Good Friday Meditation

Matthew 27:46 NASB95

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?”

Governments have executed a lot people, including innocent men. Why was this different? Religious teachers have risen up all throughout history. Some of their movements endure to this day. What makes this teacher any different? If all that happened on Good Friday was a religious teacher being executed for crimes he didn’t commit, then Jesus’ crucifixion was unremarkable. Certainly not worth recording in the history books, let alone commemorating 2000 years later.

But two unbelievable and unprecedented things happened on the cross in the 3 hours of darkness before the death of Jesus: God poured out his justice on an innocent man, and the eternal Son of God was denied the loving fellowship with his Father he had enjoyed for all eternity. Jesus endured excruciating physical suffering, but his spiritual and emotional anguish is beyond compare.

His words point his hearers back to Psalm 22, where his forefather David foreshadows this very moment. David complains that God has forsaken him, that he cries out and God does not answer. What David knew in part Jesus asks in full.

This question comes not out of confusion. He knows why. He asked His Father to take this cup from him the night before, but also insisted that His will be done. He does not seek clarity from his Father, but gives an expression of unparalleled suffering at the withdrawal of his loving embrace.

He feels the distance. For the first time in his life, he doesn’t address his Father, but only his God.

Jesus was forsaken by his Father, which means both deprivation of all God’s good gifts, and bearing the full weight of God’s just wrath and condemnation against sin. Think about that. We can’t even imagine that—except we can. We’re actually familiar with the concept, and the Bible even has a word for it. Hell.

Jesus endured the horrors of hell on the cross. This is a singular moment in history when the innocent Judge served the sentence for the rightfully condemned.

Jesus was tempted in every way that we are; there’s nothing we can experienced that he hasn’t experienced first and walks through with us, including death itself. But this cry also tells us that Jesus experienced things that we never will.

Jesus endured hell to bring us to heaven. He bore a guilty sentence so that we would be declared righteous. He entered the darkness so that we may live in the light. He cried out to God and received silence so that we never will. He experienced wrath so that all we know is grace. He became sin who knew no sin so that we might become the righteousness of God.

So what’s different about Jesus’ death compared to all the others?

Jesus was forsaken by God so that we never will be.