“My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
it was the third hour when they crucified him. And the inscription of the charge against him read, “The King of the Jews.” And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!” So also the chief priests with the scribes mocked him to one another, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.” Those who were crucified with him also reviled him.
And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Mark 15:25-34
I decided to include some of the details we’ve already covered in the previous Words, because we’re reading from another Gospel, and it’s probably of note for us to see what the disciples covered in common; We read here, as we read in Luke, that a good number of the crowd not only refused to believe, but mocked the existence of Christ (as the Christ, the Messiah, and/or the Son of God), His works, or at least what He said He would do (regarding destroying the temple and rebuilding it in 3 days).
Earlier, Mark mentioned that the soldiers crucified Jesus and divided His garments, but unlike Luke, he didn’t say anything about them mocking Him. He did, however, go even further as to mentioning who was in the crowd (the chief priests with the scribes), and what they said in particular: “He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.”
I think it should be noted that they were aware of His miraculous works – why else would they say among themselves, ‘He saved others’? But even if they saw that, they were in the same wavelength as the rest of the crowd, if not instigators of the collective mockery…
In fact, did you notice that? They were well aware of how He could save others, but they expressed anyway that He couldn’t save Himself, therefore indicating that even IF Jesus came down from the cross, contrary to what they claimed, they may see, but they clearly will NOT believe.
No, their apparent anger over His claims to be the Christ, or the King of Israel – that anger was far greater than any chance that they would believe.
But I’d like to direct our attention to the events after what we’re already aware of. Christ was crucified at the ‘third hour’, but three hours later, at the ‘sixth hour’ (ESV says this is noon our time), ‘there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.‘
Off the bat, the way I see it, the people of the earth have done their worst, beating Jesus to an inch of His life, stripping Him and nailing Him before a cross to die slowly and in excruciating pain, before a crowd that refused to believe in Him and mocked Him… and now the same reality whose rocks Christ proclaimed once would burst out in praise, now responded in darkness;
An indication of the fullness of sin being poured into the Lamb of God.
Jesus became sin, and its complete wages were being imputed onto His ledger.
The sin of man and all Creation, concentrated on and into the crucified Christ.
At the ninth hour (3pm, I’m assuming), it feels like it was Christ Himself who did the worst upon Himself. I mean, until then, everything that was happening to Him was happening from the outside in. But after all that time, He spoke, and when He spoke, He cried, in a dialect so intimate – “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?”
We have no record of Jesus complaining when He was beaten, or when He carried the cross. The four disciples, who were quick to make records of details such as the people present in His crucifixion, and what they said – none of them wrote of Christ crying out when He was nailed to the cross, ridiculed, and taunted… and in the darkness, we assume (or, at least I assume) that Christ had no words.
In the context of all that He was going through, Christ was silent… until He cried out, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?”
In His anguish, we still read so much intention from His words. Jesus – whom the disciples knew referred to God as His Father – this time, did NOT call out to Abba, but ‘Eloi’: God.
He wasn’t calling out to His Father, but He was calling out to God, not to confirm He was forsaken (‘have You forsaken Me?’) nor to proclaim He was forsaken (‘You have forsaken Me’), but, as if in utter disbelief, you could almost hear His hopelessness as He cries to God… ‘why have You forsaken Me?’;
By asking ‘why’, He was not only expressing how He was forsaken, but also that He was looking for a reason that it was so, in line with how He no longer called God His Father.
And here was the pinnacle, the ultimate wage of sin – separation from God, which leads to death; A death that begins from the inside out, where our hopes die before the rest of our being follows suit.
For all the theatrics of Hollywood, I have yet to see an actor pull off the true darkness that our Savior endured at the cross.
And for all the discussion of what the most painful, most humiliating, grievous death there is – To be forgotten, forsaken by God is the worst thing that could ever happen to us.
It’s such a humbling moment, to think that of all the things that Christ did in our place, He did not spare His words when He took on the true wages of sin… and it was only then that He cried out,
“My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
Let us pray.
Father, we thank You for Jesus, Your only begotten Son, whom You sent… That whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting Life. In these words, Father, we realize the true horror of what it meant for Him to be our sin, and we are both humbled and thankful that He saved us from such a fate. We are thankful for Jesus, for through Him we can call You our Father – our Father, who will never leave us, and our Father, who is always thinking about us.
Thank You, Jesus. Thank You, Father. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
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