"My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?"

[Arial]

I know discussions have been had on whether or not God really forsook Jesus here or whether it was just a reference to his intense suffering that felt like a forsaking. I tend to believe it was a genuine forsaking, temporary though it was, because he was taking our punishment upon himself. And our punishment is being forsaken by God.

But two questions occurred to me from another thread on a different subject, that I would like help with in pondering the answers to.

Was that forsaking the divine nature leaving Jesus?
or
Was it the Holy Spirit departing from his indwelling in Jesus?

Or, third question:

Neither of those, but something else?
Is entertaining either of the first two flirting with blasphemy?

 

[Eleanor]

I know discussions have been had on whether or not God really forsook Jesus here or whether it was just a reference to his intense suffering that felt like a forsaking. I tend to believe it was a genuine forsaking, temporary though it was, because he was taking our punishment upon himself. And our punishment is being forsaken by God.
But two questions occurred to me from another thread on a different subject, that I would like help with in pondering the answers to.
Was that forsaking the divine nature leaving Jesus?
or
Was it the Holy Spirit departing from his indwelling in Jesus?
Or, third question:
Neither of those, but something else?
Is entertaining either of the first two flirting with blasphemy?

Would it not be a complete abandonment of God's presence (forsaken)?

 

[Carbon]

Would it not be a complete abandonment of God's presence (forsaken)?

Agreed.

 

[Carbon]

Here is a good explanation. ​

​

Christ Forsaken​

Joel Beeke

matthew 27:46


"Ay, ay, d'ye know what it was—dying on the cross, forsaken by His Father—d'ye know what it was?... It was damnation—and damnation taken lovingly."
— John "Rabbi" Duncan (1796–1870)

"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?" (Matt. 27:46, KJV).

It is noon, and Jesus has been on the cross for three pain-filled hours. Suddenly, darkness falls on Calvary and "over all the land" (v. 45). By a miraculous act of Almighty God, midday becomes midnight.

This supernatural darkness is a symbol of God's judgment on sin. The physical darkness signals a deeper and more fearsome darkness.

The great High Priest enters Golgotha's Holy of Holies without friends or enemies. The Son of God is alone on the cross for three final hours, enduring what defies our imagination. Experiencing the full brunt of His Father's wrath, Jesus cannot stay silent. He cries out: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

This phrase represents the nadir, the lowest point, of Jesus' sufferings. Here Jesus descends into the essence of hell, the most extreme suffering ever experienced. It is a time so compacted, so infinite, so horrendous as to be incomprehensible and, seemingly, unsustainable.

Jesus' cry does not in any way diminish His deity. 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. The Son lacks the comforts of the Spirit, but He does not lose the holiness of the Spirit. And finally, it does not cause Him to disavow His mission. Both the Father and Son knew from all eternity that Jesus would become the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world (Acts 15:18). It is unthinkable that the Son of God might question what is happening or be perplexed when His Father's loving presence departs.

Jesus is expressing the agony of unanswered supplication (Ps. 22:1–2). Unanswered, Jesus feels forgotten of God. He is also expressing the agony of unbearable stress. It is the kind of "roaring" mentioned in Psalm 22: the roar of desperate agony without rebellion. It is the hellish cry uttered when the undiluted wrath of God overwhelms the soul. It is heart-piercing, heaven-piercing, and hell-piercing. Further, Jesus is expressing the agony of unmitigated sin. All the sins of the elect, and the hell that they deserve for eternity, are laid upon Him. And Jesus is expressing the agony of unassisted solitariness. In His hour of greatest need comes a pain unlike anything the Son has ever experienced: His Father's abandonment. When Jesus most needs encouragement, no voice cries from heaven, "This is my beloved Son." No angel is sent to strengthen Him; no "well done, thou good and faithful servant" resounds in His ears. The women who supported Him are silent. The disciples, cowardly and terrified, have fled. Feeling disowned by all, Jesus endures the way of suffering alone, deserted, and forsaken in utter darkness. Every detail of this horrific abandonment declares the heinous character of our sins!

But why would God bruise His own Son (Isa. 53:10)? The Father is not capricious, malicious, or being merely didactic. The real purpose is penal; it is the just punishment for the sin of Christ's people. "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him" (2 Cor. 5:21).

Christ was made sin for us, dear believers. Among all the mysteries of salvation, this little word "for" exceeds all. This small word illuminates our darkness and unites Jesus Christ with sinners. Christ was acting on behalf of His people as their representative and for their benefit.

With Jesus as our substitute, God's wrath is satisfied and God can justify those who believe in Jesus (Rom. 3:26). Christ's penal suffering, therefore, is vicarious—He suffered on our behalf. He did not simply share our forsakenness, but He saved us from it. He endured it for us, not with us. You are immune to condemnation (Rom. 8:1) and to God's anathema (Gal. 3:13) because Christ bore it for you in that outer darkness. Golgotha secured our immunity, not mere sympathy.

This explains the hours of darkness and the roar of dereliction. God's people experience just a taste of this when they are brought by the Holy Spirit before the Judge of heaven and earth, only to experience that they are not consumed for Christ's sake. They come out of darkness, confessing, "Because Immanuel has descended into the lowest hell for us, God is with us in the darkness, under the darkness, through the darkness—and we are not consumed!"

How stupendous is the love of God! Indeed, our hearts so overflow with love that we respond, "We love him, because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19).


@Arial
Let me know your thoughts on this.

My thoughts?

 

[fastfredy0]

"My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?"​

My guess at an answer:
This refers to Christ's Spiritual Death for He was separated from God - possibly God obscuring his glory from Christ’s human nature, and inflicting his wrath”.

flirting with blasphemy?

Blasphemy - act or offense of speaking sacrilegiously about God or sacred things

Studying God's word leads to the correction of thoughts of God in error. On the other hand, knowing 1,000 things about God rather than 100 things may lead to more errors/blasphemy than you originally had. I.E. you were wrong about 10 of 100 things and did a lot of studying and now you're wrong about 15 of 1000.

Aside: I often pray for forgiveness for things I've thought about God that are in error. But, I don't know what those things are. Hopefully, less things in error than the RCs giggle

 

[Arial]

Here is a good explanation. ​

​

Christ Forsaken​

Joel Beeke

matthew 27:46


"Ay, ay, d'ye know what it was—dying on the cross, forsaken by His Father—d'ye know what it was?... It was damnation—and damnation taken lovingly."
— John "Rabbi" Duncan (1796–1870)

"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?" (Matt. 27:46, KJV).

It is noon, and Jesus has been on the cross for three pain-filled hours. Suddenly, darkness falls on Calvary and "over all the land" (v. 45). By a miraculous act of Almighty God, midday becomes midnight.

This supernatural darkness is a symbol of God's judgment on sin. The physical darkness signals a deeper and more fearsome darkness.

The great High Priest enters Golgotha's Holy of Holies without friends or enemies. The Son of God is alone on the cross for three final hours, enduring what defies our imagination. Experiencing the full brunt of His Father's wrath, Jesus cannot stay silent. He cries out: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

This phrase represents the nadir, the lowest point, of Jesus' sufferings. Here Jesus descends into the essence of hell, the most extreme suffering ever experienced. It is a time so compacted, so infinite, so horrendous as to be incomprehensible and, seemingly, unsustainable.

Jesus' cry does not in any way diminish His deity. 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. The Son lacks the comforts of the Spirit, but He does not lose the holiness of the Spirit. And finally, it does not cause Him to disavow His mission. Both the Father and Son knew from all eternity that Jesus would become the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world (Acts 15:18). It is unthinkable that the Son of God might question what is happening or be perplexed when His Father's loving presence departs.

Jesus is expressing the agony of unanswered supplication (Ps. 22:1–2). Unanswered, Jesus feels forgotten of God. He is also expressing the agony of unbearable stress. It is the kind of "roaring" mentioned in Psalm 22: the roar of desperate agony without rebellion. It is the hellish cry uttered when the undiluted wrath of God overwhelms the soul. It is heart-piercing, heaven-piercing, and hell-piercing. Further, Jesus is expressing the agony of unmitigated sin. All the sins of the elect, and the hell that they deserve for eternity, are laid upon Him. And Jesus is expressing the agony of unassisted solitariness. In His hour of greatest need comes a pain unlike anything the Son has ever experienced: His Father's abandonment. When Jesus most needs encouragement, no voice cries from heaven, "This is my beloved Son." No angel is sent to strengthen Him; no "well done, thou good and faithful servant" resounds in His ears. The women who supported Him are silent. The disciples, cowardly and terrified, have fled. Feeling disowned by all, Jesus endures the way of suffering alone, deserted, and forsaken in utter darkness. Every detail of this horrific abandonment declares the heinous character of our sins!

But why would God bruise His own Son (Isa. 53:10)? The Father is not capricious, malicious, or being merely didactic. The real purpose is penal; it is the just punishment for the sin of Christ's people. "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him" (2 Cor. 5:21).

Christ was made sin for us, dear believers. Among all the mysteries of salvation, this little word "for" exceeds all. This small word illuminates our darkness and unites Jesus Christ with sinners. Christ was acting on behalf of His people as their representative and for their benefit.

With Jesus as our substitute, God's wrath is satisfied and God can justify those who believe in Jesus (Rom. 3:26). Christ's penal suffering, therefore, is vicarious—He suffered on our behalf. He did not simply share our forsakenness, but He saved us from it. He endured it for us, not with us. You are immune to condemnation (Rom. 8:1) and to God's anathema (Gal. 3:13) because Christ bore it for you in that outer darkness. Golgotha secured our immunity, not mere sympathy.

This explains the hours of darkness and the roar of dereliction. God's people experience just a taste of this when they are brought by the Holy Spirit before the Judge of heaven and earth, only to experience that they are not consumed for Christ's sake. They come out of darkness, confessing, "Because Immanuel has descended into the lowest hell for us, God is with us in the darkness, under the darkness, through the darkness—and we are not consumed!"

How stupendous is the love of God! Indeed, our hearts so overflow with love that we respond, "We love him, because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19).


@Arial
Let me know your thoughts on this.

My thoughts?

I have some thoughts on it---all good. There are a couple of things in it I would like to examine with you and others, likely not until the morning though as the day has drained me and I ate too much dinner! I knew I shouldn't have topped it off with a chocolate milkshake! Darn it.

 

[Arial]

Would it not be a complete abandonment of God's presence (forsaken)?

I would agree with that, though, I might alter it slightly to the abandonment of his sustaining care. I say that because if God is everywhere is he not also in hell in some sense? But there is no longer any benevolence of care and concern towards the condemned. And also I would word it in my mind as the "Father's presence". He was with Jesus during his life with us and as one of us, as his Father.

What do you think about that?

 

[atpollard]

deleted.

 

[Arial]

My guess at an answer:
This refers to Christ's Spiritual Death for He was separated from God - possibly God obscuring his glory from Christ’s human nature, and inflicting his wrath”.

Maybe? But if Christ died a spiritual death, wouldn't that make him a sinner? That is what our so called "spiritual death" did. However a couple of things to ponder.

1.Our death that made sinners of us, put us in a postition of being at enmity with God.
2. If Christ died our death in our place, and as you say, it was a spiritual death (as well as a real one (not what you said)) would that put him at enmity with God when he was forsaken?
3. Or, is "substitute" the key word in his atonement?
What I mean by that is, that he suffered as though he were those things, even though he wasn't those thugs in actuality?

Aside: I often pray for forgiveness for things I've thought about God that are in error. But, I don't know what those things are. Hopefully, less things in error than the RCs giggle

Amen to that. I don't know all of what I have thought or attributed to God that is mistaken, but having begun as an Arminnianist and even worse, a Charismatic A'ist, I know a lot of them. And cringe at the thought.

 

[Arial]

The great High Priest enters Golgotha's Holy of Holies without friends or enemies. The Son of God is alone on the cross for three final hours, enduring what defies our imagination. Experiencing the full brunt of His Father's wrath, Jesus cannot stay silent. He cries out: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

As an aside: The three hours was a mercy in and of itself. The usual time of death from crucifixion is 6 hours to 4 days.

Jesus' cry does not in any way diminish His deity. 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. The Son lacks the comforts of the Spirit, but He does not lose the holiness of the Spirit.

I am not sure how to respond to this, as I can see both its merits and the possibility that it is not fully accurate. And admittedly, we are discussing something that may not be possible to state with full accuracy, as there is mystery to it.

It may be that his divine nature could be removed and was intended to be at that point, as a temporary forsaking, without dividing him, but rather a stepping away. The two natures are distinct, after all, not mixed. And for the single purpose of making the experience of his flesh, as one of us, fully as ours (the believer) would be without the grace and mercy of the substitutionary atonement. I cannot see how that would be dividing the Trinity.

Otherwise, if his divine nature remained with his human nature at his death, would not divinity also experience death (which of course is impossible, therefore, my questions)? All of what I have said, doesn't sound right to me, but is that because it is something I really cannot imagine?

As to the Holy Spirit not being detached from him, it is my understanding that during his earthly mission, even though he possessed the divine nature in equal measure to his human nature (never mixed), it was the Spirit indwelling him and without measure, doing the work of the Spirit, that was necessary for him to complete his mission. So could Father and Holy Spirit step aside, so to speak, for the purpose of full substitution, and return to raise him in victory?

However, it is said in Scripture that Jesus himself was also involved in his resurrection.

I may have just opened up a can of worms and in a place we may not have finite access to.

 

[Arial]

With Jesus as our substitute, God's wrath is satisfied and God can justify those who believe in Jesus (Rom. 3:26). Christ's penal suffering, therefore, is vicarious—He suffered on our behalf. He did not simply share our forsakenness, but He saved us from it. He endured it for us, not with us. You are immune to condemnation (Rom. 8:1) and to God's anathema (Gal. 3:13) because Christ bore it for you in that outer darkness. Golgotha secured our immunity, not mere sympathy.

I agree with this. But I also believe that there was a true, if temporary, a true and actual forsakeness. He had completed his mission of perfect righteousness. And the Father did not deliver him from suffering and death as though he had failed and was a sinner. There was no comfort, though there was mercy in the comparative shortness of the suffering. He felt exactly what we deserve to experience on judgment day and would (but for his grace and this work of Christ).

That to him in his perfect righteousness, obedient even to the point of the cross, and as one of us, forsaken.

I guess the details posed in my OP questions don't matter. If someone has them figured out, or a way in which to express them, I , for one, would like to hear.

Your post Carbon of Joel Beeke, is possibly all we need to know. Thanks for it.

 

[makesends]

I know discussions have been had on whether or not God really forsook Jesus here or whether it was just a reference to his intense suffering that felt like a forsaking. I tend to believe it was a genuine forsaking, temporary though it was, because he was taking our punishment upon himself. And our punishment is being forsaken by God.

But two questions occurred to me from another thread on a different subject, that I would like help with in pondering the answers to.

Was that forsaking the divine nature leaving Jesus?
or
Was it the Holy Spirit departing from his indwelling in Jesus?

Or, third question:

Neither of those, but something else?
Is entertaining either of the first two flirting with blasphemy?

I think it is worth bearing in mind that we don't yet even know the facts as to our own single-nature. Well, apparently single. We arrange noble-sounding conclusions but we really don't know. So how much less can we know about the hypostatic union?

I think Jesus underwent every bit of the penalty we deserved to go through. How it was done, I don't know. Years past, I always tended more toward the idea that his 3 days had something to do with it, than that intensity of the moment of his passing did. Now, I'm not sure that the 3 days has nothing to do with it, but the idea of intensity, rather than time-spent-in-hell, seems to me more accurate. Certainly, there have been some who underwent worse physical torture than he did, so I don't think it was the pre-death physical 'dying' process that paid it, which some people include as part of him paying for our sin. But that intensity of his God forsaking him may well have been.

And, yes, I do believe the Father forsook him. Just what that means, or in what way, I don't know. I instinctively parallel with it the idea of believers who, by sin, go "out of fellowship" rather than losing their salvation. I don't think God ever lost control, there; he continued to uphold existence and all its related principles and facts, as always. But the Son of God, whose human mind knew the eternal fellowship of the Trinity, was suddenly alone for the first time. And not only alone, but under the fierce retribution of his God against sin. He became sin —was identified with sin. He who had never sinned, became guilty [in our place] for the first time. The pure lamb ironically was the recipient of God's burning purity upon him.

There's almost no end of tangents this can inspire. What I point out there can be taken by both annihilationists and those believing in literal eternal torment to support their positions, the former focusing on that burning purity and the latter on the hypostatic union as Jesus' power of resurrection over the hell that none of the reprobate can escape. I can't be sure that my human view of non-time is valid, because even it depends on, or is defined by, time, to produce antithesis. But the idea of that punishment being a matter of intensity, rather than 'unending torment' would put me in some kind of annihilationist's view, but for that notion of timelessness, where the framework of "before, during and after" negates notions of "after it is all said and done, they are no more".

This is going long, so I'll stop. But there is one more thing I very much want to point out. But it will wait.

 

[Eleanor]

I would agree with that, though, I might alter it slightly to the abandonment of his sustaining care. I say that because if God is everywhere is he not also in hell in some sense? But there is no longer any benevolence of care and concern towards the condemned. And also I would word it in my mind as the "Father's presence". He was with Jesus during his life with us and as one of us, as his Father.

What do you think about that?

Sounds good to me. . .it would be unbearable enough with the absence of any benevolene of care and concern towards them, but there is also the presence of wrath towards them.

 

[Eleanor]

I know discussions have been had on whether or not God really forsook Jesus here or whether it was just a reference to his intense suffering that felt like a forsaking. I tend to believe it was a genuine forsaking, temporary though it was, because he was taking our punishment upon himself. And our punishment is being forsaken by God.
But two questions occurred to me from another thread on a different subject, that I would like help with in pondering the answers to.
Was that forsaking the divine nature leaving Jesus?
or

Was it the Holy Spirit departing from his indwelling in Jesus?
Or, third question:
Neither of those, but something else?
Is entertaining either of the first two flirting with blasphemy?

It was both a perceived removal of God's presence and face-to-face relationship, accompanied with the pouring out of divine wrath.

 

[makesends]

I know discussions have been had on whether or not God really forsook Jesus here or whether it was just a reference to his intense suffering that felt like a forsaking. I tend to believe it was a genuine forsaking, temporary though it was, because he was taking our punishment upon himself. And our punishment is being forsaken by God.

But two questions occurred to me from another thread on a different subject, that I would like help with in pondering the answers to.

Was that forsaking the divine nature leaving Jesus?
or
Was it the Holy Spirit departing from his indwelling in Jesus?

Or, third question:

Neither of those, but something else?
Is entertaining either of the first two flirting with blasphemy?

As an MK (Missionary Kid) I noticed whenever we were on furlough in The States, that churches would always have a 'new and better' development of thought/ terminology concerning this or that doctrine or subject from Scripture, or about the Christian life. Rather interestingly to me, in that traveling from one country to another I was given the unique point of view that noticed those changes in apparent-orthodoxy showing up in the foreign country 3 or 4 years after I saw it in The States. Most of the themes fell by the wayside, or lost their 'newness' and delight, while some, like what has been termed, "Discipleship", were longer-lasting and some became almost cult-ish icons.

But one thing that has seemed to me on a steady increase (granted, it may simply be that I notice it increasingly) is the assumption that our thinking is valid in and of itself. We amateur theologians (and in this I include the professional doctors of theology and philosophy) come up with a combination of words that somehow satisfies us and rings true with others. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but that we should remain skeptical of our apprehending to these things. We too easily accept as fact, our own (or another's), way of putting it. (Ha! Look, for example, at the feeling of "rings true" as assurance concerning the accuracy of whatever it is that rings true!)

And I don't mean to speak against the OP's questions, but consider how many things are brought into the arena by those questions, that we simply don't have the means to comprehensively define. What, exactly, is meant by, "Was that forsaking the divine nature leaving Jesus?" We can only loosely deal with that question. I don't think his divine nature died, but I don't think it ever left him, either. How not? I don't know. Tell me exactly, comprehensively, intelligibly, what the Hypostatic Union is. You can't. I can't. But the answer to that question depends on it. Same thing goes for the other two questions.

And no, I don't mean that we shouldn't ask the questions. Nor even to fear blasphemy, but to be very careful to know where we are making up things, instead of qualifying our speculations as speculations.

BTW, about the blasphemy thing, I've pretty much always taken the mercy and patience of God concerning his children, combined with the severity of God's purity and truth, as comforting, concerning our constant ability to 'get it wrong'. As a paralleling example, I don't think that the things that the Redeemed can think of, the anger and rebellion they may feel toward God sometimes, and the things they may even say out loud, such as has commonly been thought of as the unforgiveable sin, is taken as seriously by God as we take them to be —or rather, I'd say, that God considers us ignorant children. It is WE who take ourselves more seriously than is deserved, yet take sin not as seriously as God does.

 

[makesends]

Here is a good explanation. ​

​

Christ Forsaken​

Joel Beeke

matthew 27:46


"Ay, ay, d'ye know what it was—dying on the cross, forsaken by His Father—d'ye know what it was?... It was damnation—and damnation taken lovingly."
— John "Rabbi" Duncan (1796–1870)

"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?" (Matt. 27:46, KJV).

It is noon, and Jesus has been on the cross for three pain-filled hours. Suddenly, darkness falls on Calvary and "over all the land" (v. 45). By a miraculous act of Almighty God, midday becomes midnight.

This supernatural darkness is a symbol of God's judgment on sin. The physical darkness signals a deeper and more fearsome darkness.

The great High Priest enters Golgotha's Holy of Holies without friends or enemies. The Son of God is alone on the cross for three final hours, enduring what defies our imagination. Experiencing the full brunt of His Father's wrath, Jesus cannot stay silent. He cries out: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

This phrase represents the nadir, the lowest point, of Jesus' sufferings. Here Jesus descends into the essence of hell, the most extreme suffering ever experienced. It is a time so compacted, so infinite, so horrendous as to be incomprehensible and, seemingly, unsustainable.

Jesus' cry does not in any way diminish His deity. 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. The Son lacks the comforts of the Spirit, but He does not lose the holiness of the Spirit. And finally, it does not cause Him to disavow His mission. Both the Father and Son knew from all eternity that Jesus would become the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world (Acts 15:18). It is unthinkable that the Son of God might question what is happening or be perplexed when His Father's loving presence departs.

Jesus is expressing the agony of unanswered supplication (Ps. 22:1–2). Unanswered, Jesus feels forgotten of God. He is also expressing the agony of unbearable stress. It is the kind of "roaring" mentioned in Psalm 22: the roar of desperate agony without rebellion. It is the hellish cry uttered when the undiluted wrath of God overwhelms the soul. It is heart-piercing, heaven-piercing, and hell-piercing. Further, Jesus is expressing the agony of unmitigated sin. All the sins of the elect, and the hell that they deserve for eternity, are laid upon Him. And Jesus is expressing the agony of unassisted solitariness. In His hour of greatest need comes a pain unlike anything the Son has ever experienced: His Father's abandonment. When Jesus most needs encouragement, no voice cries from heaven, "This is my beloved Son." No angel is sent to strengthen Him; no "well done, thou good and faithful servant" resounds in His ears. The women who supported Him are silent. The disciples, cowardly and terrified, have fled. Feeling disowned by all, Jesus endures the way of suffering alone, deserted, and forsaken in utter darkness. Every detail of this horrific abandonment declares the heinous character of our sins!

But why would God bruise His own Son (Isa. 53:10)? The Father is not capricious, malicious, or being merely didactic. The real purpose is penal; it is the just punishment for the sin of Christ's people. "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him" (2 Cor. 5:21).

Christ was made sin for us, dear believers. Among all the mysteries of salvation, this little word "for" exceeds all. This small word illuminates our darkness and unites Jesus Christ with sinners. Christ was acting on behalf of His people as their representative and for their benefit.

With Jesus as our substitute, God's wrath is satisfied and God can justify those who believe in Jesus (Rom. 3:26). Christ's penal suffering, therefore, is vicarious—He suffered on our behalf. He did not simply share our forsakenness, but He saved us from it. He endured it for us, not with us. You are immune to condemnation (Rom. 8:1) and to God's anathema (Gal. 3:13) because Christ bore it for you in that outer darkness. Golgotha secured our immunity, not mere sympathy.

This explains the hours of darkness and the roar of dereliction. God's people experience just a taste of this when they are brought by the Holy Spirit before the Judge of heaven and earth, only to experience that they are not consumed for Christ's sake. They come out of darkness, confessing, "Because Immanuel has descended into the lowest hell for us, God is with us in the darkness, under the darkness, through the darkness—and we are not consumed!"

How stupendous is the love of God! Indeed, our hearts so overflow with love that we respond, "We love him, because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19).


@Arial
Let me know your thoughts on this.

My thoughts?

I'm not going to say he is wrong —after all, what do I know— but he seems to me to put what seems to him to fit, as though it was what Scripture means by this or that. For example, "This explains the hours of darkness and the roar of dereliction". Well, no, I doubt very much it explains it. It may help understand it, or help us to see the immensity of what happened there, but, "explain it"? —No.

If someone else was to write on the same subject for the same reasons, believing the same basics, with that much self-assured understanding, they would not write the same thing. He's only giving some good thoughts.

 

[makesends]

Sounds good to me. . .it would be unbearable enough with the absence of any benevolene of care and concern towards them, but there is also the presence of wrath towards them.

True that! "...the presence of wrath towards them". One thing that has bothered me since my first years in Bible College, was the notion expressed as "Hell is only the absence of God", or "Hell is being separated from God". It's bad enough that that presents no threat to the mind of the reprobate —in fact, it alleviates their fear of condemnation, giving them hope of their sin eventually being conscience-free— though admittedly they haven't thought it through just what is implied in 'separation from God', they being ignorant of just what God is. But what is worse is that in that mode of expression it frankly opposes the words and themes of Scripture, that God is pure and before him no impurity can stand.

 

[Arial]

Sounds good to me. . .it would be unbearable enough with the absence of any benevolene of care and concern towards them, but there is also the presence of wrath towards them.

Yes. Although, since we live and move and have our being in him, are utterly dependent upon him for everything, and God being who he is, there being no benevolence or care from him is his wrath. Or at least a part of it. And yet, there is nothing capricious, or undeserved about it. It is justice, and ironically, a very aspect of his holiness.

 

[Arial]

I think it is worth bearing in mind that we don't yet even know the facts as to our own single-nature. Well, apparently single. We arrange noble-sounding conclusions but we really don't know. So how much less can we know about the hypostatic union?

If the hypostatic union is going to be a doctrine, and if it is arrived at in order to come against, and weed out, things that are opposed to what is revealed in Scripture, it has to be put into words, and very careful words, as much as is humanly possible.

Mostly we arrive at what it is, and that it is, by ruling out what it cannot be.

Jesus cannot be only human, created as all other humans are because:
1.God declares that HE will save. Not a creature, either by their own will or righteousness, or by another creature.
2. Jesus holds the titles of God and does the things only God can do. There is only one God, one Judge, one King.
3.He has authority over everything in heaven and earth and under the earth, something attributed to only God and never to a creature.
4.There is only one God, not two or three so the relationship must be a union of essence.

There is more to it than that of course in the details. That is just a brief representation of what Jesus cannot be---only human---and the way of what he is, gets expressed in what is known as the hypostatic union because it has to be known as something.

Certainly, there have been some who underwent worse physical torture than he did, so I don't think it was the pre-death physical 'dying' process that paid it, which some people include as part of him paying for our sin. But that intensity of his God forsaking him may well have been.

It is part of him paying for our sin because death is the penalty for sin. Crucifixion is one of the most horrific ways to die. Read about it sometime if you haven't. But part of the shame of crucifixion is definitely part of the substitution. It was reserved for the worst of criminals (sinners). I agree that God forsaking him was not only equal to but likely worse, than what a sinner will feel when facing God's wrath. I say worse, because he was innocent.

 

[makesends]

If the hypostatic union is going to be a doctrine, and if it is arrived at in order to come against, and weed out, things that are opposed to what is revealed in Scripture, it has to be put into words, and very careful words, as much as is humanly possible.

Mostly we arrive at what it is, and that it is, by ruling out what it cannot be.

Jesus cannot be only human, created as all other humans are because:
1.God declares that HE will save. Not a creature, either by their own will or righteousness, or by another creature.
2. Jesus holds the titles of God and does the things only God can do. There is only one God, one Judge, one King.
3.He has authority over everything in heaven and earth and under the earth, something attributed to only God and never to a creature.
4.There is only one God, not two or three so the relationship must be a union of essence.

There is more to it than that of course in the details. That is just a brief representation of what Jesus cannot be---only human---and the way of what he is, gets expressed in what is known as the hypostatic union because it has to be known as something.

It is part of him paying for our sin because death is the penalty for sin. Crucifixion is one of the most horrific ways to die. Read about it sometime if you haven't. But part of the shame of crucifixion is definitely part of the substitution. It was reserved for the worst of criminals (sinners). I agree that God forsaking him was not only equal to but likely worse, than what a sinner will feel when facing God's wrath. I say worse, because he was innocent.

Agreed. That's why we have creeds and confessions and well-stated doctrines. Kind of like how Scripture keeps doctrines under its authority, the way doctrines are historically, carefully, stated keeps our wandering definitions and concepts in check. But they don't define the facts very well—that is, they don't begin to exhaustively describe anything; they mostly state things so that we can have some valid concepts, and so that we can reject home-made un-orthodox notions.

The Hypostatic Union is very carefully stated so that we don't go wild and heretical; no matter how well meant, private interpretation produces words that are too easily taken to imply false things. It's always easier to say what the truth is not, than to say what it is.

BTW, I know a little how bad his crucifixion was, at least from a human standpoint. I'm just saying that the horror that it was, it doesn't seem to me reasonable to suppose that his physical suffering and death was all that was involved in God performing justice upon Jesus in our place. Conversely, he didn't just take a "dirt nap" as mockers like to say. His suffering and shame and mental/emotional anguish were not without meaning.