Good Friday

These are all the words that Jesus spoke while nailed to the cross, in probable chronological order:

"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
(as he was being nailed)
"Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise."
(to the repentant thief at his side)
"Woman, behold, your son!"..."Behold, your mother!"
(to Mary, his mother, and John)

"Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?"
(my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?)

"I thirst."
"It is finished...Father, into your hands I commit my spirit."
(and he breathed his last)

I've long been haunted by the ante-penultimate utterance of Jesus, "My God, why have you forsaken me?" When I was very young, the story was a story like others; except it had a tragic ending. I couldn't understand why they called it Good Friday. As far as I was concerned, we all should be very sad on that day, a day when an innocent man was killed wrongly. Throughout middle-school, I began to look at the crucifixion as an exercise in endurance and faith that we could emulate. But Jesus' calling out of that Hebrew phrase clashed with my understanding of his death. His exclamation left me with two possible conclusions: either Jesus ran out of faith at the end, or God really did abandon him.

Later, when I became a Christian, the enormity of that one phrase dawned on me. Yes-- I was right all along. Both my conclusions were correct. Jesus did run out of faith at the end. And God did really abandon him. See, you cannot have faith when there is nothing there to have faith in! When God removed his presence from Jesus-- when he removed all grace and allowed nothing but his wrath and hatred to focus on his son, when he turned his face from Christ-- there was no way he could just believe that God was still there with him.

Whether we believe in him or not, God gives us common grace so that life is possible and bearable. He looks on us, and so we live. If for even a second, God removed his presence and grace from us, there would be no goodness at all in this life that we cling to. For Jesus, whose relationship with the Father was characterized, since eternity past, by perfect love, the removal of God's presence and sudden onslaught of divine hatred would have been unimaginably horrible.

Jesus said those words... and from them, we understand that his substitutionary sacrifice for sinners like you and me was accepted by the Father. And so, if someone were to ask me about that phrase, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" I would say, "There's an answer to Jesus' question, you know-- it's not purely rhetorical. God turned his face away from Jesus so that he could turn his face towards you."

...by the way-- I received my acceptance into Gordon-Conwell on Thursday. =)