Thinking this morning as I was talking to my Father God about what His Son hanging on the cross – meant by saying, “Father, why have You forsaken me?!” So many people don’t understand why God the Father would turn on His own Son making Him go through all that we read in the Bible about Jesus being severely beaten and then made to carry His own cross to where He would be nailed to it and then set up to hang there suffering a slow and painful death. To them it is simply evil and not acceptable, but that’s because they don’t understand what was really happening that is for each of us PERSONALLY.
We need to recognize how sinful we are and that we are in desperate need of the Savior of the world! If you don’t recognize that you are a sinner with a serious sinful nature – then you will NEVER understand God’s way of the Cross of Redemption and Restoration of Life. You will naturally set yourself up as a judge of God and His Word, and see Jesus as just a man whose life ended in death, having only one purpose as a good teacher and moral example. But what shall you do with what Jesus claimed of Himself: “I am the Truth, the Way and the Life eternal – no man comes to the Father except by Me!”?
If Jesus’ death on the cross was all there was to what His purpose on earth was – then what will you do with what was said of Him as the One who returns to REIGN on the earth for one-thousand years as KING of kings and LORD of lords? If you don’t understand that Jesus was raised from His physical death (in the tomb) to revisit His disciples and show them that what He promised them He would do; and if you don’t know what happened to Him after He was laid in the tomb – to be joined back to His Father in Heaven where He stands as our High Priest until all His faithful children are joined to Him in Heaven and then to return with Him to the earth for His full purpose in the world as both Lamb and Lion, then you will only see Jesus Christ in part, not in whole, and miss what THE CROSS was all about.
When the Father turned away from His Son hanging on the Cross, God the Father did not reject His Son; the Father was rejecting the “sin of the world” that was placed upon His Son – because Jesus is the Savior of the world.
I can’t even imagine what the Father felt for His Son at that point – knowing that the love of God is so much greater than any kind of human love. The Father knew that His Son had to suffer and die for no fault of His own – bearing all our wickedness and rebellion – so that we who believe in the Son of God would become the true sons and daughters of God.
Some tend to stop at the Cross when we think about Jesus Christ, but Father God, like God the Son, knew the JOY of what it would all produce; the outcome of why Jesus Christ came into the world as a baby, and why He lived like He did on the earth for 33 years, and why He called certain men to Himself, and why He was sent to the cross as the only perfect man that ever lived, and with His resurrection from death to life – what all THAT would mean for the world, especially for each of us ‘personally’ who would believe in Him and give up our own life – for His life in us – because we love Him.
When we try to understand why Jesus, hanging on the cross, cried out to His Father, “Father! Why have you forsaken me!” we need to understand ALL about Jesus Christ. The Bible tells ALL! The Holy Spirit is the One who will reveal ALL to us and remind us of ALL that Jesus said and taught that is recorded in the Word of God.
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the JOY that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding YOUR OWN blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? ‘My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son/daughter whom he receives.” Hebrews 12:1-6
“All this is clear evidence of God’s righteous judgment. And so you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God – for which YOU are suffering.” 1 Thessalonians 1:5
“What then shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also, along with Him, freely give us all things? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? If is God who justifies. Who is there to condemn us? For Christ Jesus, who died, and more than that was raised to life, is at the right hand of God – and He is interceding for us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation – will be able to separate us from the LOVE OF GOD THAT IS IN CHRIST JESUS OUR LORD!” Romans 8:31-38