Robert McLaughlin Bible Ministries
Our Lord’s fourth utterance from the Cross introduces a mystery that is very difficult for us to identify with.
Friday, March 26, 2004
He prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do,” LUK 23:34.
When He spoke to the thief, He said, “Today you will be with me in paradise,” LUK 23:43.
JOH 19:26-27 He said to His mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then He said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!”
HAB 1:13 Thine eyes are too pure to approve evil, And Thou canst not look on wickedness
This is the time when Jesus Christ “bore our sins in his own body on the tree,” 1PE 2:24.
PSA 22:1 My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning.
TLJC was accustomed to address God as His Father.
This statement shows us how truly human TLJC was, that He could be forsaken by God.
It is hard for us to comprehend that TLJC being “Emmanuel, God with us,” and His deity and humanity being permanently united in one person, could have been forsaken by God.
He was and is the God-man who has been scourged, and spit upon, and who has died.
It was necessary for Him to be both God’s beloved Son and to be forsaken of his Father.
Our Lord Jesus Christ saw all that man had to suffer because of sin and He perceived the total sum of the miseries brought by sin upon all the past, present, and future generations of the human race.
When the body is suffering it also can affect the mind.
It was not many moments after this that He shouted “with a loud voice,” His victorious proclamation that “It is finished,” and passed from the conflict of the cross to His coronation.
Certainly this cry was not caused by unbelief.
Unbelief often makes us talk about God forgetting us when He does nothing of the kind, but our Lord Jesus Christ was a stranger to unbelief.
God did forsake His Son, but He loved Him as much when He forsook Him as at any other period.
ISA 53:10 But the Lord was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering,
God was not angry with Him personally. God did not look upon Him as unworthy of His love.
God did not regard Him as one upon whom He could not say, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased.”