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Forsaken
“Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. 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” (Matthew 27:45-46).
What a question, asked by the Lord Jesus at the end of the three hours of darkness. To get the answer, we must go to the Old Testament, where we have the question raised prophetically, along with the innermost feelings of the Lord that we don’t get in the Gospels. There we find that the one who asks the question Himself gives the answer.
“My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me? why art Thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? O my God, I cry in the daytime, but Thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent. But Thou art holy” (Psalm 22:1-3). While the Lord Jesus was being“made … sin for us” (2 Corinthians 5:21), and while, in those three hours of darkness, He, “bare our sins in His own body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24), God had to forsake Him because of His holy nature, and because He is of“purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity” (Habakkuk 1:13).
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