HAVE YOU LEFT ME?

At about three, Jesus cried out with a loud shout, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani,” which means, “My God, my God, why have you left me?” Matthew 27:46

As we visualize our dying Savior on the cross and imagine His cry, it might draw from us several emotions. When I was young, I heard from the pulpit that God looked away from His Son because He could not look on sin. As a child, we believe in our naivety what we hear; we trust these things to be true. However, when we get older, we begin to question statements such as this from the pulpit.

Jesus was God, but He was fully human, so it begs us to ask this question, “How can God turn His back on Himself?” Jesus was flesh and blood, coming to our level, fully immersed in our experience of human existence. He did not know all things, but He most certainly lived within His Father, yet feeling all our humanness. Sometimes, during great difficulties, our human emotions make us cry out to God, “Where are you, God?” The reality is, God never leaves us. We are the ones to hide from God in shame. 

Jesus was merely crying for us and quoting scripture as He so often did from Psalm 22:1, “My God! My God, why have you left me all alone? Why are you so far from saving me—so far from my anguished groans?” However, when you read the rest of Psalm 22, you will learn in verse 24, “Because he didn’t despise or detest the suffering of the one who suffered—he didn’t hide his face from me. No, he listened when I cried out to him for help.” The Father experienced torture through His Son. God never looked away from His self-representation in His Son. The Holy Spirit was also in the whole equation. 

God most certainly did look on our sins, and it was for that very reason He devised a plan for the cure. Although the book of Habakkuk says that God’s pure eyes cannot look on evil, in reality, there is nothing that God cannot do. We must read scripture in its full context. The final words of Jesus were, “Into Your hands, I commit my Spirit” bears the proof that God was there in His Son. God looks on us with pity with all our battle scars of sin. He does not look away, but says, “Come to me, sinner, because I love you.”

I can’t thank and praise You enough, Father God, for looking at this filthy sinner that I am and still loving me.  Amen.