Why?

Scripture Reading: Matthew 27:45-50

“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

The Cross is the central truth of the New Testament and this cry from out of the darkness is the deepest expression of Jesus’ suffering. Jesus asks, “why?” and since no answer is recorded, we are left to wrestle with the question ourselves.

Some have suggested this was the cry of a deeply disappointed reformer. Jesus, they say, had come to set things right and believed God was with him in his efforts. There on the Cross, he realized his plans had all failed and he couldn’t understand why God hadn’t given him the success he anticipated.

Others have said that Jesus' feelings of abandonment were just that – feelings – and nothing more. There was no factual experience of abandonment. It was, to put it bluntly, all in his head.

In contrast to these speculative theories, the Reformers, I believe got it right. Jesus experienced the death of a martyr for a religious or political cause, his question has only a psychological answer. If, on the other hand, we understand that Jesus bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that God laid on Him the iniquity of us all, and that He who knew no sin became sin for us, His mysterious cry of anguish begins to make sense.

One group of Reformers put it this way:

We believe that He suffered His blessed body to be nailed on the Cross that He might affix thereon the handwriting of our sins; that He also took upon Himself the curse due to us that He might fill us with His blessings. And humbled Himself unto the deepest reproach and pains of hell, both in body and soul, on the tree of the Cross when He cried out with a loud voice, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” that we might be accepted of God and never be forsaken of Him.

This questioning cry of Jesus was a line, the first line, from the 22nd Psalm. Turning there and reading further we find the answer to the question. “Why have you forsaken me?” “For you are holy…” The Father’s holiness required Jesus’ forsakenness. As He became sin for us and bore the punishment for our sin on the Cross, it was a divine necessity that He be forsaken.

Jesus was forsaken so that we might be forgiven.