Psalms 22:1

The Cross.

‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me? Why are you so far from helping Me, and from the words of My loud groaning?'

These words were cited by Jesus on the cross. But we cannot see it as merely signifying that Jesus was taking comfort from the Psalm. It was rather because (if we may say it reverently) He had come to a new understanding of what the Psalmist was describing. From the torment of His soul as He bore on Himself the sins of the world He was aware of a sense of total desolation and torment, a sense of total isolation from His Father, and it came out in this cry. He felt that in His cry He had to pierce through the darkness, because He felt ‘God forsaken'. As has been well said, ‘God forsaken by God, who can understand it?'

He was not, of course, forsaken. He could still speak to MY God. And the very fact of His praying was a recognition of the fact that God was within hearing, even though appearing to be terribly far away. It rather therefore expressed the agony that He was facing, and the burden that He was bearing. It was the only prayer that Jesus ever made that He did not address to God as ‘Father'. Even in the agony of the Garden He had prayed ‘Abba, Father'. But now in the darkness of His soul, tormented by the sin of the world, He came as a suppliant to God, rather than as a Son to the Father. And for Him there was a genuine and very real sense of separation. In these moments He knew the awful intensity of the work that He had come to do, and the price that He had come to pay. He was taking on Himself all the agony deserved by mankind.