Forsaken

Forsaken. How many have had someone in your lives forsake you for maybe something you did or maybe even because you became a Christian. We really don’t know what it means to be forsaken like some others might know it. I think of those in the Middle East that choose to leave Islam and become Christians, that’s what it means to be forsaken. Family, friends, even people they don’t really know forsake them because of their new relationship with Christ.

Christ definitely felt forsaken in an earthly sense when almost all of His disciples left Him when He was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane. But I don’t think being forsaken by them hurt as much as it did to be forsaken by His Father. That brings us to the fourth saying of Christ on the Cross.

“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?’” - Mark 15:34. As Jesus nears the point of death, God the Father turns His back on His own Son. At that point, God had laid the sins of the entire world on the body of Jesus. And because God is Holy, He could not look upon His Son in sin. He had to turn from Him and forsake Him for that time.

Since before the foundation of the world, the Father and the Son has always been in perfect fellowship with one another, and now for the first time that fellowship is broken. Jesus is now feeling something He has never felt before and it makes Him cry out in agony.

Because of our sin nature, we often break fellowship with our Heavenly Father. But we have the promise that He will never leave us nor forsake us. Isn’t that a great promise to rely on?

Have a great day and God bless.