"My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" For many years those words perplexed me. As I've come to a greater understanding of theology, I can now say I appreciate their significance. What do you think about Jesus' words? Do they make sense? Why did Jesus say them? What are your thoughts?
6 comments:
Interesting question, Mike! My musings on this are in regards to the circular nature of this utterance. Was Jesus teaching us who HE was, even on the cross? By HIS statement, HE leads us directly back to David's prophecy of the coming Messiah. But, the other part of this question is why did David write that? Was he given a vision of what Jesus would say in HIS anguish (in which case we need to speculate further on why HE said it), or was David inspired to write that simply so Jesus could later refer to it on the cross? Was Psalm 22 just GOD's way of connecting the dots later on?
In last week's reading in Mark 14 my study notes stated that the sinless Son of God took on our sins and was separated from God for a while. I couldn't wrap by brain around Jesus being separated from God. The notes today explaining Jesus' words "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me" state that Jesus knew that he would be temporarily separated from God the moment he took upon himself our sins. This separation was what he dreaded as he prayed in Gethsemane. The physical agony was horrible but the spiritual separation from God was the ultimate torture. That kind of makes sense, in that God couldn't take our sins so for a moment Jesus was not part of God. That's still hard to understand--help!
Yeah, I struggle with comprehending that, too. HE was fully human, yet fully GOD. Being someone who is only fully human, I can't grasp that dual existence entirely. Being temporarily separated from yourself...can't imagine what that would be like.
This is getting deep...
I agree with the notes from Vicky's study Bible. But I also agree that this is complicated and we are limited in our understanding. J, I don't know if I agree with your premise. When Christ took on our sin, He was not like a Christian (forgiven and accepted). When He became sin, He was rejected. I think that is why He asked, "Why have you forsaken me?" He was totally separated from God, at least momentarily (maybe three days??? That's not the important part). It would seem more appropriate to compare Christ's moment of death with that of a lost sinner than a Christian. Of course, that is a complete injustice but it was His choice. He knew it was the will of God (His will also) and He also knew He would overcome. I don't know, what do you think?
This is hard to understand.What is harder to understand is how anyone could say Jesus is not the messiah after all the Old Testament prophesies about Him were fulfilled. Is is amazing that He had the power to stop the crucifician at any time. I'm glad He didn't.
Frankly, we are getting into issues too complicated to discuss in this format. I agree Jesus' words had the dual purpose of conveying his present situation and taking his listeners back to the Psalm. It wasn't a mistake that He quoted Scripture. But these words also accurately described His experience. The rest we will have to table for another time. The only thing we need to be able to say with confidence is that Jesus died for us and He remains our only hope.
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