Forsaken?

Forsaken?

“And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
(Mk. 15:34)

Jesus’ cry form the cross was a cry of desperation! Yes, Jesus had a time of desperation; a time when He desperately and earnestly called out unto His God, and anguished over the loneliness of sin. You see, God had never forsaken Christ before; He was with Jesus every moment of every day, and the fullness of His Spirit was upon Him. Until the weight of sin had been placed upon His back, Jesus had never walked alone on this earth; He never had even a moment of confusion or anxiety because His Father was with Him all the way. Now, at the time of this cry unto God, He is left to Himself—with the sin of the world upon Him—a feeling He had never known before. Can you see the intensity of His cry, the anguish of His soul? Who would have thought that the Father would ever turn His back on the Son?—and yet He did. The price of sin is great; it separates us from God.
Notice first that Jesus had always referred to God as “Father”, but Here He calls Him “God”! He no longer knows the Father-Son relationship that He had all His life and all during His ministry; He no longer had that closeness with the Father that a son ought to have; sin had come between them. If sin is vile enough to separate the Father from the Son, what do you think it would do with us? Never underestimate the power of sin.
Secondly, and perhaps most important, sin breaks fellowship with even the mightiest of men. The word “forsake” means to “abandon altogether” with no hope of return in the mind of one that is leaving. It is a very strong word, as opposed to “leaving”—leaving leaves the door open for return, or reconciliation, but forsaking has no thought of ever returning again. Hebrews 13:5b tells us that our Lord will “Never leave us nor forsake us” two different depths of separation; He will not leave us for a moment, nor abandon us altogether, but that promise is only for His children. That is how God sees sin—serious enough to abandon the Son when sin was placed upon Him. Sin, which He had never known before, had separated the Son from the Father, and Jesus had to cry unto God, just as we do, for mercy and grace. Until the sin was atoned for, God had to forsake His Son, His only begotten, and leave Him to the suffering and torment of Calvary.