Why does the psalmist ask, "Why have you forsaken me" (Psalm 22:1)?

(v. 3) 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. Thus 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; for the Lord can say, “But thou art holy.” Thus the One who is forsaken by God is the One who entirely vindicates God. These words, however, do more than assure us of the holiness of God in forsaking Christ on the cross. They tell us of the deep necessity for Christ to be forsaken when bearing sins, if God's holiness is to be met, and man to be blessed.

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.

But here the Lord is speaking from the cross. It is now not 'My Father' as in the garden, but 'My God'. The question of sin has arisen, and God, Who is Judge of all, is the appropriate name of address. God is the righteous governor of the world. His nature is opposed to sin, and His essence demands the punishment of sin. There can be no communion between holiness and unholiness, between light and darkness. And there, Him Who knew no sin God had made sin for us. In the consciousness of sin-bearing, and of being 'made a curse for us,' He exclaimed, 'My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?'

So our Lord in the midst of His suffering for sin confessed Himself forsaken by His God, but still addressed Him as 'My God'. This relationship of Jesus subsisted from His earliest infancy. In this very Psalm, He declares, 'Thou art My God from My mother's belly' (v. 10). From the manger in Bethlehem right onwards He the perfect and blessed Man, recognised God as the One Whom He obeyed and on Whom He depended. But here it was a time of noontide darkness, and there was an immeasurable difference. His God in Whom He trusted God forsaken Him! and Why?

But there is another element of ineffable preciousness and sweetness that enters into the answer to the mysterious "Why?" of the forsaken One. It is this: the amazing love of God toward us poor sinners, a love which led Him not only to give His Son from His bosom, but to bruise and forsake Him on the cross. Why did He do this? Because there was no other way possible in which we could escape. It was either a question of an eternal hell for us, or of infinite wrath for the Sin-bearer. God be praised! He chose the latter; and hence the place which Christ now occupies is the place of all who simply believe in Him.

Is it not this side of the suffering of our adorable Lord that we find so wonderfully set before us in Psalm 22? "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" This, the deepest suffering of all, came from God, not from men, though caused by our sins. Some people would tell us that the Lord Jesus only thought that God had forsaken Him, as in Jonah's case: "I said, I am cast out from before Thine eyes." It was, however, very different in the case of our Lord and Savior. There on the cross, He bore our sins; and with all those mountains of sins upon Him, God must turn away from Him, and it was in very truth that He uttered that awful cry, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" We may, to some small extent (never fully) , enter into what it meant to our pure and holy Saviour to bear those external sufferings and shame and reproach from man; but no human mind can ever fathom the depth of suffering contained in that terrible cry, "Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani?" Here, indeed, the waters compassed Him about, to the soul. It was then He took that awful cup of the wrath of a holy God against sin (the cup you and I deserved to drink), and drank it to its very dregs. "The depth of all Thy suffering No heart can e'er conceive; The cup of wrath o'erflowing, For us Thou didst receive."

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.

The word "Eloi," etc., in the quotation is expressive of nearness — "My God." It is not Hebrew, but Syriac. This expression coming forth to Him who was always so near has deep force in it; and the only moment in which He could be forsaken of God was this, when He was taking our sins upon Him. He was always in the full sunshine of God's favour; for He was holy. Christ could have been no victim if He had not been holy and separate from sinners. Nothing shows the perfect purity and holiness of the Lord like this psalm. A Jewish rabbi has called it a psalm of repining. True indeed there was a deep agony of soul when He said, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?" But almost immediately afterward He vindicates God: "But thou art holy."

Let us bear clearly in mind that in this Psalm we hear the words of Christ Himself addressed to God. Most of us are familiar with the bitter cry which forms the forefront of the Psalm and provides the keynote to its pervading theme. We read, 'My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?' Here the pathetic words occur prophetically. In the Gospels they are found historically. Matthew and Mark record that the Lord uttered them upon the cross. In the depths of His anguish, the Lord used the words, having the fullest sense of their profound significance and also the knowledge that the prophecies of Psalm 22 were being fulfilled in Himself. At the due moment He had appeared in the world for the putting away of sin by the sacrifice of Himself. In this work the Blessed One stood alone-the God-forsaken One. This awful experience He Himself proclaimed aloud that whosoever would might hear-'Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani?' As so often, those who heard did not understand His speech. Thy said, 'Let be, let us see whether elias will come to save Him.' That this crucified One should thus address God in heaven was beyond their comprehension. The fact is that therein lies the central truth of the propitiation which Christ made for our sins and for the whole world.

And here it may be as well to point out the danger of those who cite Psalm 22:1, as an ordinary saint's experience, despising or at least failing to use the lesson scripture gives us, that those words suited Jesus on the cross, and certainly no Christian since. He was thus forsaken then that we might never be. It is not then true that the believer under any circumstance is forsaken of God. Jesus only could say in the fulness of the truth, both "My God" and "Why hast thou forsaken me?" And even He never did nor could, I believe, have said these words save as atoning for sin. To suppose that, because David wrote the words, he must have said them as his own experience, is to make the Psalms of private interpretation, instead of recognizing the power of the Spirit who inspired them. Psalm 16 might as well or better be David's experience; yet it needs little discrimination to see that both in their full import belong to Christ exclusively, but in wholly different circumstances.

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.