And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (Mark 15:34)
The death of Jesus Christ for our sins is something that needs to be experienced; not merely analyzed. What could be more horrifying than spending one’s entire life in complete submission to God, experiencing the deepest possible trust because of the deepest possible intimacy, only to feel forsaken at the end. Before we rush to our theological explanations, we need to take a moment to feel the horror of it all. We shouldn’t rush off to explain. We need to avoid the tendency to rush off to celebrate the resurrection before the time. We need to feel the sorrow. Closing the theological loop now would be premature. The Son feels abandoned by the Father. God feels abandoned by God. Whatever the theological explanation, the feeling was real. The horror was real. The darkness of that moment in the soul of Jesus is unimaginable. It was the worse possible nightmare in the universe, but it was real. The emotional pain was real. The agony was real. It wasn’t only physical pain that Jesus felt on the cross. The physical pain was emblematic of the emotional and spiritual pain of feeling abandoned by God Himself. The wretched agony that Jesus was experiencing at that moment can never be described or replicated. Jesus experienced all the physical, emotional and spiritual pain and brokenness and isolation that the universe could dish up against him. It happened once for all. The universe can contain that degree of pain only once. It had to happen this way. The shedding of the blood of lambs and bulls could never accomplish our redemption; it could only point to it. Only a human can pay for the sins of another human. Only God Himself can pay for the sins of a billion humans. The sacrifice for sins must be accomplished by someone who is, in the words of the ancient creed, “very God and very man”. It must be accomplished via a strange kind of sacrifice, where the priest and the offering are one. The priest offers himself as an offering for sin, and the priest is God. This baffles the intellect and stretches the imagination beyond the breaking point. God gives up His life to save the life of His people. God exacts the penalty, because He is just. God pays the penalty Himself, because He is loving. Rational explanations will always fall short. We must experience the truth, feel the truth, believe the truth. In some way that passes all human comprehension, when Jesus died on the cross as the sacrificial Lamb of God, God died for me, so that I could be forgiven. Jesus was forsaken that I might be accepted. Jesus was condemned that I might be forgiven. There is something very deep going on here in the cosmic order of things. Something at the heart of the universe exploded. Something deep in the heart of God exploded, and out of that explosion flowed the love and mercy that forgives a billion people of their sins and reconciles the inhabitants of a rebellious planet to their good Creator. He was forsaken that I might be reconciled. His death is my life. We need to feel the horror of Friday before we can dare to celebrate what will happen on Sunday. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5)
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