Why Have You Forsaken Me?

There are many places in our world where Christians face monetary and physical persecution for their beliefs. The more I read the news, the more I am convinced that the United States is moving toward that direction. It may be many years before Christians in the U.S. face physical persecution, but some have already faced fines, subpoenas, and even possible prison sentences for failure to pay for abortions or support homosexual marriage ceremonies.

Christians all over the world need to be ready for persecution. Even if you never experience persecution, you will experience difficulties. When it happens, it will be easy to feel that you have been abandoned by God. You will wonder why God allowed this to happen to you when you were only doing what He called you to do. Even Job, the servant of renown, felt abandoned by God.

For most of my life I heard pastors teach that even Jesus felt abandoned by God. They point to his cry from the cross when he shouted:

Eloi, Eloi, lemá sabachtháni?

I heard many times that this cry was at the moment that Jesus took on the sins of the world and that God, not able to look on sin, turned his back on His Son, Jesus. The sky darkened, the thunder rolled, and the earth shook, all because God had abandoned His Son.

Then I studied the Book of Psalms as a theology course at seminary and discovered something that I never learned from any of these pastors: the first verse of each Psalm was used as the title of that Psalm. Just as we would use the title, Amazing Grace, to refer to one of the churches most beloved hymns about God's wonderful, amazing, never-ending grace; the Jewish people would use the first line of a Psalm to refer you to that specific Psalm.

This new information opened a whole new world for me in my understanding of the Bible, especially in my ability to fully grasp what Jesus meant in Mark 15:34 when He cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Those words would have sounded very familiar to any Jewish person present at the crucifixion, but Jesus chose to speak them in Aramaic rather than in Hebrew. This confused the people into thinking he was calling on Elijah to rescue Him.

What was Jesus actually saying? He was using every ounce of strength He had, being forced to lift Himself using hands and feet with nails piercing them because His lungs most likely collapsed when His cross was dropped into the ground, Jesus shouted the title of a well-known Psalm so that people would understand that this very moment in time had been foretold through David. Recorded in our scripture as Psalm 22.

Did God abandon Jesus on the cross? Did He turn His face away from Him? No. How can I know? Because Psalm 22: 24 tells me that He did not.

For He has not despised

or detested the torment

of the afflicted one.

He did not hide His face from him

but listened when he cried

to Him for help.

Psalm 22:24 (HCSB)

The cry of Jesus from the cross was actually a victory cry. Jesus was shouting, "This, this is the moment that I have told you about. This, right now, is why I became the Incarnate One. I have not abandoned you. I love you enough that I was willing to become the Sacrificial Lamb. I know that God is with me through all of this. I know that He has not abandoned me. I know, because I Am."