Pastor’s Podium

We are in our fourth week of Lenten season and I wanted to focus on Jesus’ fourth saying on the cross. Because of the physical rigors of crucifixion, Christ spoke only with great difficulty during His final hours on the cross. Scripture records only seven brief sayings from the Savior on the cross, but every one of them reveals that Christ remained sovereignly in control, even as He died. Each of Jesus’ sayings was rich with significance.

The seven sayings of Christ in order are a plea for forgiveness, a promise of salvation, a provision for His mother, a petition to the Father, a pleading for relief, a proclamation of victory and the seventh saying is a prayer of consummation.

Christ’s fourth saying from the cross is by far the richest with mystery and meaning. Matthew writes, “Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?’” (Matthew 27:45-46).

It might seem at first glance that Christ was merely reciting the words of Psalm 22:1 (“My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me, and from the words of My groaning?”). But given the fact that all of Psalm 22 is an extended prophecy about the crucifixion, it might be better to see the psalm as a prophetic anticipation of the cry of Jesus’ heart as He bore the sins of the world on the cross. It was no mere recitation.

As Christ hung there, He was bearing the sins of the world. He was dying as a substitute for others. Jesus took on the guilt of their sins, and He was suffering the punishment for those sins on their behalf. The very essence of that punishment was the out pouring of God’s wrath against sinners. In some mysterious way during those awful hours on the cross, the Father poured out the full measure of His wrath against sin, and the recipient of the wrath was God’s own Son!

In this lies the true meaning of the cross. Those who try to explain the atoning work of Christ in any other terms inevitably end up nullifying the truth of Christ’s atonement altogether. Christ was not merely providing an example for us to follow. He was no mere martyr being sacrificed to the wickedness of the men who crucified Him. He wasn’t merely making a public display so that people would see the awfulness of sin. He wasn’t offering a ransom price to Satan — or any of the various explanations that some have tried to suggest over the years.

Here’s what was happening on the cross: God was punishing His own Son as if He had committed every wicked deed done by every sinner who would ever believe. He did it so that He could forgive and treat those redeemed ones as if they had lived Christ’s perfect life of righteousness.

Scripture teaches this explicitly: “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:4-5). “He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief…[in order to] make His soul an offering for sin” (vv. 9-10). “Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself ” (Daniel 9:26).”What the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3). “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’)” (Galatians 3:13).“Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh” (1 Peter 3:18).

This was the true measure of Christ’s suffering on the cross. The physical pains of crucifixion — dreadful as they were — were nothing compared to the wrath of the Father against Him. The anticipation of this was what caused Him to sweat blood in the garden. This was why He had looked ahead to the cross with such horror. We cannot begin to fathom all that was involved in paying the price of our sin.