:5). He drank the cup of judgment in its entirety that we might drink the cup of blessings.