God Abandoning God: What Could Seem Stranger?

(Audio: English)

SUMMARY: Jesus, as both fully God and fully human, took upon Himself the sin of the world and became the sacrifice for all sin for all time. The greatest trauma for Jesus was the momentary loss of communion with His Heavenly Father. When Jesus cried out on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” it was because He was experiencing ultimate abandonment - the sense of being separated from God. However, because of Jesus’ sacrifice, we can receive and apply it to regain our eternal connection to God, our Father. Calvary is about connection, reconnection, and reestablishing our communion with God. This is why we celebrate Good Friday and Easter!

God’s perspective and faith are difficult enough to understand. When we read that Jesus, who was God in human flesh, often known as “The Word made Flesh” or “The Son of God,” took upon Himself the collective sin of the whole world, we know that Jesus became the sacrifice for all sin for all time. God Almighty, the Father, in all of His Holiness, could not look upon the sin of the world that His Son was carrying. For a brief moment in time, God, the Father, abandoned His Son, as He became the sin sacrifice, the spotless Lamb of God. The knowledge of looming separation from His Father, was the greatest reason that Jesus agonized in prayer the night before His crucifixion in the garden of Gethsemane.

Even though Jesus was fully God, and fully human, I do not believe that the critical nature of His anguished prayer in the Garden, to the point that His capillaries dilated, and He sweat drops of blood, was caused only by knowledge of the scourging, beatings, and even death that lay before Him. His greatest trauma was the awareness of the momentary loss of communion with His Heavenly Father.