4th Saying: "Why Have You Forsaken Me?"
We continue our meditation on the last seven sayings of Christ while His life was slowly ebbing 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). The question arises, if Jesus had never sinned as the Scriptures teach, and that He was totally pure and innocent of all charges of blasphemy brought against Him, why would Christ feel forsaken of God near the hour of His death?
Speaking about God giving the Lord Jesus to be our substitutionary sacrifice, Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, “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 the transference of the sins of the nation to the animal, so now God transferred the sin of the world to Jesus. Jesus became the sin-bearer for the whole human race. Scripture tells us that God is too pure to look upon evil (Habakkuk 1:13), so for the first time in eternity, fellowship between the Son of God and the Father was broken as the Father turned away from Christ. Christ came to be the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. As death drew near, He spoke for the fifth time:
5) “I am thirsty” (John 19:28).
We cannot tell what Christ was experiencing when He said the fifth saying. Some have said that He was beginning to suffer the thirst of a man without God. The thought is that because Christ was bearing the sin of many, the Father had withdrawn from Jesus. We cannot tell for sure if this is so, but if it was, perhaps Christ was experiencing the thirst that the rich man in hell suffered upon death (Luke 16:24). The rich man had been thirsty and desired Lazarus to dip his finger into water to cool his tongue.
Because of a lack of blood, Christ’s body was shutting down, and as the prophecy in Psalm 22:15 states, His tongue was sticking to His mouth, that being a normal process of crucifixion. Jesus had now drunk the cup of God's judgment to the full (Luke 22:42), so he looked for some relief to be able to shout His next words of victory. This time there was no myrrh, no narcotic; it was sour wine on a sponge that 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). Interestingly, Scripture tells us that it was a sponge on a hyssop plant raised to His lips because this was the same plant dipped in the blood of a lamb and used to strike the doorposts and lintels at the time of the Passover from Egypt (Exodus 12:22). The children of Israel were delivered from slavery to Egypt by a substitute lamb's blood, just as we are delivered from the bondage of sin by the substitutionary blood of the Lamb of God, Jesus.
To stop Jesus' tongue from sticking to the roof of His mouth, as the prophecy in Psalm 22 says, He took a drink from the sponge on the hyssop. Matthew and Mark record that Jesus shouted out 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 and shouted His next words loudly. It is John who tells us what He cried in a victorious shout. Let's talk about that tomorrow. Keith Thomas.
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