Forsaken For Our Sake

Today is called Good Friday. Imagine the deepest pain you’ve ever felt over a broken relationship, then multiply it into infinity. This is a whisper of what Jesus felt during the final moments before His death.

Lenten reflections often focus on Jesus’ physical suffering. But His emotional torment was far greater. The depth of community and eternally perfect fellowship within the Trinity — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — is beyond our ability to fathom.

So when these anguished words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” rent the air that awful afternoon, they bore with them the pain of a loss we cannot comprehend. Unjustly suspended on the cross, Jesus faced the jeering crowds. He took their unrighteousness, and ours, upon himself. He took on our defiance, our hatred, our guilt, and our sin. Abandoned and alone, his body crushed as the weight of God’s wrath pounded like a relentless waterfall.

Jesus surrendered himself to this agonizing death for you and me. He allowed his Father to stamp out his life so that we could draw near to God freely and without fear. We can now become God’s kids. Galatians 4:6 says, “And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his son into our hearts, crying ‘Abba! Father!’”

The Aramaic word ‘Abba’ connotes a tender, childlike intimacy, like the English word ‘Daddy.’ Because Jesus died for our sakes on the cross, the Holy Spirit is permanently present in us, bidding us to cry to our loving Daddy and bask in his forever love.

Father, thank you for forsaking your Son so that I could be made your child. Jesus, I cannot imagine the suffering and anguish you felt, and I’m astonished that you endured it because of your great love for me. Help me to experience the depth of that infinite love through the Spirit you’ve placed in my heart. Amen.

Go Deeper — Search in a Bible concordance for the word ‘Abba’ to see how Jesus used it. How does living in the Spirit, as we’ve explored this month, empower us to experience that same familial depth in our own relationship with God?