Considerations on My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?

On Good Friday, I was asked to share with the congregation of my church on the passage of Jesus on the cross when he says My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? This was part of a Good Friday service in which the lessons were drawn from the Seven Last Words of Christ.

This line comes from Matthew 27:46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" that is, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Following are my thoughts as delivered.


"Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?"

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"  These words are uttered by our Lord as he hangs on the cross, suffering awful physical pain from crucifixion and the events over the last day.

Just days earlier, crowds had turned out to welcomed him into Jerusalem. He had ridden into town like a king, riding on a donkey. The adoring crowds laid garments before him, waving palm branches. “Hosanna!” they cried. “Blessed be the king of Israel!” “Praise to God in the highest!”

His arrival in Jerusalem had turned the town upside-down. Everyone was talking about the king who had arrived. The crowds followed him everywhere he went, clinging to his every word. Every morning they would gather in the temple to listen to his teaching. The entire town, filled with Jews coming to celebrate the Passover, was paying attention to this man Jesus and his message.

Religious leaders demanded he silence the people. They demanded answers to their questions, hoping to catch him in a trap. They tried to lead the people away from Jesus.  Nevertheless, through all of this, the crowds kept gathering and those who opposed him were silenced by his answers.

Then one night, while in the garden of Gethsemane at the Mount of Olives, he was taken away in the darkness by men bearing weapons, betrayed by one of his own disciples. Most of his other disciples would flee in fear, one of his closest even publicly denying he even knew Jesus. He was brought before the religious rulers, Herod the tetrarch of Galilee, and Pontius Pilate the prefect of Judaea. Despite being given a mockery of a court trial, he was found guilty of no crime, yet sentenced to be punished by being lashed. He was tied to a post and beaten by whips until the near the point of death. His back was torn to shreds with wounds deep into the muscle. He was untied and left lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood. The guards ridiculed him by dressing him up in a robe, making him hold a scepter, and fastening a crown made of thorny sticks and placing it on his head. They then beat him and spit in his face while mocking and insulting him.

The crowds, those same voices who just days earlier had chanted “Hosanna in the highest!” at his arrival now cried “crucify him! Crucify him!” Pilate responded to their cries, “I have examined him in your presence and have found no basis for your charges against him. Neither has Herod, for he sent him back to us; as you can see, he has done nothing to deserve death.” But their pleas continued. "Away with this man!” they shouted. “Release to us instead the murderer!” Pilate grew fearful because of the crowd. Having turned against Jesus, the cries of the crowd compelled Pilate to sentence Jesus to the cross, the man who Pilate said he could find no wrong doing in.

After enduring the flogging that brought him close to death, he was forced to carry his own cross through town until he could bear it no longer. He was taken outside of town, on the hill of Calvary.

He was then placed on the cross. Nails were pierced through his wrists and his feet. He was then lifted up, naked before all, under a sign King of the Jews. The weight of his entire body hanging on these nails would cause excruciating pain. The very word excruciating was created to describe this pain and literally means “a pain like the pain of crucifixion.” His legs are bent at 45 degrees, causing them to become extremely fatigued and overcome with cramps. The weight of his body causes his shoulders, elbows, and wrists to become dislocated. To take a breath, he would have to lift his body up, each breath only continuing the agonizing torture he was enduring. In his chest, the sac around his heart was filling with fluid, compressing his heart. Indeed, Christ was living out the very words David wrote in the 22^nd Psalm, I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted within me.

And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, Eh-loy-ee Eh-loy-ee, la-ma sa-buck-tani' that is, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"  

My god, my God, why have you forsaken Jesus?

1500 years earlier, at this very same time of the year, hundreds of thousands of Israeli slaves were about to have their last night in Egypt. As God had commanded, Moses had the people slaughter the Passover lamb. They then dipped hyssop into the blood and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the doorframe. When the Lord came through the land to strike down the Egyptians that very night, he would see the blood on the doorframe and would pass over that doorway, and not permit the angel of death to enter their houses and strike them down. When the angel of death came that night, the death in Egypt was so great, Pharaoh and the Egyptians pleaded for the Israelites to leave. The lamb was slayed so that the people might live.

For 400 years the people of Israel were in a land that was not theirs, a slave to another people, awaiting deliverance by Yahweh. He heard their cries and had not forsaken them. That very night, through the blood of the Passover lamb, Yahweh delivered his people as his wrath was poured out on Egypt because of Pharaoh. The blood of the Passover lamb was shed for deliverance from God’s wrath for those people who God had chosen to save.

In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This was the one thing which God had warned them not to do. Through their willful disobedience to God, sin entered into the world, man fell into sin, and Adam and Eve were banished from the garden where they enjoyed relationship with the Lord. For this sin, we were all born under the condemnation of God. Indeed all of us have freely chosen to sin through willful disobedience to God and are well deserving of this condemnation.

Ever since the fall, all creation has cried to God to restore the relationship. God’s faithful people offered animal sacrifices, but these could not remove the guilt from the heart of the sinner. God’s people continued to cry out for salvation from sin.

But the condemnation of sin is not easily removed from before the eyes of the most righteous God. His wrath for transgressions against him must be satisfied. Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness and whose blood should be shed except the one who committed the sin. For man, there was no hope for forgiveness, only death because of their sins.

But Yahweh heard their cries and had not forsaken them. Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Lamb of God, came in the flesh. Just like the Passover lamb 1500 years earlier, Jesus was slaughtered, his blood poured out. His blood was placed on those who believe, and when God comes in final judgment, those who are marked with the blood of the lamb will be passed over, and the angel of death will bring no harm.

He suffered humiliation on the cross and died through one of the most cruelest forms of death man has ever invented. His last day was filled with great physical suffering. He saw the crowds who welcomed him into town call for him to be taken from town and killed. He was abandoned by God the Father, endured the wrath of God, and allowed to suffer unto death. And all of it was so that those who had sinned against God could be forgiven and come to God. Jesus was forsaken so that you could be cherished. He was killed so that you might live.

My god, my God, why have you forsaken Jesus? So that I might be remembered and forgiven. I know no way to thank you, my dear Savior.