BP 145
Darkness, like a dusky ocean, boils over the horizon. Flooding across the blue vault at midday, it swallows up the fiery-orange warrior of the sky as if it is a mere pebble in its path. The resulting gloom is thick, foreboding.
From his lofty position, His eyes once more scan the world beneath him. In the distance, all but entirely obscured by the darkness, he beholds the outline of the tawny city wall with its parapets and towers. His dimming eyes see the vineyards, the gardens with their exotic flora, the orchards rich with olives and dates. All these things he sees, yet he sees far beyond them.
His eyes drift down, and he considers the motley throng gathered beneath him. Some of the faces looking up at him brim with disdain and disgust. Some communicate fear and anxious dread. Others still are twisted into expressions of great agony and sorrow. Many are weeping.
All of them are partially masked by the gloom that has fallen from the sky, rendering their appearance ghostlike, unearthly.
Another darkness wars against His perception of the crowd beneath him—the endless night of excruciating pain that crushes his body and soul. The razor-sharp thorns that were pounded into his skull radiate an unrelenting current of pain through his head. His arms, face, and chest that are caked with drying blood throb with fire from the countless blows cruelly delivered by Roman clubs. Hs naked body shivers violently from the cold spring air—and from shock.
His cracked lips and parched mouth cry out for water, and his empty stomach screams for something—anything—to eat even though the food would be rejected as soon as He swallowed it. His hands and feet, thrust through by the large rusty spikes, sear with pain. And his back, ripped open to the bone by the metal-tipped whip from hell itself, is ablaze with nauseating pain.
As if this torture is not enough, He must fight for every breath. Slowly—everything is drawn out for an eternity on the crucifix—ever so slowly, He is suffocating. But until that moment of coveted release, His desperate efforts to breathe contort His whole body: His back, hands, and feet erupt with acute explosions of unimaginable pain whenever He pushes against the spikes so He can raise His body enough for His diaphragm to expand.
Has it only been six hours since He stumbled out of the Roman Praetorium with the transverse beam on His shoulders? Has it only been five hours since the soldiers nailed His hands to the crossbar and hoisted Him atop the upright post that is darkly stained with the blood of thieves, murderers, and insurrectionists who took their last breath on this same cruel tree?
It feels like days, not hours, since He looked into the eyes of his executioners and uttered, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Glacially, and with mammoth effort, He lifts his head and gazes up at the twilight heavens for the last time. He draws in another breath—this time only by supreme willpower because His body hates the agony of pushing against the spikes—and writhes in anguish on the rough post. A huge millstone has been laid on his chest, and his breaths are now so shallow that He is dizzy from lack of oxygen. A part of Him fights against blacking out; another part of Him begs for it.
But far more torturous than the physical weight of ten thousand millstones is the spiritual weight that crushes down on Him. And in this suffering, He knows He is without peer. He alone experiences this burden, this pain, this curse. It is so excruciating to His spirit that the physical torment that rips through his body pales in comparison.
He, who has never known sin, is now the sin-bearer. He is carrying on Himself the incalculable moral weight of the sins of all men and women: those alive, those dead, those who are yet to be born. He has willingly become the substitute, the scapegoat, the sole bearer of the holy Father’s wrath against unholiness. He is paying the price that had to be exacted before men and women could be freed from sin and its deathly penalty. It is a price that can only be paid by a perfect sacrifice—only by God Himself.
He squints at the dark vault above with eyes narrowed to slits by physical beating and dimmed by spiritual distress. Then he sucks in a shallow breath and his entire body screams in pain. He holds the breath for a moment and then cries out, “My God, my God, why, have you, forsaken me?”
There is no response to His anguished cry. The heavens are silent. They are covered by a curtain of iron, a dark messenger that speaks an unprecedented truth: for the first time in forever, God the Father has turned His face away from God the beloved Son, for the Son has become the accursed one. The sin-bearing scapegoat.
The Father cannot violate His eternal nature: in His holiness and hatred toward everything that separates Him from His beloved creatures that carry the imago Dei—fractured beyond human repair but not erased—He cannot countenance His own dear Son to remain in His presence. The sin of His fallen created ones—the sin that the Son is now bearing in His own pierced and crushed body—has created an unfathomable distance between Father and Son.
The Father cannot approach His sin-bearing Son any more than He could stop loving Him.
The Son has been abandoned by the Father.
The Son groans. He is heartsick for His Abba. He misses the One who has been with Him since before the beginning. The pain is more acute than human grief over the loss of a billion children. No man or woman can begin to imagine the depth of His loss. There is no empathy for such pain.
Heaven weeps. The dark sky offers mute testimony of the terrible separation between the Father and His Son. His only Son.
In that moment, just when the physical pain and the spiritual anguish are at their apex, the voices of temptation rise to a fever pitch.
The human mockers at His feet cry, “He saved others; let Him save Himself, if He is the Christ of God, His chosen one.”
His flesh shouts, “Call on a million angels to rescue you! Come down from the cross and escape the pain!”
Short-sighted Satan, who has finally begun to perceive an inkling of the wisdom and the power of the Son’s death, begins to panic. He whips his devils into a frenzy. They scream rabidly into His ears, “If you are God’s Son, demonstrate your power! Come down from the cross! Call on your Father to send the unfallen angels to rescue you! Fly down from the cursed tree! Are you not God? Exercise your divine freedom! Escape this human torture! Why are you enduring this?
For them?
The torn and rejected God-man of sorrows on the cross listens to none of the tempting, urgent voices. He looks past the suffering, past the humiliation of being publicly shamed on the cross, past the throbbing of His divine heart that cries out to be with His Father, and past the dark expanse above and around Him that cries out, “Abandoned!” Instead, He beholds the reward that awaits Him if He will endure but a little longer.
(And He remembers that He came not to be served but to serve.)
The joy of His Father’s glory lies ahead! The joy of His victory over Satan, sin, and death is soon to be realized once and for all! The joy of being united again with Father and Spirit is near! The joy of saving God’s chosen children from forever lonely darkness and bringing them into His presence is not far off! Even His own glory is looming on the horizon! It is all within reach. . . .
He will endure. He will persevere. He will obey. The reward that beckons Him is too great to be shunned, and the avenue to that reward lies through the cruel and punishing cross. His heart longs for His Father and breaks for His friends who will soon walk the paths of heaven beside Him if He will only persevere!
The Father will raise Him from the dead!
He gazes up at the black, impenetrable ceiling of heaven as tears roll down His cheeks, washing away crusted blood before them. Then His strength is gone, and His head slumps forward on His chest.
He regards the multitude at His feet for a long time—the mocking ones, the fearful ones, the sorrowing ones—and loves them all. He sees Peter, his mother, the centurion–He sees them all. He loves them all. He loves every man and woman—even those who are long since dead and those who will not be born for centuries to come.
Then, perceiving in Himself that the end has come, that the curse has been borne, that God’s wrath has been satisfied, that Satan has been toppled, that all that has separated His beloved creation from Himself has been removed, He cries out, “It is finished. Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”
In His human body, He knows one final moment of spiritual darkness, terrible abandonment, and physical pain. Then he breathes his last. He goes to the tomb where He will continue the battle against every enemy of humanity.
Immediately, the curtain in the Temple that for so long has been symbolic of the separation of the Holy God from His rebellious children is rent from top to bottom! Shocked, the demons shudder uncontrollably. Satan’s perverted parody of happiness plunges into a bottomless pit of utter misery and despair.
The myriad of angels in heaven and on earth burst into a chorus of glorious worship. The four living creatures sing louder than ever before in all eternity. They shake the foundations of the Temple with their cry of victory: “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.”
Casting their crowns before the throne, the twenty-four elders fall before the Alpha and the Omega and worship Him.
God has done it! He has done it! He has won the victory! In the sacrifice of his Son, God has provided a way for lost daughters and sons to approach Him!
You who are wracked by pain—physical, emotional, spiritual, relational—consider Jesus. Consider how He took up His cross for you—by name. Consider the spiritual anguish and physical torture He willingly endured for you because of love and glory and joy.
You who even now live with a deep sense of abandonment and aloneness, wondering if anyone will ever come for you, consider how Jesus experienced divine abandonment for you, separation from His beloved Father. Even though you cannot fathom His depth of abandonment, He knows yours—fully. Cry out to Him. He will meet you in your loneliness, grief, isolation—in your hiding place that falsely promises to protect you.
He will come for you.
You are seen.
You are not forgotten.
The abandoned and rejected One suffers with you.
He will send His sons and daughters to walk with you in the darkness of this age.
Help me. I can’t even draw near to you in my own strength.
Help.
Help.
“Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” ~ Hebrews 4:14-16
“Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud; be gracious to me and answer me! You have said, ‘Seek my face.’ My heart says to you, ‘Your face, Lord, do I seek.’ Hide not your face from me. Turn not your servant away in anger, O you who have been my help. Cast me not off; forsake me not, O God of my salvation! For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in” ~ Psalm 27
“For he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ So we can confidently say, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me” ~ Hebrews 13:5