"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46)
Was He expressing true abandonment by God—as though grace had left Him? Or was something deeper happening in that moment?
The Echo of Psalm 22
To understand this cry, we turn back to Psalm 22:1, where David first voiced these same words:
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?"
David goes on to describe a moment of total weakness:
"My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death." (Psalm 22:15)
Yet the psalm does not end in despair. It moves toward trust and praise:
"Ye that fear the Lord, praise him... For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard." (Psalm 22:23–24)
By quoting the first verse of this psalm, Jesus was connecting His suffering to a well-known passage that begins with anguish but ends in assurance. He wasn’t just expressing pain—He was pointing to the bigger picture.
Grace in the Surrender
Soon after, Jesus “yielded up the ghost” (Matthew 27:50), and the world responded:
"And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose."
(Matthew 27:51–52)
This was not a moment of abandonment, but of divine fulfillment. The veil—the separation between God and humanity—was torn. By surrendering to death, Jesus opened the way for all to return to the Father.
He Became Sin for Us
Paul later wrote:
"He [God] made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." (2 Corinthians 5:21)
This doesn’t mean Jesus became sinful. It means He took on the burden, the distance, and the consequences of sin. The cry of forsakenness was part of that weight. He entered fully into the human experience, even into the feeling of distance from God, so that we would never have to be truly separated from Him again.
The Cry That Opened the Door
Jesus’ cry from the cross wasn’t a fall from grace—it was grace. Not the end of hope, but the doorway into it. He bore our separation, fulfilled the words of Psalm 22, and revealed God’s plan of reconciliation in full.
What sounded like abandonment was actually love speaking at its deepest level.
Final Thought
When we feel far from God, may we remember: Christ has already stepped into that place. And because of Him, we are never alone.
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