And thou art holy, thou that dwellest amid the praises of Israel.
Psalm 22 opens with the cry Jesus made from the cross, and this third verse is the Sufferer's own answer to His own question. He does not accuse God; He calls Him holy and points to God's dwelling among His people.
These words come straight after the cry of being forsaken. They give a reason, not a complaint.
That God should forsake a perfectly righteous man in his distress is entirely contrary to the ways of God with men. Yet we are assured there can be no unrighteousness with God. So we learn from the lips of Christ Himself that on this solemn and unique occasion, God was perfectly righteous in forsaking the absolutely righteous One. This is because the Lord can say, "But you are holy." The One forsaken by God is therefore the One who entirely vindicates God. These words also tell us of the deep need for Christ to be forsaken when bearing sins, if God's holiness is to be met and man to be blessed.
At the cross God's own glory was at stake.
Because of man's sin God's glory was at stake. God's eternal attribute of justice was in question. Was God the Holy One who hated sin? Or was He One who would favour sin and overlook its due penalty? The Lord Jesus supplies the answer in His Person, and upon the cross He upheld the unchangeable holiness of God. There He declared for the whole universe to hear, "You are holy, O You who dwell among the praises of Israel." He witnessed to that holiness by confessing His own abandonment.
The reason lies in what Christ was carrying at that moment.
He had offered Himself of His own will as a sacrifice for the sins of mankind. God is absolute in holiness, so He could not show the least fellowship with the sin the Lord Jesus was bearing on that cross. In fact, since the Lord was willingly bearing our sins, God must punish Him just as He punishes sin. How deeply must the heart of God the Father be affected as well as the heart of the Lord Jesus!
One writer turns the question on the reader: what did we bring to that cross?
What do I bring to the cross? What do I have in it? My sins... The Righteous One, suffering for sin, vindicates God. Yet to Himself it was the depth of agony, when God forsook Him — at the moment, we may say, when He needed God most... It was obedience — suffering — to the fullest extent; but forsaken as He was, Christ says His God was holy all the same. We know now why it was. It was for sin, for our sins, not for righteousness. Our sins were our only contribution. What a tale that tells on our part; on His, what blessed love!
Older translations read "You who dwell among the praises of Israel." Writers link that dwelling place to the sacrifice.
The holiness of the LORD required the judgment of sin. Only then could His people, or the praises of His people, be acceptable to Him. Propitiation for sins is the foundation of worship and praise, because the place where the LORD dwells is holy.
The two halves of the verse are not two separate thoughts but cause and effect.
God is holy and cannot endure sin, so He had to forsake the spotless sin-bearer. But another thought is added: God inhabits, or dwells amid, the praises of His people. He must be known in such a way that His very presence produces praise... Our Lord was forsaken so that redemption might be accomplished. As a result, praise pours out from hearts forever delivered by grace.
The death of Christ brings us near to God, and it costs God's holiness nothing.
As a result of the death of Christ, God lives in the praises of His people without having surrendered the smallest part of His holiness. This cry of abandonment came from the very depths of His holy soul. He, the Holy One of God, "suffered for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God" (1 Peter 3:18).
For Israel, that praise is still future.
How privileged we Christians are! We may worship God revealed as Father, while praise is still silent in Zion. We worship today in spirit and in truth. Soon God will be addressed as "You who dwell among the praises of Israel" (Ps. 22:3).
- Holy. Christ answers His own cry with God's holiness. God was righteous in forsaking the only righteous Man.
- Forsaken. He bore our sins by His own choice. God could have no fellowship with that load, and dealt with Him as sin deserves.
- Vindicated. The One abandoned is the One who vindicates God. He declared God's holiness before the whole universe when it cost Him everything.
- Founded. Propitiation makes praise possible. God's dwelling place is holy, so sin had to be judged before He could accept our worship.
- Inhabited. Redemption ends in praise. God now lives among the praises of a delivered people, with His holiness untouched. Israel's praise is still to come.
Our fathers confided in thee they confided, and thou didst deliver them.
On the cross the Sufferer looks back over Israel's history and finds an unbroken record: God rescued everyone who leaned on Him. He sets that record beside His own unanswered cry. Why is the one righteous Man the single exception?
The verse looks back to named men whose prayers God answered. Their record is what makes His own case so strange.
In verse 4 the Spirit of Christ still speaks. The Lord upon the cross contrasts Himself with pious men of olden days. "In You our fathers trusted (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and others); they trusted, and You delivered them. To You they cried and were rescued; in You they trusted and were not put to shame." So was it not against God's past dealings for God to forsake the Lord Jesus in His sufferings, and to ignore His cries for deliverance? Abraham was not perfect in his devotion, yet God heard his prayers.
Set against that history, the cross stands alone. God delivered flawed men who trusted Him. He did not deliver the one Man whose trust was flawless.
Nothing else compares with the case of a righteous man forsaken. Set God's ways with Him beside God's ways with all others who have trusted in God, and it stands out even more. All history proved that the fathers who trusted in God were delivered. Righteous men may indeed have died as martyrs. But God had never before forsaken a righteous man.
Rescue from enemies is one thing. Being forsaken by God is another.
Yet a long line of martyrs witness to us that, when it comes to rescue from the hands of enemies alone, multitudes have cried and were not rescued. Their sufferings only proved that God had not forsaken them. On the contrary, His power held them up and made them able for whatever they went through — and it showed itself all the more in that very way. How many before and since have proved Paul's experience, "Persecuted, but not forsaken"! Their patience was precious to God, and He accepted it. Yet none of these patient sufferers touched even the edge of the darkness of the cross, when the cry of the holy One found no answer.
The psalm raises a question it also answers. He was not abandoned because God had changed, but because He was standing in the place of the guilty.
And more still, He owned that God's abandonment of Him was the one exception: "In You our fathers trusted; they trusted, and You delivered them. To You they cried, and were not put to shame. But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people." Yes, so it must be, if He was propitiation for our sins. We are guilty. God could not save us in righteousness unless He made the Sinless One sin for us, so that we might become God's righteousness in Him. This, and this only, is the true answer to His "Why?" — this the sole and complete solution of the puzzle.
The word "our" places Him inside Israel rather than above it. He speaks as one of the people whose history He is quoting.
He appeals to God as Jehovah, not Father, because that relationship had not been brought out as it now is. The Jew did not know the Father as He is now revealed. Christ was taking the place of a godly Jew among them, so He takes up the relationship they knew… The grand principle is that He waited on Jehovah.
The unbroken record of answered cries did not end at the cross. It broke once, so that it could hold for everyone else.
No one can question it: this psalm was the language of the Lord Jesus in His great sorrow as the Sin-bearer. He spoke it in those dark hours when God forsook Him for our sakes. He recalled and retold how no one had ever cried to God in vain, and no one had ever trusted in Him and been put to shame; no, not one. He alone — amazing fact — suffered in this way. But we know the reason. It was so that we might never be put to shame, so that God might deliver us when we cried, so that we might trust and not be afraid.
- They trusted — the fathers were real men with flaws — Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses. Their imperfection is part of the argument, since God still heard them.
- They were delivered — every recorded case ran the same way. Even when God did not rescue martyrs from their enemies, He never abandoned them.
- He was forsaken — the only righteous Man is the single exception in the whole record. He says so Himself from the cross.
- Made sin — the reason is not a change in God. God made the Sinless One sin for us, so that we might become God's righteousness in Him.
- So we trust — He was left without an answer once, so that no one who cries after Him is ever left without one.
They cried unto thee, and were delivered; they confided in thee, and were not confounded.
Psalm 22 opens with a cry of abandonment. This verse then looks back over Israel's past and states a rule that never once failed: God answered everyone who called on Him. The startling thing is who says it — the One for whom, at that moment, the rule did not hold.
This is not a general reflection on history. Christ speaks it from the cross, measuring His own case against those who came before Him.
The Lord on the cross contrasts Himself with godly men of old. Our fathers — Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and others — trusted in God, and He delivered them. Now the Lord Jesus was forsaken by God in His sufferings, and His cries for deliverance went unheard. Was this not contrary to God's past dealings? Abraham was not perfect in his devotion to God, yet God heard his prayers. Job was known for his patience in suffering. Yet he showed much impatience with his "friends," and he confessed to the LORD, "Behold, I am of small account" (older translations: "I am vile"). God heard Job too, and delivered him.
The fathers cried, and God delivered them. That was the settled pattern. The verse states it here to make one case stand out.
Nothing matches the case of a righteous man being forsaken. Contrast the ways of God with all others who have put their trust in Him, and that case stands out all the more. All history proved that God delivered the fathers who trusted in Him. Righteous men have indeed suffered martyrdom. But never before had a righteous man been forsaken by God.
Being rescued and not being forsaken are two different things.
A long line of martyrs tells us something. As far as simple rescue from the hands of enemies goes, many have cried and were not rescued. Their sufferings only proved that they were not forsaken. Instead a power held them up and made them able for whatever they went through — a power that showed itself all the more. How many before and since have proved Paul's experience, "persecuted, but not forsaken"! Their patience was precious and acceptable to God. Yet none of these sufferers touched even the edge of the darkness of the cross — when the cry of the holy One found no response.
The psalm itself rules out treating Christ's death as one more heroic death.
Suppose being forsaken by God only meant being handed over to death at the will of enemies. There was already a full record of such martyrs, those "of whom the world was not worthy." To reduce the cross of Christ to this takes out of it what makes true atonement. If this were "being made sin," then every martyr who ever died was made sin — or a sin offering — as well. The question here is not the dignity of the Sufferer, but the place where He suffered. The psalm itself declares that place to be utterly exceptional.
He states the rule, and then He does not claim it for Himself.
He accepts a place of nothingness among people. He wipes out self entirely. As "a worm and no man," He gave up every claim upon divine deliverance. This is the crowning evidence of that blessed One's perfect humility and self-denial.
The exception had a purpose, and it reaches everyone who reads this verse.
He recalled and repeated what was true. No one had ever cried to God in vain. No one had ever trusted in Him and been put to shame — not one. He alone — amazing fact — suffered like this. But we know the reason. It was so that we might never be put to shame, that we might be delivered when we cried, that we might trust and not be afraid.
The rule of the verse did hold for Him in the end — but on the far side of death.
His trust in God remained unshaken, even when He cried, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" At the very end He had met death in the fullness of its power. Even then it is to God He cries, "Save me from the mouth of the lion! You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen" (Psalm 22:21). His trust in God to the very end was not put to shame, for His cry was answered in God raising Him from the dead.
- Rule. All history said the same thing. The fathers trusted, they cried, and God delivered them. No righteous person had ever been forsaken.
- Exception. One righteous Man cried and got no answer. He states the rule Himself, to mark His own case as unique.
- Difference. Martyrs were persecuted but not forsaken, and God held them up in their suffering. What made the cross different was not the pain but the place He stood in.
- Surrender. He does not claim the deliverance the rule would give Him. As "a worm and no man" He gives up every claim on rescue.
- Result. He was put to shame so that we never would be. We are delivered when we cry, and we trust without fear. God raised Him, and His own trust was proved right.