Forsaken. It means to be departed from … left behind … left alone … completely abandoned.
I shudder at the thought of an existence with no God. Even amid the most horrible atrocities of this age, God is still present. Can we even begin to imagine his absence? We cannot.
So we hear Jesus’ cry and ask, Why did he suffer abandonment by his Father?
Simply this: so we wouldn’t have to.
When God moved Adam into Eden, he warned him not to “eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Everything God created was good; in its entirety, his creation was very good. That’s what he wanted for us. And he warned Adam that, were he to pursue knowing both good and evil, he would die. He would be separated from God. As we painfully know, that became his lot and ours.
But God’s heart is not for separation; his passion is for life and re-birth – his Spirit living in us, and us reunited with him. On the night in which he was betrayed, Jesus asked his Father to remove the chasm between us and him, and to restore the oneness we once had. For those who would believe, he prayed, “May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me” (John 17:21-23).
Did you catch that? As the Father indwells the Son, so the Son indwells those who entrust their lives to him. Jesus doesn’t separate us from him; he reunites us with him. He does not condemn a good people; he saves a sinful people. We are separated no more!
And we carry with us this message of peace. The price has been paid for all. Ours is simply to believe. And rejoice!
[Messianic in nature, Psalm 22 is quoted in the New Testament more than any other Psalm. Jesus himself spoke from it as he suffered separation for us. Click here to read Psalm 22.]
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