The Forsaken Cry and the Thirst of Christ During Jesus’ Seven Last Sayings

We are continuing our meditation on Christ's last seven sayings as His life gradually ebbed away on the cross.

4) The fourth saying Jesus spoke was, "'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?' - which means, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'" (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34). If Jesus had never sinned as the Scriptures teach, and He was completely pure and innocent of all charges of blasphemy brought against Him, why would Christ feel forsaken by God near the hour of His death?

The apostle Paul wrote that the Lord Jesus was our substitutionary sacrifice: “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Just as the high priest, on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16), laid his hands on a sacrificial animal to make atonement for sin, praying for the transference of the nation's sins to the animal, now, in the same way, God transferred the sin of the world to Jesus. The Lord became the sin-bearer for the entire human race. Scripture tells us that God is too pure to look upon evil (Habakkuk 1:13), so fellowship between the Son of God and the Father was broken as the Father turned away from Christ for the first time in eternity. Christ came to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. As death approached, Jesus spoke for the fifth time:

5) “I am thirsty” (John 19:28).

We cannot be certain what Christ experienced when He spoke the fifth saying. Some commentators suggest He was beginning to suffer from the thirst of a man who feels forsaken by God. The idea is that because Christ bore the sins of many, the Father had withdrawn His presence. We can’t know for sure if this is true, but if it was, perhaps Christ was experiencing the same thirst that the rich man in Hell felt upon death (Luke 16:24). The rich man’s experience was that he was thirsty and wished for Lazarus to dip his finger in water to cool his tongue.

In a prophetic psalm about the crucifixion, spoken a thousand years before Christ’s crucifixion, King David spoke of Christ’s body being pierced and shutting down: “My mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death” (Psalm 22:15). What David saw prophetically was that the tongue of Jesus stuck to the top of His mouth, which is what happens to those who are crucified. The Lord had now drunk the cup of God's judgment to the full (Luke 22:42), so He looked for some relief to shout His following words of victory. This time, there was no myrrh, no narcotic offered to Him (which He refused); it was sour wine on a sponge lifted to His mouth. “A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus' lips” (John 19:29).

The passage above explains that a hyssop plant was used with a sponge soaked in sour vinegar to moisten Christ’s lips and alleviate His dry mouth. Hyssop was also the same plant dipped in the blood of a lamb and used to strike the doorposts and lintels during the Passover from Egypt (Exodus 12:22). The children of Israel were freed from slavery in Egypt by the blood of a substitute lamb, just as we are liberated from the bondage of sin by the substitute blood of the Lamb of God, Jesus.

Both Matthew and Mark record that Jesus shouted something from the cross before giving up His spirit: “And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, He gave up His spirit” (Matthew 27:50). He pushed one more time on the wedge of wood under His feet before shouting something loudly. John tells us what He victoriously exclaimed. We'll discuss that tomorrow. If you can't wait, the complete notes are at the link below. Keith Thomas.

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The YouTube video of this talk with closed captions (subtitles) in 65 languages is found at the following link: https://youtu.be/98EY8UNmpmk

The written notes are at the following link: The Seven Sayings of Christ on the Cross