Our God-Forsaken Savior

Mark 15:33-41
Gregory Perry | Friday, April 02, 2021
Copyright © 2021, Gregory Perry

The title of our Good Friday message tonight is “Our God-Forsaken Savior.” We have been studying through the book of Mark as you know for this last year or so, and for this Good Friday service tonight we are looking at Mark 15:33–41. This is a section that tells us of the death of Christ on the cross. Then Dr. Spencer on Sunday morning will be looking at the Mark passage about the resurrection.

When we come to the crucifixion of Christ, we are coming to the very reason why the eternal Son of God came to this earth and took on human nature. He was born in order to die. He came to be crucified. This is the very heart of the gospel: Christ died for our sins. On the cross, Christ was suffering the penalty that we deserved. It is not just that he died the death that we owed. That is true. But on the cross, the wrath of God that was intended for us was poured out on him as our substitutionary sacrifice. So let us look more closely at what we can learn from this passage about the crucifixion of our dying Savior. We will look at the following three points. First, Christ forsaken; Second, Christ died; and, Third, Christ identified.

Christ Forsaken

In verses 33 and 34, we read, “At the sixth hour, darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’—which means, ‘My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?’”

What was happening to Christ on the cross? It is not just he died. On the cross in these three hours, he was suffering the wrath of God in our behalf.  So in the middle of the day, from noon till 3 p.m., darkness descended on the land. This cosmological phenomenon was indicative of a deeper meaning. For three hours on the cross, the Son of God was suffering the outpouring of God’s wrath.

This three hours of darkness is reminiscent of the plague of darkness that descended over Egypt before the plague of the death of the firstborn. Likewise, darkness here descends over the land before the death of God’s one and only Son.

At the end of these three dark hours, the Lord cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This was not just a random question. Jesus was quoting the first verse of Psalm 22, a psalm that prophesied the suffering of the Christ to come.

Not only is Jesus alluding to this important messianic psalm, but the question itself reflects the reality of what is actually happening to Christ at that very moment on the cross. The great Reformer John Calvin put it this way: “Jesus expressed this horror of great darkness, this God-forsakenness, by quoting the only verse of Scripture which actually described it and which he had perfectly fulfilled.”

As Isaiah 59:2 makes clear, our sin necessarily separates us from the holy God. As sinners, we are alienated from God’s blessed presence. Ultimately, this is the essence of hell: to be completely separated from God’s blessed presence for all eternity. When Jesus Christ our sinless Savior took on human nature and willingly transferred our sins into his account, he knew that he would be forsaken by his Father. He had to undergo the cosmic trauma of separation from God, who is light and in whom is no darkness at all.

Christ received the just punishment for our sins, not just through his death, not just when his spirit left his body, but also as he suffered on the cross. The essence of Christ’s suffering was not the pain of the nails that pierced his hands and feet, nor was it the shame of being stripped and beaten in Pilate’s presence, nor was it the humiliation of hanging on the cross alongside common criminals. No, the key aspect of Christ’s suffering was his experiencing the wrath of God on the cross. The Son beloved by God from all eternity was cut off for the first time from his Father. For the first time ever, he was separated from God. He was alienated from him. He who was always one with the Father became the God-forsaken Son.

This was the punishment that we as sinners deserved. Christ was forsaken by God for us. Our sin was imputed to Christ. That means our sin was put into his account. He was sinless but he took our sin upon himself, so that he received the punishment that was due us for our sins.

And, moreover, Christ’s righteousness was imputed to us. It was put into our account so that we, his elect believers, could be reconciled to God and brought into fellowship with him. This is the glorious doctrine of double-imputation, the double transaction we read about in 2 Corinthians 5:21. It says, “God made him who had no sin”—it is speaking about Christ—“to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Christ not only took our sin and imputed it to himself, but he also graciously gave us his righteousness, that we could now and forever stand justified before God. He who had eternal fellowship and union with the Father gave that to us as he took on the alienation and wrath that our sins deserved. We, as sinners, were by nature objects of wrath. And yet Christ willingly became the object of wrath in our place.

First Peter 3:18 is translated in the ESV and the King James Version, “For Christ also suffered.” The NIV says “died,” but these other translations say, “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.” We think a lot about the death of Christ, but the suffering of Christ on the cross is very significant. For it was then that God’s wrath was being poured out on Christ and he was experiencing what it means to be forsaken by God.

Christ did not just die; he suffered. Many people die without suffering, but he died and he suffered. And he did not just suffer pain. We think about the pain of the nails and so on. But he suffered especially the wrath of God. God forsook him at the cross because of our sin. The suffering of Christ on the cross is an important aspect of what he was accomplishing on the cross. That being said, let us turn now to the death of Christ.

Christ Died

In verses 37 and 38, we read, “With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” The historical fact is that Christ died.

Now, everyone in history dies. But this is the most important and significant death in history. And the important question to answer is, why did Christ die? Though there was a form of spiritual death that Jesus experienced on the cross—in other words, when he was separated from the Father’s blessed presence, when he was forsaken by God, that is a form of spiritual death—Jesus Christ ultimately still had to die physically in order to fulfill the just requirements of God’s law. For from the beginning, God’s law was the same:  The wages of sin is death. Even as early as the Garden of Eden, God told the first man Adam that on the day that he broke the law of not eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he would surely die. He must die.

Death is ultimately defined by separation. Physical death occurs when the soul or the spirit is separated from the body. That is what death is. Jesus Christ physically died on the cross. His spirit was separated from his body. This is especially evident in his loud cry. We read in Mark about the loud cry and the Luke account tells us what the loud cry was. Luke tells us that Jesus cried out, “Into your hands I commit my spirit.” And after saying this, Jesus died. His spirit was separated from his body.

The death of Christ points to his true humanity. He took on human nature. Yes, Jesus is divine, and we will see that in the minute. He is the Second Person of the Trinity. But he is not only God. In fact, if he was only God, then he could not die because the immortal God, by definition, cannot die. And, simply put, if Jesus could not die, then he could not pay the price of our sins. Jesus is fully and truly man.

We say that Jesus needed to be man in order to die. But death, if you think about it, is not unique to man. All sorts of creatures experience death. But, as we are told in Hebrews 10:4, it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin. And the truth is this: In order to pay for the sins of man, Jesus had to be a man, a real man.

And Christ truly died. He did not just appear to die. The skeptics and Muslims alike speak about the “swoon theory,” in which they imagine that Christ only appeared to be dead and that he was simply resuscitated while in the tomb. There are all sorts of problems with this theory that we will not get into, but I want to focus on the theological problem of this theory. The theological problem is that if Christ did not truly die, then, simply put, we are not truly saved. Christ’s death was the necessary payment for our sin. If his payment is not real, if his death is counterfeit, then the ransom price is not truly paid. It is like he is paying with counterfeit money. And so therefore we cannot be redeemed. If he did not pay for our sin, then we still must pay for our sins. And the only way that we pay for our sins is by suffering the wrath of God eternally in hell. That is what we know as eternal death.

The mockers, we are told in Mark 15:30, called on Jesus, “Come down from the cross and saved yourself!” But if Christ had followed that diabolical advice and saved himself, then none of us could be saved. The payment for our sin would not have been paid.

Jesus Christ was without sin, so he did not deserve to die. And the just God will not let the innocent die. But the Lord Jesus Christ took our sins upon himself, and our sins were put into his account. So Jesus took our guilt and died for us. This is the very heart of the gospel. We read this in 1 Corinthians 15:3. The apostle Paul says, “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.” Christ died for our sins. Paul also says Romans 5:8, “But God showed his love for us in this, that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” You see, Christ died in behalf of us. He died instead of us. He died in our place. He was our substitutionary sacrifice, the substitutionary atonement, the ultimate fulfillment of the Old Testament sacrificial system. Our sins were transferred onto Jesus Christ, just as we read in Leviticus 16, how the priest transferred his sins and the sins of the people onto the scapegoat.

Either Christ died for our sins, or we must die for our sins. There is no third option. The punishment for sin must be meted out in one of these two ways. The perfectly just God will not and, indeed, cannot let the guilty go unpunished. The just requirements of the law must be meted out. We read about this in Romans 3:25–26. It talks about how the justice of God is fulfilled in Christ. It says, “God presented him” speaking about Christ “as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.”

Christ’s death on the cross for our sin was the ultimate demonstration of both the love of God and the justice of God. And when Christ died, the curtain in the temple was miraculously torn asunder, symbolizing that the way for sinful man to approach a holy God had now been made. We can now do what we could not do before. We now can approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Christ, who eternally had communion with the Father, was forsaken by God so that we who were alienated from God could now be brought into fellowship with him, both now and for all eternity. Praise the Lord. This leads us to the third point: Christ Identified.

Christ Identified

In verse 39 we read, ‘And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, heard his cry and saw how he died, he said, ‘Surely this man was the Son of God!’” The Roman centurion, who was responsible for security at the crucifixion site, witnessed it all. This centurion had surely beheld many deaths in his day, both on the battlefield and at crucifixions. But he had never seen anything like the death of Christ.

The centurion witnessed the three hours of darkness. He heard Christ’s words from the cross. He observed the mockers who came to taunt Jesus, and he even saw the handful of grieving women watching from a distance.

The centurion saw it all and he rightly concluded, “Surely this man was the Son of God!” It is not clear how much the centurion understood about all that he was saying, but we know this: He was exactly right. This Jesus was and is the one and only eternal Son of the Father, the Second Person in the Holy Trinity. (GWP) This statement of Jesus as the Son of God comes here towards the end of the gospel of Mark. It echoes how this gospel began. The first verse of Mark 1 says this: “The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

We saw before that Jesus is truly and fully man. He had to be a man in order to die and represent man as the proper substitutionary sacrifice of atonement for man. Man had to die for man. To be more precise, a sinless man, a perfect man, had to die in behalf of sinful men.

But Jesus also had to be God. When man sinned against the eternal and infinite God, he incurred an eternal and infinite debt to God. To pay the infinite debt, the sacrifice itself had to be infinite. The death of a mere man—even if we hypothetically think of a perfect man—if he was a mere man, that death would not be sufficient to cover this infinite debt. The sacrifice had to be both human and divine, and only Jesus is both fully man and fully God.

The clear and consistent witness of the Scriptures is that Jesus is nothing less than God. This point is made explicitly and implicitly throughout the Bible. Think of the explicit statements that we read about the divinity of Christ. Contrary to people who say that the Bible never comes out and says that Jesus is God, read John 1:1. Speaking about Christ, it says, “In the beginning was the Word”—that Word is Jesus—“and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Or read Romans 9:5. You cannot get much clearer than this: “Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised!” Or 1 John in 5:20 we read, “And we are in him who is true—even in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.” Or we see in Colossians 2:9, “For in Christ all the fullness of Deity lives in bodily form.”

But more than that, there a number of ways that the Bible implicitly shows that Jesus is God. So, yes, the Bible tells us that he is God. But also the Bible shows us that Jesus is God.

For example, the Bible attributes to Jesus divine attributes, characteristics that can only be said of God. He is given what is known as incommunicable attributes, attributes that only God can have. So, for example, his eternality—only God is eternal. In John 8:56–58 we read that Jesus says, “Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.” And they responded, “You are not yet fifty years old, and you have seen Abraham!” And Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, before Abraham was born, I am!” Jesus described himself as the great “I am.” He is speaking about his eternality.

He speaks about his omnipresence, when in Matthew 28:20 in the Great Commission he says, “Surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age.” Or consider the fact that Jesus, like God, is immutable. He does not change. Man changes. Every man changes, but Jesus does not change. Hebrews 13:8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

Then there are divine works that are attributed to Jesus. He does things that only God can do. The Bible speaks about Jesus as Creator. Only God is the Creator, and yet Colossians 1:16 says, “For by him [Christ] all things were created; things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.” And the Bible speaks about Jesus being the Sustainer of life. Only God sustains life. Hebrews 1:3 says, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being,” again speaking of his divine nature. Then it goes on to say that he sustains “all things by his powerful word.” This is saying that Jesus, who is God, sustains all things by his powerful word. In fact, in John 5:19 he goes so far as to say, “Whatever the Father does, the Son also does.” Think about what he is saying there. He is saying whatever God does, I the Son do.” No mere man can say that he can do what only God can do. And yet here is Jesus declaring that he does what only the Father can do.

Then there are divine titles given to Christ that are only appropriate for God. Of course, he is called “Lord” over and over. But not just “Lord” as a general term. There are times he is spoken of as “Lord” which are directly reflective of the name of God, Yahweh, Jehovah. For example, in Matthew 3:3, when you read about John the Baptist preparing the way for the Lord, he applies Isaiah 40:3. He is saying, “I am here to prepare the way for the Lord.” Well, in Isaiah 40:3, it is saying, “I am here to prepare the way for Yahweh,” for Jehovah, for God himself. So John is declaring that this Jesus who he is preparing the way for is Yahweh; he is God.

The Bible speaks of Jesus as the King of kings and Lord of lords. We read about this in Revelation 17:14. He is the King of kings and the Lord of lords. In Deuteronomy 10:17 in the Old Testament Scriptures, it says, “For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome.” So if you speak of Christ as being “the Lord of lords,” you are speaking of him being God. In 1 Corinthians 2:8, you read this: “None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” Paul is calling Jesus Christ “the Lord of glory.” That is saying he is God.

And divine honor throughout the Scriptures is given to Jesus Christ. He is worshiped. In Matthew 14:33, after he calms the storm, we read about the disciples: “Then those who were in the boat worshiped him,” and you know what they said? They said exactly what the centurion said. They said, “Truly you are the Son of God.” They worshiped Jesus.

Now there are a lot of religions in which you worship trees or you worship whatever—you worship yourself, you worship man, like the Caesars were worshiped. But in Judaism in the time of Christ, you worshiped only God. And yet these disciples, these Jewish believers, worshiped Jesus because they were saying, “You are God.”

As we read this morning about Jesus, “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:10–11). In Isaiah 45:22–23 it says this about God, and only God. Before him every knee shall bow and every tongue confess. And that is being applied now to Jesus.

So, yes, this centurion at the cross was no Bible scholar. He could not cite any of these verses, many of them which had not been written yet. And he did not know the Old Testament, I am sure. But he himself could see clearly that this crucified Jesus was nothing less than the Son of God

This Good Friday, as we remember what Jesus Christ did for us on the cross, we too should marvel and say, “Surely this was the Son of God, sent by God the Father for the express purpose of saving his people from their sins through his death on the cross.” For three hours on the cross he was forsaken by God so that we would not have to be forsaken by God for all eternity. He took the cup of God’s wrath that was meant for us sinners and he drank it in full so that now there is no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus.

Christ died for us. This is a sobering truth, but it is one we must celebrate. We can celebrate because of what we will celebrate on Sunday. This Jesus did not just die; he conquered death and was raised to life. Through Christ’s death, we are now given new life in him. He died so that we could live. As we read in 2 Corinthians 5:15, it says about Jesus, “He died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but they now live for him who died for them and was raised again.”

Christ the Son of God, the Suffering Servant, has died for us. Therefore, we must go and live for him. He was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father so that we may live a new life. For we are God’s workmanship. We are his re-creations. He created us in Christ Jesus. So let us go and do the good works of obedience that God has prepared in advance for us to do, all for his glory and our ultimate and eternal good. Praise the Lord. Amen.