"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Matt 27:46 (NIV). All Christians recognize these words. They were spoken by Jesus when He was on the cross and God had turned His back on His Son. For the first time ever Jesus Christ was alone! Alone on the cross, in front of people who hated Him and weighted down by the full burden of all of humanity’s sins on His shoulders. Completely and totally, separated from God, His Father.
Have you ever felt like crying out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Have you ever had those moments in your life when you felt like God had turned His back on you? I have. Occasionally, I go through short periods of time when I don’t feel God’s presence and I think that God has turned away from me. Then I realize that God has not turned away from me, that I have turned away from Him.
For years, I thought that the reason God turned His back on Jesus was because He just could not watch His only begotten Son die. Then I realized, well duhhhh.....God could not look upon sin and Jesus had become sin for our sakes, that’s why God turned away. When we go through those periods in our life that we feel like God has turned from us, it’s not because He can’t look at us because of the sin in our life (Jesus already paid the price for that), it is that our sin is clouding our eyes and keeping us from seeing God and causing us to turn away from Him.
When I go through those separation times in my life, I’ve learned to recognize them for what they are.....something that I am doing that is causing me to turn from God. Often I find that the culprit causing this gulf between us is because I have moved my focus from Jesus to the little busy things in life that I allow to overwhelm me. When I feel this separation of total emptiness and think to myself that God has turned away from me, that is when I start to examine myself.
Over the past year, I’ve read the Bible more, I’ve prayed more, I’ve fellowshipped with my church family more and I’ve noticed that when I allow life to impact me more than these things, that is when I feel the gulf between myself and God. I realize that I am spending more time worrying about me, myself and I than I am thinking about, praying to and studying God’s Word.
During those times when you find yourself saying “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” Just realize that it is not God turning away from you, but it is you turning away from God. God loves you more than anything, you are the most important thing to Him and He wants more than anything to have the same personal relationship with you that He does with His Son Jesus! You are His child but it is up to you to completely and totally surrender to Him.
During those times examine your life and see where you’ve caused the disconnect, maybe you’ve forgotten to read the Bible lately, maybe you’ve been missing your quiet time in the Lord’s presence, maybe you’ve allowed life to interfere....whatever it is, know that it is you who has turned, not God. Always remember, “God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.’” Hebrews 13:5b.
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Why exactly can't God look upon sin?
ReplyDeleteAlternatively, continuity issues arise here. "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you." But here you say that God averted his eyes from Jesus because Jesus had become sin. Your conclusion from this event was that it is us who have turned our eyes from God? So... wouldn't it have been Jesus who looked away from God?
I understand what you are thinking, but you are confusing God and Jesus with humans. When Jesus came to earth, He came specifically to sacrifice Himself for us. He made Himself a living sacrifice so that you and I could have a personal relationship with God. Humans may be at the top of the “feeding” chain here on earth, but when it comes to the Trinity (God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit) we’re like a candle blowing in the wind.
ReplyDeleteWhen Jesus was dying on the cross, He became total sin. Upon His shoulders was placed all of humanities sins, past, present and future. Jesus was fully human and He was also fully God (John 1:14) and as God He chose to leave heaven and came to earth as a human solely to sacrifice Himself for all of us (John 3:16). As God (the Son), He had the perfect relationship with God (the Father) from the beginning. God, the Father could not look at sin, because He is perfect and therefore, He had to turn His back on Jesus who was now total sin (Habakkuk 1:13) (Mark 15:33). Jesus could not bare the thought of His Father turning away from Him because He had always been in total communion and a complete relationship with His Father. Because Jesus had to experience everything that humans do (Hebrews 4:15), He also had to experience total isolation from His Father. When a human dies without accepting Christ as their personal savior, they will live eternally separated and isolated from God. So Jesus had to experience this. When Jesus was on the cross, there was so much more going on, that we can’t possibly understand, only the Trinity can understand.
When Jesus tells us “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” He means it. When we accept Christ as our savior, God (the Holy Spirit) comes to live within us forever (John 14:16-18). He will never separate Himself from us, He will never leave us. We are the ones that do the separating. As humans, when things start going good for us, we forget about God. We get selfish and think that we are in charge and we decide that we don’t need God, so we turn our back on Him, get caught up in our so busy lives and forget about God....that is until a crises hits and we need Him. God is not a statue that we take out of a drawer, dust it off and place it on a shelf whenever we need Him. Jesus never once turned His eyes away from God because He was God and He would never sever that relationship. Humans are easily distracted, we are so easily swayed, we lose our focus, and we are the ones that turn our eyes away from God. Humans were created by God solely to have a personal relationship with Him. That’s all that He wants from us. It is up to each of us to choose to accept that relationship or not. When we accept Christ as our personal savior, our sins are covered by the sacrifice of Jesus and when God looks at us, He sees us through the blood of Jesus. (1 John 1:7).
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