“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Matthew 27:46
We are reminded here that not only does God hide His face from us sometimes, but God also hid His face from His own Son.
The Father had always delighted in the Son and the Son had always delighted in the Father. Love, in all its fullness, had always been flowing between the Father and the Son.
And then there was the cross. Christ stood in our place and bore our sins. Darkness covered the land, and the Father hid His face from the Son, and our Savior cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
The Father did not cease to love Him. Jesus said, “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life” (John 10:17). If the Father loves Him because He lays down His life, He could hardly cease to love Him in the act of doing so.
The Father did not stop loving the Son in these hours of darkness. But the comforts of the Father’s love were beyond the Savior’s reach. Jesus was separated from this love, outside of it, beyond its reach.
It was there that God accomplished His greatest work. The day God hid His face was the day He redeemed the world. Jesus was forsaken so that you would never know what that is like.
Think about the day God hid his face from his Son and the implications of that for your life and eternity.
