Featured Forsaken in Matthew 27:46

I think you need to define this "feeling of rejection". In what capacity did Jesus feel rejected?

 

I don't believe Jesus felt rejected of God. I believe instead that Jesus suffered knowing that he was being obedient to the will of the Father and that the Father would be faithful to deliver him.

And, of course, to borrow from the quote we've been considering, "Jesus does not cease being God before, during, or after this. Jesus’ cry does not divide His human nature from His divine person or destroy the Trinity. Nor does it detach Him from the Holy Spirit." So it is not just divine omnipresence.

I agree not only that this is about a "sense" or "feeling", but also an experience. Jesus is experiencing the Father's presence in a different way (as the Father lays our iniquities upon Him).
Omnipresence is not applicable because Jesus is God (it's a given) and Jesus is not severed from God's Spirit (instead he is faithfully obedient to death, and accomplishing our redemption through the Spirit).

Nonsense. Your position minimizes God Himself sacrificing for mankind.

Not only is the Cross beyond the suffering that all of mankind would experience (because Jesus is God) but the sacrifice of the Father is also beyond anything mankind would experience in toto. We do not need to minimize the Cross (to make it what we would have suffered) to support substitutionary atonement.

My view has Christ being made sin on the grounds that God is offering Him as an atoning sacrifice, laying our sins on His Beloved Son and pouring the consequences of sin upon Him because of his love for us. Do I think that the Father tricked himself into hating Jesus (as He hates sin)? No, of course not. He offered His Son not only as loving the world but also with a love for His Son (it was also a sacrifice on the part of the Father).

 

I think that this comment deserves a little more than I have offered regarding its accuracy to my view.

My view is that Jesus’ entire earthly ministry to include the Cross is a part of the Atonement. On the Cross the Father looked on His Son and knew that Jesus had fulfilled the law and was laying down his life of his own accord in perfect obedience. The Father did not make Jesus to be sin, and He did not look at Jesus as if he were sin. Instead I believe that the Father looked on His Son and was pleased, for it was His will that Jesus lay down his life as a propitiation for sin.

Rather than a punishment, Jesus took upon himself the consequences of our sin. What I mean by this is the Father was not punishing His Son because He knew full well that this point in time, this suffering, is Jesus’ greatest work of obedience (punishment implies the purpose of controlling and retribution). Our punishment was propitiated on the Cross.

But what this looked like was far beyond human suffering (even the eternal suffering of man). Jesus (as God, his human nature united with his divine person) experienced his body, beaten, broken, and dying on the Cross. There is NOTHING that God could do to all of mankind as a whole that would even come close to this sacrifice. This was for our punishment, as a propitiation for our sins, as a substitute for us, suffering in our stead. Jesus did not experience our punishment. He did not experience what those who will suffer in Hell experience. What He experienced was far worse because He is God.

Likewise, what the Father experienced in the act of love that was giving His only Beloved Son was a sacrifice that eternally exceeded in love the wrath that would have been poured out for our sins. It would have been this way just because God the Father gave sacrificially. But giving of Himself, giving His Son, willing that His Son suffer so that we may life…NOTHING that all of mankind could experience would ever come close to this.

So yes, I reject the idea that Jesus just took the punishment we would have experienced and we were saved. I deny that it was such a business transaction, equaling the credit and debit columns on a divine ledger. What was given cannot be expressed in terms of what we would have suffered. I believe that those I’ve opposed on this thread are severely minimalizing the Cross and the Atonement in order to puff up their version of penal substitution.