Matthew 27:46

CHRIST FORSAKEN

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

Matthew 27:46

A darkness had overspread the land, and there was darkness in the Saviour’s soul. We may not follow Him, but the awfulness of it we may partly understand from the exceeding bitter cry: ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’

I. Forsaken for our sins.—It was the loss of the sense of the Presence of God. God seemed so far away that He had to be called back by a conscious effort of the Redeemer. And the reason we know. Christ was burdened with the sin of men. The Lord had laid upon Him the iniquity of us all. God and sin cannot exist together, any more than light and darkness can be found in one. If Christ had not been forsaken for us we should now be inevitably forsaken of God.

II. The sinfulness of sin.—What a wonderful mystery there is about God’s dealings with us and about this fact of sin intervening. What a dislocation in the order of the world sin has produced. On every side we are aware of its consequences, and are blindly indignant at them. We cry for justice, for reversal of human conditions as we know them now. Why is God so silent? Why does He not make Himself felt? Why does He not do something? God’s justice may be slow in vindicating itself, but on the whole it vindicates itself here and now, and we must have faith to believe that it will be wholly vindicated hereafter. It was so in the case of our Saviour Christ; it will be so in ours.

III. But God’s mercy and God’s justice triumph.—Think once more, the agonised cry was not the end; Christ’s death was not the end. He died, yes; but He rose three days later. The triumph of His Cross remained. Therefore let us take courage. Let us not turn back because there comes into our life that suffering which our religion always told us we were to expect—the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings, the fellowship of the Cross—and if His yoke is easy and His burden light, it is not because it is a painless yoke, no, no, but because love will make the pain welcome. Be sure, too, that one day God’s justice will triumph, that what is base will be debased; that if we do not live to see it in our lives, yet in the next life at least there will be the great reward.

The Rev. Lionel Ford.

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE CRY OF AGONY

This is the fourth of the Seven Words from the Cross, and it is the word of Agony.

I. The cry of agony.—First of all, fancy Christ saying, ‘My God, My God!’ Hitherto it has been ‘My Father.’ It is the cry which comes from His perfect human nature. It shows us that we must not confound our Lord’s human nature with His Deity. We cannot understand these things: we cannot understand how He could ‘increase in wisdom and stature’ when He was the Eternal Son of God; but He did. We do not know why He cried, ‘My God, My God’; but He did: it was perfect human nature. It is the cry of Agony. He was born with a perfect human nature that He might die a perfect human death. He was the Man Christ Jesus ‘Who tasted death for every man.’ But He was also God.

II. What made Him cry?—Was it weakness? No. It could not be weakness, because afterwards He cried with a loud voice: He was not exhausted. Was it, do you think, that He had made a mistake and thought that God had forsaken Him? No. He could not make a mistake. He never made a mistake in His life, and not in His death. But had God forsaken Him? How could God forsake God? The only explanation that I can possibly give you is that He willed to feel forsaken that you and I might never be forsaken. It was to teach us the lesson that ‘the Lord hath laid upon Him the iniquity of us all.’ As representing Sin, He had to go through the Passion of seeming forsaken. ‘He became Sin’ (hear the words of Scripture; I do not understand these things, but I believe and worship) ‘Who knew no sin.’ And why did He become Sin? For me. ‘He loved me and gave Himself for me.’

III. God forsaken.—During the Passion darkness came upon the land, and when you have your passion (it may be at midday or midnight, and though the sun be shining in the heaven yet it may be as dark around you as night) you may say, ‘I am a God-forsaken man.’ And He will be near you, I know, and forgive you and excuse you. And when, afterwards, the sun begins to shine upon your life again, and you are sorry you ever said or thought such a thing, you can say to Him, ‘Thou, dear Saviour, didst say in thine Agony, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” I lie down under Thy Cross, and hide myself in Thine Agony, and cover myself with Thy Blood of Redemption.’

The Rev. A. H. Stanton.

(THIRD OUTLINE)

THE MYSTERIOUS CRY

Two things we notice about this mysterious cry of the stricken Saviour.

I. The cry.—First of all that it is a question, the only question, which, so far as we are told, was ever uttered to the Father by His lips: ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ And the Blessed Son of God seems to put Himself, as it were, with those holy men of old who at different times and stages of Israel’s history pleaded with God concerning His judgments.

II. God’s silence.—And yet, in the second place, how strange it is that to that question there is no reply, as if to teach us of the mystery of God’s dealing with men. What an unspeakable mystery is the Atonement of Christ! We see enough to satisfy our reason to some extent; we see enough to reassure our aching heart, but we cannot fathom the mystery of what Jesus did upon the Cross. Religion does not profess to give us cut-and-dried answers to every futile or unreasonable question that we may ask. All we know is, and that is quite enough for us, that he that followeth the Lord Jesus Christ shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. And so I suppose in this utterance Jesus shows Himself the helper of the perplexed. Let us be sure that God’s judgments are a great deep, that there is much which in this life at least we must be content not to know, and that our Blessed Lord passed victorious through the pain of perplexity and went forth into the light once more.

III. The faithfulness of the Creator.—And one more thought is this—the thought of the faithfulness of our Creator. Christ does not say, ‘My Father, My Father,’ but ‘My God, my God.’ He appeals to God as a Creater; He commits His soul as to a faithful Creator, and He knows that He is safe. Though a man does not see what is the exact meaning, what is the end of the discipline through which he passes, he may commit himself to God with the faithful assurance that he will not be forsaken. For man is not alone in his search for truth. The Truth is seeking him. And so for our comfort in perplexity let us remember that the Blessed Saviour Himself has got a heart that can sympathise with the perplexed, and that He for Whom we seek here, and for Whom we wait, and for Whom we long, will manifest Himself, if not here, then beyond the veil, and in due season we who seek after Him shall find Him, and we shall reap if we faint not.

The Rev. T. G. Longley.