Did God the father, forsake Jessus on the cross? see Psalms 22:24 for the answer!

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Daniel_Marsh

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Psalm 22
1My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?

2O my God, I cry in the day time, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.

3But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.

4Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them.

5They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded.

6But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.

7All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying,

8He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.

9But thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother’s breasts.

10I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother’s belly.

11Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help.

12Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round.

13They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion.

14I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.

15My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.

16For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.

17I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me.

18They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.

19But be not thou far from me, O LORD: O my strength, haste thee to help me.

20Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog.

21Save me from the lion’s mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns.

22I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee.

23Ye that fear the LORD, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel.

**24For 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. **

25My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear him.

26The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the LORD that seek him: your heart shall live for ever.

27All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee.

28For the kingdom is the LORD’s: and he is the governor among the nations.

29All they that be fat upon earth shall eat and worship: all they that go down to the dust shall bow before him: and none can keep alive his own soul.

30A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation.

31They shall come, and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this.
 
I am not clear I understand what you are staying here. Sorry.

My understanding is that Jesus crucified bore the sins of the world. Sin is defined as that which separates man from God. When he cried Eloi, eloi, Lama sabachthani Jesus who was both fully human and fully divine, was instantaneously separated from God. He lost sight of his Father; whether God hated the sight of His son in sin I cannot comprehend.

The physical, spiritual and emotional pain must have been excrutiating for Jesus the man. It is not possible that his divinity saved him from that pain: his sacrifice was complete and completely human, before he died, divine.

Blessings
 
I believe Jesus is God, yesterday, today, and forever, and can never be “separated” from the other persons of the one true God, the Blessed Trinity.

On the cross, Jesus is expressing grief or lamentation in a very Jewish way. In other words, he is praying the psalms, which was a customary way of praying for Jews.

There are times I may ask a question that I already know the answer to, like, “Why don’t you kids ever clean up your rooms?” I know the answer. It is a rhetorical question. With my question, I’m not expressing lack of knowledge, nor doubt, but instead I am expressing grief or a lamentation.

Christ is quoting a Psalm of lament, Ps 22:1. Take a look at all of Ps 22. I belive Christ had the entire Psalm in mind, not just the first verse. He is pointing to that psalm so at to tell us what is being fulfilled. The Psalm, while one of lament or grief, is a cry for help. In His suffering, Jesus showing us how we are to imitate Him in our suffering–we are to cry out to God for help. This lament is not, in my opinion, an expression of doubt or despair on the part of Jesus, nor does it show that Jesus was separated from God (which is impossible, as he IS God). He is truly lamenting, but he is also showing the faithful that the lament of Ps. 22 is being fulfilled in Himself, in his work of redemption.

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Carol_Coombe said:
I am not clear I understand what you are staying here. Sorry.

My understanding is that Jesus crucified bore the sins of the world. Sin is defined as that which separates man from God. When he cried Eloi, eloi, Lama sabachthani Jesus who was both fully human and fully divine, was instantaneously separated from God. He lost sight of his Father; whether God hated the sight of His son in sin I cannot comprehend.

The physical, spiritual and emotional pain must have been excrutiating for Jesus the man. It is not possible that his divinity saved him from that pain: his sacrifice was complete and completely human, before he died, divine.

Blessings
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You might want to study the 22nd Psalm a little closer, as well as the Doctrine of the Trinity.

What you are describing is impossible in the Triune God.
 
I heard this same thing for the first time at White House retreat center at St. Louis; that Jesus was praying this psalm, which David wrote some 1000 years before. When you read the psalm, it is obvious it was written about the crucifixion, and I would say its my favorite bible verse.

It’s mostly because of this psalm that I don’t care for the NAB version. The quote given above is from the NAB. My RSV2CE says (in verse 16-17)
16 Yes, dogs are round about me; a company of evildoers encircle me; they have pierced my hands and feet-17 I can count all my bones- they stare and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.
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Gives me chills.
 
AFarmer said:
I heard this same thing for the first time at White House retreat center at St. Louis; that Jesus was praying this psalm, which David wrote some 1000 years before. When you read the psalm, it is obvious it was written about the crucifixion, and I would say its my favorite bible verse.

It’s mostly because of this psalm that I don’t care for the NAB version. The quote given above is from the NAB. My RSV2CE says (in verse 16-17)

Gives me chills.
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Before you goose bumps are completely gone, read Psalm 31:6. No, better, read all of Psalm 31.
Into your hands I commend my spirit; you will redeem me, LORD, faithful God.
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I think Jesus never was separated from God the Father and God the Holy Spirit who are also part of the Trinity but I do think that he felt like he was separated as he bore all the sins throughout all history in His body on the cross.

No one can say to Jesus–“You don’t know how it Feels to be separated from God after sinning”.

Jesus never sinnned and was always in unison with the Will of God the Father and God the Holy Spirit but on the cross He felt what it was like to be separated from God by sin as He totally reversed every sin ever committed in offering the perfect sacrifice for our salvation.

God is pure Love and Jesus was pure Love on the cross.

That love is so deep and that sacrifice was so perfect that we can never fathom it!

Lord have mercy on us sinners and praise be your name!
 
Carol_Coombe said:
I am not clear I understand what you are staying here. Sorry.

My understanding is that Jesus crucified bore the sins of the world. Sin is defined as that which separates man from God. When he cried Eloi, eloi, Lama sabachthani Jesus who was both fully human and fully divine, was instantaneously separated from God. He lost sight of his Father; whether God hated the sight of His son in sin I cannot comprehend.

Blessings
Click to expand...
This is a common protestant interpretation. However, although Jesus did act as the supreme sacrifice for our sins He was never “in sin” in the sense that we are.
 
guanophore said:
This is a common protestant interpretation. However, although Jesus did act as the supreme sacrifice for our sins He was never “in sin” in the sense that we are.
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When Jesus bore the sins of the world, he took on the curses that sin entailed according to the Mosaic Covenant. That last curse was death. Jesus had to bear these curses so that we wouldn’t have to.

Now are there any more Aryans out there that believe that Jesus is separate from God?!?!? 😉
 
here’s what Pope John Paul II had to say about it…

“My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?”
General Audience — November 30, 1988

According to the Synoptics, Jesus on the cross cried out aloud twice (cf. Mt 27:46, 50; Mk 15: 34, 37); but only Luke tells us what he said when he cried out the second time (cf. 23:46). The first cry expresses the depth and intensity of Jesus’ suffering, his interior participation, his spirit of oblation, and perhaps also his prophetic-messianic understanding of his drama in the terms of a biblical psalm. Certainly the first cry manifests Jesus’ feelings of desolation and abandonment with the first words of Psalm 2: “And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (Mk 15:34; cf. Mt 27:46).

Mark quotes the words in Aramaic. One may suppose that the cry appeared so characteristic that the witnesses who heard it, when later recounting the drama of Calvary, deemed it opportune to repeat the very words of Jesus in Aramaic. It was the language spoken by him and by the majority of his contemporary Israelites. They could have been relayed to Mark by Peter, as happened in the case of the word “Abba” (cf. Mk 14:36) in the prayer of Gethsemane.

The fact that Jesus, in his first cry, used the initial words of Psalm 22 is significant for various reasons. Jesus was accustomed to pray following the sacred texts of his people. There must have remained in his mind many of those words and phrases which particularly impressed him, because they expressed better man’s need and anguish before God. In a certain way they alluded to the condition of the one who would have taken upon himself all our iniquity (cf. Is 53:11).

Therefore on Calvary it came natural to Jesus to make use of the psalmist’s question to God when he felt completely worn out by suffering. But on Jesus’ lips the “why” addressed to God was also more effective in expressing a pained bewilderment at that suffering which had no merely human explanation, but which was a mystery of which the Father alone possessed the key. Therefore, though arising from the memory of the Psalm read or recited in the synagogue, the question contained a theological significance in regard to the sacrifice whereby Christ, in full solidarity with sinful humanity, had to experience in himself abandonment by God. Under the influence of this tremendous interior experience, the dying Jesus found the energy to utter that cry!

In that experience, in that cry, in that “why” addressed to heaven, Jesus also established a new manner of solidarity with us who are so often moved to raise our eyes and words to heaven to express our complaint and even desperation.

In hearing Jesus crying out his “why,” we learn indeed that those who suffer can utter this same cry, but with those same dispositions of filial trust and abandonment of which Jesus is the teacher and model. In the “why” of Jesus there is no feeling or resentment leading to rebellion or desperation. There is no semblance of a reproach to the Father, but the expression of the experience of weakness, of solitude, of abandonment to himself, made by Jesus in our place. Jesus thus became the first of the “smitten and afflicted,” the first of the abandoned, the first of the desamparados (as the Spanish call them). At the same time, however, he tells us that the benign eye of Providence watches over all these poor children of Eve.
 
Continued:
If Jesus felt abandoned by the Father, he knew however that that was not really so. He himself said, “I and the Father are one” (Jn 10:30). Speaking of his future passion he said, “I am not alone, for the Father is with me” (Jn 16:32). Jesus had the clear vision of God and the certainty of his union with the Father dominant in his mind. But in the sphere bordering on the senses, and therefore more subject to the impressions, emotions and influences of the internal and external experiences of pain, Jesus’ human soul was reduced to a wasteland. He no longer felt the presence of the Father, but he underwent the tragic experience of the most complete desolation.

Here one can sketch a summary of Jesus’ psychological situation in relationship to God. The external events seemed to manifest the absence of the Father who permitted the crucifixion of his Son, though having at his disposal “legions of angels” (cf. Mt 26:53), without intervening to prevent his condemnation to death and execution. In Gethsemane Simon Peter had drawn a sword in Jesus’ defense, but was immediately blocked by Jesus himself (cf. Jn 18:10 f.). In the praetorium Pilate had repeatedly tried wily maneuvers to save him (cf. Jn 18:31, 38 f.; 19:4-6, 12-15); but the Father was silent. That silence of God weighed on the dying Jesus as the heaviest pain of all, so much so that his enemies interpreted that silence as a sign of his reprobation: “He trusted in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him; for he said, ‘I am the Son of God’” (Mt 27:43).

In the sphere of feelings and affection this sense of the absence and abandonment by God was the most acute pain for the soul of Jesus who drew his strength and joy from union with the Father. This pain rendered all the other sufferings more intense. That lack of interior consolation was Jesus’ greatest agony.

However, Jesus knew that by this ultimate phase of his sacrifice, reaching the intimate core of his being, he completed the work of reparation which was the purpose of his sacrifice for the expiation of sins. If sin is separation from God, Jesus had to experience in the crisis of his union with the Father a suffering proportionate to that separation.

On the other hand in quoting the beginning of Psalm 22, which he perhaps continued to recite mentally during the passion, Jesus did not forget the conclusion which becomes a hymn of liberation and an announcement of salvation granted to all by God. The experience of abandonment is therefore a passing pain which gives way to personal liberation and universal salvation. In Jesus’ afflicted soul this perspective certainly nourished hope, all the more so since he had always presented his death as a passage to the resurrection as his true glorification. From this thought his soul took strength and joy in the knowledge that at the very height of the drama of the cross, the hour of victory was at hand.

A little later, however, perhaps under the influence of Psalm 22, which again came to the surface in his memory, Jesus uttered the words, “I thirst” (Jn 19:28).

It is easy to understand that these words of Jesus refer to physical thirst, to the great agony which is part of the pain of crucifixion, as the experts in these matters tells us. One may also add that in manifesting his thirst Jesus gave proof of humility, by expressing an elementary need, as anyone would have done. Also in this Jesus expressed his solidarity with all those, living or dying, healthy or sick, great or small, who are in need and ask at least for a cup of water (cf. Mt 10:42). For us it is good to think that any help given to one who is dying, is given to Jesus crucified!

However, we cannot ignore the evangelist’s remark that Jesus uttered the words, “I thirst,” “to fulfill the Scripture” (Jn 19:28). These words of Jesus have another dimension beyond the physico-psychological. Once again the reference is to Psalm 22: “My throat is dried up like baked clay, my tongue cleaves to my jaws; to the dust of death you have brought me down” (v. 16). Also in Psalm 69:22 we read: “In my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.”
 
Continued again:
The Psalmist’s words treat of physical thirst, but on the lips of Jesus they enter into the messianic perspective of the suffering of the cross. In his thirst the dying Christ sought a drink quite different from water or vinegar, as when he asked the Samaritan woman at the well of Sychar: “Give me to drink” (Jn 4:7). Physical thirst on that occasion was the symbol and the path to another thirst, that of the conversion of the Samaritan woman. On the cross, Jesus thirsted for a new humanity which should arise from his sacrifice in fulfillment of the Scriptures. For this reason the evangelist links Jesus’ “cry of thirst” to the Scriptures. The thirst of the cross, on the lips of the dying Christ, is the ultimate expression of that desire of baptism to be received and of fire to be kindled on the earth, which had been manifested by him during his life. “I came to cast fire upon the earth and would that it were already kindled! I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!” (Lk 12:49-50). Now that desire is about to be fulfilled. With those words Jesus confirmed the ardent love with which he desired to receive that supreme “baptism” to open to all of us the fountain of water which really quenches the thirst and saves (cf. Jn 4:13-14).
 
Crucifixion

Science provides a physical description of Jesus’ crucifixion:

The cross is placed on the ground and an exhausted Jesus is quickly thrown backwards with His shoulders against the wood. The legionnaire feels for the depression at the front of His wrist. He drives a heavy, square wrought iron nail through His wrist deep into the wood. Quickly he moves to the other side and repeats the action, being careful not to pull the arms too tightly, but to allow some flex and movement. The cross is then lifted into place. The left foot is pressed backward against the right foot, and with both feet extended, toes down, a nail is driven through the arch of each, leaving the knees flexed. Jesus is now crucified. As He slowly sags down with more weight on the nails in His wrists, excruciating fiery pain shoots along His fingers and up the arms to explode in His brain; the nails in His wrists are putting pressure on the median nerves. As He pushes himself upward to avoid this stretching torment, Jesus places His full weight on the nail through His feet. Again He feels the searing agony of the nail tearing through the nerves between the bones of His feet. As His arms fatigue, cramps sweep through His muscles, knotting them with deep relentless, throbbing pain. With these cramps come the inability to push Himself upward to breathe. Air can be drawn into His lungs but not exhaled. He fights to raise himself in order to get even one small breath. Finally, carbon dioxide builds up in His lungs and in the blood stream, and the cramps partially subside.

Jesus suffered all this in front of His mother and brethern. When Jesus then saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then He said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!”
(John 19:26,27)

Spasmodically, Jesus is able to push himself upward to exhale and breathe in life-giving oxygen. Hours of limitless pain, cycles of twisting, joint wrenching cramps, intermittent partial asphyxiation, searing pain as tissue is torn from His lacerated back as He moves up and down against rough timber. Then another agony begins: a deep, crushing pain deep in His chest as the pericardium slowly fills with serum and begins to compress His heart. In a moment of desperation, Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It is now almost over; the loss of tissue fluids has reached a critical level. Jesus’ compressed heart is struggling to pump heavy, thick, sluggish blood through the arteries. His tortured lungs are making a frantic effort to gasp in small gulps of air. He can feel the chill of death creeping through His tissues. Finally, the Lamb of God was ready to lay down His life and die. About the ninth hour, “Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, said, I thirst. Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a sponge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.” All this the Bible records with the simple words, “and they crucified Him” (Mark 15:24).
 
Carol_Coombe said:
Science provides a physical description of Jesus’ crucifixion: … In a moment of desperation, Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?
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I don’t believe “desperation” can be measured by science. Nonetheless, as I’ve stated already, I don’t agree that desperation accurately describes this moment. On the contrary, he was our Rabbi even at this moment, praying Psalm 22 and showing us how He was fulfilling it and how we too are to cry out to God for help in our suffering.
 
pio_s said:
here’s what Pope John Paul II had to say about it…

“My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?”
General Audience — November 30, 1988…
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Thank you pio s. God bless John Paul II. 👍
 
Jesus never was separated from God and He knew he wasn’t separated from God but he did indeed feel what it would be like to be separated from God.

A saint can feel abandoned by god–empty and not sensing his presence and still with faith trust in god and know that he is not abandoned.

If that is the case with saints like St. John of the Cross who alludes to that abandonment “In the Dark Night of the Soul”–how much infinitely more so with Jesus on the cross!
 
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