Featured How was Christ Forsaken?

1 John 2
8 He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil. 9 Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.

@Yeshua1

Was Christ forsaken for the devil?

 

I have been studying that book for many years, and still see myself agreeing on this issue with those such as Calvin, and Hodge, Grudem etc!

 

Was Jesus a sinner? No
Was he the The Sin Bearer Yes

 

He died as the sin bearer, correct?

 

what basis do you ask this? Explain the question

 

Matthew 27:46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (KJV)

I'll take the word of the Lord Jesus Himself. He said that His God had forsaken Him. I do not fully comprehend it, but it is so.

 

He is quoting Psalm 22, I'd check out the entire Psalm and then make a conclusion. I'd hate to make an entire doctrine off of one verse, not in context (particularly the verses prior to).

To cut to the chase...He was proclaiming the fulfillment of this Psalm and Judgment upon the Jews. At the VERY LEAST He was saying what He felt, but not what was reality. But i believe our Savior to be more wise and powerful than that. I believe the Jews knew this Psalm well. Read it...it's all about God Vindicating His Servant.

 

I do not think it to be a mere coincidence:

". . . Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. . . ." -- Mark 9:48.
". . . But I am a worm, and no man; . . ." -- Psalms 22:6.

 

We will first look at the supernatural darkness that came over the land. There are several places in the O.T. where darkness denotes God’s wrath and judgement, especially connected to the ‘day of the Lord,’ e.g. Joel 2:31; Amos 5:18-20; Zephaniah 1:14-15 and particularly Isaiah 13:9-11 (quoted in Mark 13:24-25). so the darkness indicates the righteous anger of God, but against whom? The Lord Jesus Himself tells us that it is against Himself. ‘Then Jesus said to them, “All of you will be made to stumble because of Me this night, for it is written, ‘I will strike the Shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered'”‘ (Mark 14:27). The quotation is from Zechariah 13:7 which makes it perfectly clear that God Himself is the One who will strike the Shepherd. The Lord Jesus was made sin, and God’s righteous anger against sin was poured out upon Him instead of us, with His full knowledge and consent.
I, truly, admit that I'm sorry but this opening salvo does not ring true for me. YHWH, Yashuah ha'Machiah and Ruah are one
Elohim, one God! If YHWH were angry with Yashuah, He would be angry with Himself and Ruah as well. Our Elohim, being perfect, cannot sin and hating our Elohim, there is no greater sin.

Some helpful study is:
Hatred is a feeling that can be both Godly and sinful depending on what it is that is causing us to hate. The Bible speaks of loving God and hating evil (Psalm 97:10) and hating the assembly of evildoers (Psalm 26:5) and hating falsehood (Psalm 119:116). (continue this 30 verse study at 30 Top Bible Verses About Hate - Top Scriptures)

 

At the time I wrote the article (which was previously a post on this forum) all sorts of people were arguing against Christ being forsaken.

What exactly do you mean by 'forsaken to the cross'? If Christ was not forsaken on the cross, why did He say that He was?

I think you'll find that some people don't believe it.

Psalm 22:1-2. 'My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are you so far from helping Me, and from the words of My groaning? O My God, I cry in the daytime, but You do not hear; and in the night season, and am not silent.'

 

This is the other part of my blog post which was originally a post on this forum a year or so ago. It may be helpful in explaining the relationship among the Persons of the Trinity.

Since writing on the subject of Penal Substitution a few months ago, I have been accused on a Christian discussion forum of “Destroying the Doctrine of the Trinity” (as if I could!) by suggesting that Christ was the recipient of the Father’s wrath and more especially by suggesting that the Son was ‘forsaken’ by the Father. There have been amazing textual gymnastics to make Mark 15:34 say the opposite of what it so plainly does. In the early Church, the reality that there is one God in three Persons (not ‘members’) was safeguarded by speaking of a single divine ‘substance’ shared by Father, Son and Spirit. This substance is simply what God is, the thing that makes Father, Son and Spirit divine without implying three deities.

The Lord Jesus tells us that He and His father mutually indwell each other (John 14:11; c.f. also John 10:38; 14:10, 20). The technical term for this is perichoresis. This implies both union and distinction between Father and Son. One of the many problems with polytheism is the idea that different deities may make different demands of people and compete with one another as we see in the poems of Homer and Hesiod. Within the Trinity this is avoided, not because the Persons fortuitously happen to agree on most things, but because they must agree, for they are one God. The idea therefore that on the cross the Father inflicts a punishment upon the Son that He is unwilling to bear, or that the Son draws from the Father a forgiveness that He is unwilling to bestow is a non-starter.

But there is also a distinction between the Persons. Without it, it would be ridiculous to talk of a distinct Father, Son and Spirit at all, and it would be impossible for them to relate to each other as separate Persons as the Scripture teaches they do. But if Son, Father and Spirit are all fully Divine and equal in their possession of all the Divine attributes (e.g. holiness, wisdom, truth etc.), what distinguishes them? The answer is their asymmetric in their relationship with each other. The Father is in a relationship of Fatherhood to the Son and the Son is in a relationship of Sonship to the Father. The Son is everything the Father is, save that He is not the Father, the Spirit is not the Son and so forth.

It must surely be agreed that God’s actions reflect His nature. He does what is holy because He is holy; what is good because He is good. Therefore God’s nature will be reflected in the actions of each Person of the Trinity and both unity and distinction between the Persons will be reflected in what God does.

So the actions of the Persons reflect their unity. In John 14:10-11, the Lord Jesus teaches that His works are at the same time His Father’s works and this is grounded in the Perichoretic Union. In John 5:19, He testifies that ‘Whatever He [the Father] does, the Son also does in like manner.’ The fundamental unity in their actions mirrors the fundamental union of their Persons.

On the other hand, the actions of the Persons reflect their distinctions. The Bible teaches that the Father sent the Son, and that the Son willingly obeyed the Father (John 10:15-18; Philippians 2:5-9). Father and Son send the Spirit, but the Spirit does not send the Father. The work of the Trinity in salvation is outlined in Ephesians 1:3-14. The Three work in perfect harmony to accomplish their single goal, but their roles are quite different.

In order to represent this unity and distinction between the Persons, Augustine taught that the Father’s actions are not without the Son and the Son’s actions not without the Father. That seems to work rather well. Augustine affirmed that while the Persons of the Trinity do not perform the same action in the same way, nevertheless they do not act independently of one another– their respective contributions to any given activity are inseparable.

So it is not meaningless to say that God the Son propitiated God the Father. The same Person is not the subject and object of the verb. Nor does the fact that the Father exacts a punishment borne by the Son mean that they are divided or act independently. Their relationship is asymmetric, but they are mutually and inseparably engaged upon two aspects of the same action with one purpose– the salvation of guilty sinners while satisfying the justice of the Triune God.

I now want to look at the Lord Jesus being ‘forsaken’ on the cross. First of all I want to repeat what I said above. We must never imagine that God the father imposed upon the Son any burden that He was unwilling to bear. On the contrary, He declares, “I delight to do Your will, O My God….” (Psalm 40:8; Hebrews 10:7; c.f. John 4:34; 6:38). Nor should we imagine that on the cross, the Son extracted from the Father a mercy that He was unwilling to give (John 3:16; Romans 5:8). On the contrary, on the cross, ‘Mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed’ (Psalm 85:10).

[continued]

 

[continuation of post]

We should now consider the various references to the Lord Jesus drinking a cup. In Mark 10:38, He asks James and John, “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” Then in Gethsamene, ‘deeply distressed and troubled’ Mark 14:33), He cries out to the Father, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will but as You will” (Matthew 26:39, 42 etc.), and then in John 18:11, “Shall I not drink the cup which My Father has given Me?” It is clear that this cup is something horrific which the Father requires Him to drink. He knows all about it, has willingly (see above) agreed to drink it, but as the cup approaches, He is filled with dread and horror at the anticipation of it. On an night when it was cold enough for a fire to be kindled in the courtyard of the high priest’s house (Luke 22:55), the Lord Jesus sweats copiously (Luke 22:44)– the psychosomatic response of a human to impending trauma.

So what is this cup which the Lord Jesus must drink? The O.T. tells us; it is a cup of judgement and wrath against the wicked. ‘For in the hand of the LORD there is a cup, and the wine is red; it is fully mixed, and He pours it out; surely its dregs shall all the wicked of the earth drain down and drink’ (Psalm 75:8). ‘For thus says the LORD GOD of Israel to me, “Take this wine cup from My hand and cause all the nations, to whom I send you to drink it. And they will drink and stagger and go mad because of the sword I will send among them……..”‘ (Jeremiah 25:15-32).

As one reads on, it becomes clear that this judgement is for the whole world to drink. See also Isaiah 51:17; Ezekiel 23:32-34; Habakkuk 2:16). So why should the Lord Jesus drink this cup? Mark 10:45 tells us, He came, ‘To give His life as a ransom for many;’ to drink the cup destined for sinners in their place. “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed {lit. ‘handed over.’ Gk. paradidomai) to the chief priests and to the scribes; and the will condemn Him to death and deliver [Gk. paradidomai] Him to the Gentiles [lit. ‘nations.’ Gk. ethnoi], and they will mock Him and scourge Him, and spit on Him, and kill Him. And the third day He will rise again.’

Now compare with Psalm 106:40-41. ‘Therefore the wrath of the LORD was kindled against His people, so that He abhorred His own inheritance. And He gave them [LXX paradidomai] into the hand of the Gentiles [or ‘nations’] and those who hated them ruled over them.’ So for our Lord Jesus to be handed over to the nations is tantamount to being delivered over to God’s wrath. Christ gave His life as a ransom for many, being handed over to God’s wrath in the place of many. The ransom is, of course, not money, but a life being given up in death, and pain being suffered in the place of others who would otherwise suffer the pains of hell.

[For much of the post so far I have drawn on Pierced for our Transgressions by Jeffrey, Ovey and Sach (IVP, 2007. ISBN 978-1-84474-178-6)]

 

It's my opinion that if they read all of Ch. 22 slowly in the context of the cross they would not believe Christ was forsaken.

 

And that's Christ's message to us. We are not forsaken no matter the affliction. He is faithful. 1 Peter has this theme throughout.

1 Peter 2:21-23 (KJV) For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps:
Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth:
Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously:

1 Peter 2:21-23

 

My two pence:
To me, Christ felt forsaken, as a man and in agony on the cross.

I see no Scripture that states that God turned His back on His Son.
But I have heard a lot of conjecture on the subject over the years.

I agree that it is in context with Psalms 22 and a fulfillment of it by the Lord.

" Then he took [unto him] the twelve, and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished.
32 For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on:
33 and they shall scourge [him], and put him to death: and the third day he shall rise again." ( Luke 18:31-33 )

As a man of sorrows ( Isaiah 53:3 ), His crying out as if forsaken makes perfect sense to me.
Like David, He felt abandoned.
Yet, He was never alone ( John 8:29, John 16:32 ).

Believers can feel alone at times ( especially in times of extreme testing ), and like their Lord, we have to remember that He promised us:

" [Let your] conversation [be] without covetousness; [and be] content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee." ( Hebrews 13:5 )


Have any of you ever been in Psalms 88?


Be of good cheer...He delivers us ( Psalms 50:14-15 ).

 

Yes:

1 John 2:2
1 John 4:10
Romans 3:25
Isaiah 53
1 Corinthians 5:7
1 Peter 1:18-19
2 Corinthians 5:21
Romans 4:25
Romans 5:8
Ephesians 5:2

Many more.


Put 'em all together and it's a picture worth more than a thousand words.
God bless you all.