How much does God love us? The Apostle Paul tells us that the death of Jesus Christ on the cross is the supreme demonstration of God’s love for fallen human beings.
“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:6-8)
On this special day of Good Friday we make time to remember Jesus Christ dying on the cross. We give thanks to God that “Christ loved us and gave up His life for us.” (Ephesians 5:2).
We sometimes try to imagine what it was like for Jesus to die for our sins. The shame of the death of a common criminal. The physical pain. All the experiences of rejection. The guilt of sin. And then death, separation from God who is the source of all life. God loves us so much!
None of us enjoy being rejected! It can be hard to fit in sometimes. We may have childhood memories of been rejected by our school friends. The very last person in the class to be picked whatever the game. Some people are tragically rejected by their own family, by brothers and sisters, even by parents. We can be rejected in the workplace, ignored at lunchtimes, rejected from jobs we apply for or passed over for promotion. And most people have gone through experiences of being rejected in relationships – dumped by boyfriends or girlfriends. Nobody enjoys rejection. Jesus was rejected, as Isaiah foretold.
Isaiah 56:3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
By current standards of success, Jesus Christ was a failure. After one of his sermons, all of his followers deserted him, except for the Twelve Apostles. He was a political failure. All levels of government first rejected him and then they conspired to kill him. His peers (the Pharisees) rejected his ministry. In the end even his friends eventually abandoned him, and one of them betrayed him to death. Jesus was rejected by everybody.
MAN OF SORROWS! what a name For the Son of God, who came
Ruined sinners to reclaim! Hallelujah! what a Saviour!
Bearing shame and scoffing rude, In my place condemned He stood;
Sealed my pardon with His blood: Hallelujah! what a Saviour!
And then dying on a cross as a common criminal was indeed the ultimate failure, the ultimate shame, the ultimate rejection. Because most significantly, there on the cross Jesus felt himself to be rejected by God His father.
“Christ loved us and gave up His life for us.” (Eph 5:2). If we think it would be easy to give up our lives to save somebody we loved, we are deluding ourselves! But let us not forget the role of God the Father at Calvary? Jesus gave Himself up – but the Father also had to give Him up and hand Him over. “Because of our sins Christ was handed over to die.” “God did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all.” ( Rom 4:25, 8:32)
Notice this phrase, “gave him up.” We find this same word which means “gave up”,”hand over,” or “give over” more than a hundred times in the New Testament. The Jewish leaders handed Jesus over to Pilate. Pilate handed Jesus over to be crucified. And the same word can sometimes mean “betrayed.” In Gethsemane Jesus said, “The time has come for the Son of Man to be handed over to the power of sinful men. Here is the man who is betraying me.” (Matt 26:21-22, 45-46). Judas hands over Jesus. And the Father hands over the Son.
Jesus was rejected by His own people as a blasphemer. He was condemned by the Romans as a dangerous rebel. He was deserted by His closest friends. But more important than all these things, on the cross God the Son felt the full reality of being abandoned by God the Father.
We can see that so clearly in that astounding cry “of dereliction” from the cross.
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
“My God, my God, why did You abandon me?” (Mark 15:34)
The New Century Translation even says, “My God, my God, why have you rejected me?
Jesus was quoting Psalm 22
1. My God,my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?
2 O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent.
This Psalm prophetically gave words to Christ’s deepest feelings. These were feelings of complete rejection, no apparent desertion but a real desertion. The Son had come to reveal God as the heavenly Father. He had shocked traditional Judaism by daring to address God as Abba, Daddy. But on the cross for the first time in His life Jesus cannot pray “My Father” but only “My God”. Why have you deserted me just like all my disciples have done? Why have you forsaken me? Why have you abandoned me? Why have you handed me over – just like the Jewish leaders did and Pilate did? Why have you given me up? Why have you betrayed me just as much as Judas did? WHY have you rejected me? How those words would have pierced the Father heart of God!
These words as Jesus was on the point of death give us a glimpse into eternal realities. As Jesus was suffering on the cross something very profound was happening deep within God Himself. As Martin Luther said, “Christ saw Himself as lost, as forsaken by God, felt in His conscience that He was cursed by God, suffered the torments of the damned who feel God’s eternal wrath, shrink from it and flee.”
In his book “The Crucified God” the German theologian Jurgen Moltmann explains the cross this way. “It was a deep division in God Himself, insofar as God abandoned God and contradicted Himself. The Son suffers in His love being forsaken by the Father as He dies. The Father suffers in His love the grief of the death of the Son.”
So the cross of Christ was just as hard, just as painful, just as heartbreaking for the loving Father as it was for the obedient Son. Any father would suffer handing his son over to such agony and desolation. God the Father was not an aloof spectator at Calvary. He looked on with grief and tears that the world could only be reconciled and redeemed at the inestimable cost of alienation from His only beloved Son.
Amazing love, oh what sacrifice, the Son of God given for me! The sacrifice of the omnipotent Father is as great as the sacrifice of the helpless Son. God’s deity is divided! The Holy Trinity, God eternally three-in-One, is split apart by OUR sin as Christ the Son shares our rebellion and separation from God the Father!
“Christ was without sin, but God made Him to BE sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God!” (2 Cor 5:21)
We rejected God! God never rejected us. We sinful proud selfish human beings turned our backs on God! Ignored his laws. Refused him the worship of which He is worthy. The only thing we deserve is to be rejected by God in return.
But instead of rejecting us – God rejects his one and only Son. The Son who was one with the Father from eternity, before space and time were created. The Son who from the very moment of his human birth lived in unbroken fellowship with God. The Son who was always the delight of God’s heart, kept by his Father right from birth. The Son for whom the Father spoke from heaven and put his seal of approval upon his life, saying, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,” {Matt 3:17b, cf, Mark 1:11}. There is absolutely nothing in the Son to cause the Father to turn His back on Him. Yet there on the cross the Son of God is hung up to die, forsaken, abandoned, rejected.
Reflect on these words from Moltmann. “The suffering in the passion of Jesus is abandonment, rejection by God His Father. Jesus humbles Himself and takes upon Himself the eternal death of the Godless and the Godforsaken, so that the Godless and the Godforsaken can experience communion with Him.”
Man of sorrows indeed.
Guilty, vile, and helpless, we; Spotless Lamb of God was He:
Full atonement—can it be? Hallelujah! what a Saviour!
My Lord, what love is this That pays so dearly,
That I, the guilty one, May go free!
Amazing love, O what sacrifice, The Son of God given for me.
My debt He pays, and my death He dies, That I might live,
that I might live.
THAT is how much it cost God to bring us back from hell! THAT is how much God loves you and me! This Easter give thanks as you remember how much it cost Jesus to die for you. And think on this. How much does it cost you to live for Him?
