Seven Last Words of Christ: My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? (Matthew 27:46).
Jesus was human as much as he was divine. We forget that. He was conceived by the action of the divine and the human so that he could be part of us and understand how we felt. If he never felt like we do or had problems like we do, it would have been worthless for him to come.
He hurt as we hurt. He felt as we felt. He was hungry and said ouch when he hit his toe like we do. He was like us except that he was sinless. But even though he was sinless, he was no less human.
And as a human, the last thing on this earth he wanted to do was to be whipped and nailed on a cross.
He knew why he would be. And he came for that reason. Yet when it came, I think it surprised him in some ways.
For one thing, he never anticipated the loneliness of desertion by God. He may not have even considered it. But as the Bible said, he became sin so that we could have forgiveness from our sins. For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20-21).
When he took the sins of the world on himself, God couldn’t be with him anymore. God is perfect and holy. In him there is no sin. When Jesus took those sins God had to move away from him.
Jesus knew this when he came. But I really think that the enormity of God being gone surprised him. He had always had a relationship with God. As the Word, he had been with God for eternity. There was no time when they were not in communion with each other. As Jesus, the human Son, he had always been in contact with God in prayer. He had always felt the nearness, the closeness of God in his life.
But as the sin-offering, he now had to endure the absence of God. And he did it so that we would not have to.
Of course, it was not permanent. It was only until he died. But for those couple of hours, he felt the loneliness so many feel when they do not have God in their lives, when they have not invited the Father to come in and be with them in their hearts.
For those couple of hours, he was alone. And it surprised him.
And the human side of him cried out, Wait! Where did you go? Why are you gone?
The divine side knew why God had to go, but the human side was caught by surprise.
And Jesus knew the loneliness that so many know outside of God.
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