While Christ Was on the Cross, Why Did God Forsake Jesus?

45From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land. 46About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”) (Matthew 27:45-46).

Matthew quotes the prophetic psalm of King David, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 2:1). The Gospel writer ties the prophetic words spoken hundreds of years before Christ to the words of Jesus on the cross. Let’s try to understand what took place at the cross of Christ. If you have read the Gospel accounts, one is struck by the majesty of the purest person ever to walk the Earth. Even those who were with Jesus, His disciples for three years, tell us that they never saw Jesus commit any sin (1 Peter 2:22). The Bible records that, apart from Jesus, there is not a man who has not sinned:

Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous, no one who does what is right and never sins (Ecclesiastes 7:20, emphasis added).

How could Jesus be different from you and me and not sin? This was the very reason He was born of a virgin. The Holy Spirit came upon His mother, Mary, and she conceived in a way that set her apart from the rest of humanity. Jesus was 100% God and 100% man. Adam, the first sinner, passed on to all of us this inherent tendency to disobey our Creator, known in the Bible as sin. When Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, God warned them about the following:

16And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die” (Genesis 2:16-17).

The warning was about spiritual death, which is separation from God, and, of course, physical death as well. After they ate the fruit, Adam and Eve did not fall dead, but something changed within their inner nature, their spirit, that caused them to hide from God when He came to enjoy their company (Genesis 3:8-10). Sin creates a barrier between God and us:

But your iniquities have separated you from your God;
 your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear (Isaiah 59:2).

God has gone to extraordinary lengths to remove the barrier of sin that separates us from Him. He came to earth and was born of a virgin, so Adam's sinful nature was not passed on to Him. He came to take upon Himself the payment for the sin that we owed because of our transgressions. God cannot weigh some actions on the scales of justice and claim that one has done more good than another. The issue is more profound than that. All of us have sinned. There is not a person on earth who is good enough to be in the presence of a Holy God. The wage we earn for our sinful life is eternal separation from God, which the Scriptures call death. But God, in His love for us, chose to come to earth and pay our penalty for sin Himself:

God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them (2 Corinthians 2:19).

When Christ hung on the cross, He took our sins upon Himself, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God. He cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" The debt of sin that separated us from God was paid for on the cross. That is why He could shout a victory shout right at the point of death, "It is finished!” The Greek words translated into English as "It is finished" literally mean "Paid in full.” This is the Good News! The debt of your sin and mine has been paid! To become a Christian is to receive the full pardon for your sin, paid for by Christ. Will you give your life to Him, believe the good news of your deliverance from the penalty of sin, and ask Him to come into your life? There's no better day than today. Keith Thomas

If you are interested in Jesus's last words before He died on the cross, you may want to listen to the video teaching at this link: The Seven Sayings from the Cross.