If Jesus was God, why did He call God "My God?"

C.C. — There He was being made sin; and as standing in the sinner’s place, He could not say, “My Father”. It is, My God. Even in His abandonment He vindicates God: “Thou art holy,” He says (Ps. 22:3).

"My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" (v. 1). This was the most dreadful aspect of the sufferings of Christ on the cross. He spoke these words at the end of the three hours when the world was enveloped in darkness from noon until 3.00 p.m. (Matt. 27:45-46). Many have wondered what He meant, for this is such a contrast to His own words in John 16:32, "Indeed the hour is coming, yea, has now come, that you will be scattered, each to his own, and will leave me alone. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me." This was perfectly true until the time when the darkness fell, a darkness that signified the withdrawal of the light of God from this sinless, faithful Son of Man. Then He was forsaken by God. He asked, "Why?" Did He not know why? Yes indeed, for He answers this Himself. But He asked "why" in order to awaken us to consider this amazing question.

The result of His atoning work is exactly the opposite. Why did He suffer from man? It was for righteousness. When He suffers from God, is it for righteousness? Just the opposite. He suffers for sin under the wrath of God. He was made sin! Ave, and He suffers for sin. The moment He was made sin, He had to do with God about it. He was absolutely alone in this; there were none to look on, man could not contemplate. We have not such an expression as that we have in Psalm 20, "Jehovah hear thee," in this Psalm 22. The disciples were even as the world - they could not go there. The ark must stand in the midst of Jordan until the people are over. There was Satan's power, God's wages against sin. When He appeals to God for deliverance, He is not heard on the cross. He tasted death for every man. He must drink the cup of wrath - it is between God and Himself. If He had had the least comfort from God, He would not have drunk the cup. Man had nothing to do with it. If man had been there, it would have been damnation; He must be alone when suffering from God. In the thought of this suffering from sin He prayed against it. Could He say of that, "My meat is to do the will"? etc. No! not on the cross. This was the power of death, and in prospect of it, in the garden of Gethsemane, He said to His disciples, "Tarry ye here and watch"; and to God, "If it be possible, let this cup pass," etc. Then He takes the cup from His Father's hands. When on the cross He cries "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" He is forsaken of God. His soul drinks the cup of wrath due to Him when He is made sin. We have His thoughts and feelings expressed where the facts are going on. In the Psalms we have the privilege thus of knowing how He felt when under them. Psalm 22 gives, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" His feelings - the fact was atonement.

It is on the cross, and on the cross alone, that He bears sin, as the apostle says, "Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24). It has been attempted to prove that this should be rendered "carried our sins up to the tree," and the new version gives this as an alternative in the margin. This has been fully investigated by another: and I do not propose to enter upon it. Every translation that I am aware of gives at least the preference to the common version; and the doctrine of Scripture admits of no other construction. Contrast the Lord's words in the twenty-second psalm, "Thou hearest not," with those at the grave of Lazarus, "I knew that Thou hearest Me always" (John 11:42); or, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" with those elsewhere, "And He that sent Me is with Me: the Father hath not left Me alone; for I do always the things that please Him" (John 8:29). Who cannot see here the infinite difference? If hearing and not hearing, forsaking and not forsaking, are but the same thing, or can consist together, then words have no longer any meaning. The cross is thus distinguished from all the Lord's sufferings beside as the place where "He was made sin for us who knew no sin," and He who "is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and that cannot look at sin," turned away His face from the Sin-bearer.

Yes, He was pleasing the Father in those solemn hours on Calvary's cross. Why, then, those words, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" There is only one explanation. Christ was there meeting God in all His holy nature and its righteous requirements in the judgment of SIN. Then was "He who knew no sin made sin" (see 2 Corinthians 5:21); then He took up as His own the guilt that belonged alone to others, for He not only "did no sin" (1 Peter 2:22), but in Him is no sin (1 John 3:5). Then indeed He bore the whole weight of God's wrath against sin, suffering as only an infinite Being could suffer, yet as man and for man; and, thank God, at the end of those three hours of darkness over the whole earth (or land), He could say "It is finished," and deliver up His spirit to the Father. Can you wonder that the very earth was convulsed at such a moment? There is much of the soul experience of Christ at that awful time, to be found in the 22nd Psalm, in the 1st verse of which we read the very words, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Can you not now see that the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are needed to give us a complete picture of the cross? They show us how the One who hung there was perfect through all — praying for His very murderers (Luke 23:34), caring for His mother (John 19:27), blessing a dying robber (Luke 23:43), but, beyond all, perfectly meeting God's righteous demands (involving as it did the hiding of God's face from Him when bearing sins), and laying a righteous basis on which the vilest sinner, who will but repent and believe in Him, may be fully and freely forgiven, and live for ever in blessedness with Himself in glory.

54 We are "all of one." The more it is looked at, the more striking it will be seen to be. All through the life of Christ He does not once say, "My God." He lived in the perfect relationship He was in, and says, "My Father"; but on the cross, when He was drinking the cup of wrath, He says, "My God." This was His perfectness; it was not the expression of relationship: but it was the expression of infinite suffering, and of infinite claim. But when this was accomplished, so that we could be brought in, He uses both names; and on those names of God our whole blessing rests. If we look at God as He is, we can delight in that name; for we are made partakers of His holiness. We are made the righteousness of God in Christ; of course, we are so suited to God; while we have also the blessed relationship of sons, and say, each of us, He is my Father too. And so we read in Ephesians 1:3, "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" has blessed us. Of course Christ is a Man, and so God is His God; and because He is His Son, God is His Father. Grace has brought us perfectly to God, and this is the blessedness which is wrought for us. Then the whole place is perfectly settled.

Observe, first, the God of the Lord Jesus Christ; and, second, the Father. If I say, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, I could also say He was the God of Israel, or He is my God; but here it is God and Father of the Son — not a Son by adoption or creation, but the Only Begotten in the bosom of the Father, before all worlds, possessor of a being that never had any commencement. Next, there is the display of His glory as the "God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory." (Read 17th to 23rd.) I get there the person of the Lord Jesus presented in the place where He is distinctly able to call God, "God." When on earth He called God His Father, but never, save on the cross, "My God." If all He said down here is gathered up, you will find a guardedness until where there could be no question of using the term, "My God," as if He were only like Paul or John. The forsaking of Him was as wonderful as the honouring; He, the only One who could possibly be in that place, standing between God and Satan, bearing the whole wrath of God, carrying out the perfect mind of God. There could be no mistake there, as to who He was when He said, "My God, My God." When He rose He again used it, saying, I go "to My God and your God." He was going where all in heaven and on earth would know Him, not only as the Servant, but as the One (because having been such a Servant) seated at God's right hand. A Man in glory, not a glory of subserviency, but of government; every knee to bow to Him, "of things in heaven, things in earth, and things under the earth," etc. If all up there see none but this Lamb on the throne, as the only One from whom blessing can flow, we know Him not only as that, but as Head of a body — "the fulness of Him that filleth all in all." If you compare all the displays the divine Being has made of Himself, you will find no glory anywhere in the old creation like this; this throws all the rest into the shade. If He has power, where am I to look for the mightiest display of it? Ah! His Power and wisdom shine nowhere as in this scene where the Lord Jesus Christ is raised up from the dead, and is sitting in glory at the right-hand of God as Man.

The Son of God is called Son in two senses: one, as Son of the Father, independent of incarnation; another, as Son of the Highest, as born of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Ghost. It was in the latter sense He could say, "My God;" He came as a servant — He took our nature upon Him that He might associate us with Himself and with God. What vast blessedness, dear brethren men in the flesh to be associated with God! But the association Jesus has brought us into with the Father has a deeper range of blessedness, — my Father; something far beyond "my God." God has revealed Himself in preceding ages as Eloim; then as Eloim Shaddai; next as Jehovah (Ex. 2); but the title, "My Father," carried with it all that range of blessing and glory that Jesus the Son knew from all eternity. The names, Father, Son, are domestic titles. How sweetly they speak to us of home! Contrast with Eloim, Shaddai, and Jehovah, the Father, as He is presented in 1 John 3, in all the constraining power of a love known to us; or as our privilege it won in the first chapter of that epistle, "and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ," throwing us into that communion which exists between the Father and the Son — bringing us into partnership and community! Hence the different kinds of worship. Those of you who are accustomed to watch the workings of your own hearts — I speak to you — have you not marked the different character of your worship? In Hebrews God's place of worship is laid open; we are enabled to go in through the rent veil by the blood of Jesus, and stand in the holiest with a pure conscience. Jesus has higher intercourse than that, - that fellowship He has as a Son with the Father. The Son has got a communion far beyond that which He has as High Priest. I call the one heavenly worship, the other divine worship. Even thanksgiving and service connected with this latter are quite different from the former. Col. 3 brings my soul into the relationship between Jesus and the Father. These are the things my heart is to be prying into — to be connected with.

The Lord Jesus has the nature of God in all its fulness, and as the Son He also has an eternal relationship with the Father. This relationship with the Father characterised the Son as come into the world. It didn't begin when He came into the world, and neither did it cease then. The relationship continued without interruption. On only one occasion in the Gospels does the Lord address God, and that is on the cross: “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Matt 27:46; Mark 15:34). At all other times He addressed God as His Father and this known and enjoyed relationship with the Father was the home of His heart. He referred to it in His first recorded words in this world. Mary and Joseph found Him in the temple and Mary mistakenly reproved Him: “Son, why hast Thou thus dealt with us? behold, Thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing” (Luke 2:48). Was Mary forgetting that while legally Joseph's son, the Lord Jesus had been born “before they came together”? (Matt. 1:18). The Lord answered with words to Mary's conscience: “How is it that ye sought Me? wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?” (Luke 2:49). The Father had sent the Son and the Son had come down from heaven, not to do His own will, but the will of Him that sent Him (1 John 4:14; John 6:38).

The Lord Jesus has the nature of God in all its fulness, and as the Son He also has an eternal relationship with the Father. This relationship with the Father characterised the Son as come into the world. It didn't begin when He came into the world, and neither did it cease then. The relationship continued without interruption. On only one occasion in the Gospels does the Lord address God, and that is on the cross: "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" (Matt 27: 46; Mark 15: 34). At all other times He addressed God as His Father and this known and enjoyed relationship with the Father was the home of His heart. He referred to it in His first recorded words in this world. Mary and Joseph found Him in the temple and Mary mistakenly reproved Him: "Son, why hast Thou thus dealt with us? behold, Thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing" (Luke 2: 48). Was Mary forgetting that while legally Joseph's Son, the Lord Jesus had been born "before they came together"? (Matt. 1: 18). The Lord answered with words to Mary's conscience: "How is it that ye sought Me? wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?" (Luke 2: 49). The Father had sent the Son and the Son had come down from heaven, not to do His own will, but the will of Him that sent Him (1 John 4: 14; John 6: 38).