Mark 15:34

THE WORD FROM THE CROSS

‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’

Mark 15:34

The tragedy of the Crucifixion reached its climax at the sixth hour. The Blessed Master had passed through the outer circle of sorrow, and now the pale, bruised Form is lost in the thick darkness which surrounds Him. During the first hours our Blessed Lord reigns as a king—interceding, absolving, and commending His loved ones. Now a change passes over Him; His soul enters into a great loneliness. This cry shows that there was something deeper, something more awful, than the fear of death.

I. Do we ever feel forsaken?—Such days come to even the best of us—days of darkness, days of depression. But here is our comfort. When all seems lost in life, when there is no light to gladden our eyes, then it is for us to realise that because of that One’s bitter cry which rang out in the darkness, Jesus is always with us because He knew what it was to be forsaken even by God Himself. Let us cling to the Cross for this our comfort in our time of darkness!

II. The guilt of sin.—And yet surely it must mean more than this, something deeper than this, for it reveals to us the guilt of sin. We cannot think little of sin when you and I realise that it cost the best, the noblest, the purest blood, when we realise that it has cost the Blood of God Himself to take away that sin; that for one great atonement it needed God to come down and live our life, it needed God to be surrounded by the darkness on the Cross, to live out His life, as it were, just for a few hours making that atonement, forsaken by God Himself. When we are tempted to call some sins little and some great, let us realise what it meant when our Lord cried from the cross, ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’

III. The punishment of sin.—I think we have here not only the revelation of the guilt of sin, but we have more—we have a revelation of the punishment of sin. This one hour had loomed before Christ all His life. Our Blessed Master could endure all else but this. The thought of His Father hiding His face, and the thought of entering that darkness, was something which he could not contemplate unmoved. We are inclined—are we not?—to guess at the future condition of the soul; but after we have stood beneath the Cross, after we have heard this cry, we need not have any further speculation, for sin always means here and there separation from God. Separation from God—does not the sinner know it now? Ah, but the sinner always has a feeling that he can turn to God when he likes; but to realise that sin will bring this separation, entire and complete, from God is the most awful thing that man could contemplate. To-day Jesus calls to us, ‘Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?’ nothing to us who stand by the Cross? Was there ever such sorrow, ever such love?