Taking the time to observe each day of Passion Week gives us an incredible opportunity to end the Lenten season in a season of careful reflection. In fact, you may be so drawn into the concept of examining yourself, that you don’t let the practice end with an Easter celebration. The Bible encourages us to constantly “examine ourselves to make sure that we are still of the faith” (2 Corinthians 13:5). Over the course of the last several weeks, God may have revealed some areas in your life that you need to work on. Perhaps through times of prayer and fasting, you’ve realized that there are things in your life that are separating you from God’s presence. Don’t let the discovery of those things discourage you. Instead, ask the Holy Spirit to help you correct them in your pursuit of a closer walk with God.
Since there are seven days in Passion Week and the Bible provides seven different sayings of Jesus on the cross, we have been looking at a different declaration from Calvary as we observe each day of Passion Week. The fourth day of Passion Week, often referred to as Maundy Thursday, aligns with Jesus’ fourth cry from the cross.
Maundy Thursday is significant because it is the day during Passion Week on which Jesus celebrated the Last Supper with His disciples. Fully aware that He was less than 24 hours away from the cross, Jesus wanted to celebrate the Passover with His closest friends and the disciple who would betray Him. That concept of betrayal makes the fourth declaration from the cross so fitting for the observation of the fourth day of Passion Week.
Jesus Experiences Abandonment
Matthew 27:45-46 (TPT)
For three hours, beginning at noon, darkness came over the earth. And at three o’clock Jesus shouted with a mighty voice in Aramaic, “Eli Eli, lema sabachthani?”-that is, “My God, My God, why have you deserted me?
Jesus was nailed to the cross at around 9:00 a.m. on Good Friday. For three hours, the crowds came and went as they watched the suffering of the common criminals. It seemed to be a crucifixion day like any other. There was pain, screaming, blood shed and other reminders that violators of the Roman law were being killed for their transgressions. Nothing that went on between 9 a.m. and noon did anything to make this day seem remarkable. But at 12 p.m. something happened. For three hours, darkness covered the earth.
It’s important to understand what was going on in the spirit realm during the crucifixion. This was not simply the case of a man being crucified. That had been done countless times before Good Friday and would happen countless times again after this. There were things going on in the spiritual realm that no one gathered around the cross could see. John, the beloved disciple knew that his closest friend was dying. Mary knew that she was losing her first-born son. The other women who had followed Him knew that the Messiah was experiencing death, but none of them could see everything that was happening in the supernatural.
While Jesus hung there, suspended between the Heavens and the Earth, He did so as a bridge between humanity and Divinity. However, for Him to serve as that bridge, He had to take our sins upon Himself so He could take the punishment that we deserved. Jesus took our sins into His own body so that we could become dead to sin. Paul discussed the events of the cross in this manner:
2 Corinthians 5:21 (TPT)
For God made the only one who did not know sin to become sin for us, so that we who did not know righteousness might become the righteousness of God through our union with him.
Jesus became the embodiment of everything that humanity had ever or would ever do wrong during His time on the cross. There is no way for the human mind to fully comprehend what this looked like because this wasn’t a battle that took place in the natural. Instead, when God looked at His Son in that moment, He saw our sins. He saw the disobedience that Adam and Eve displayed when they ate of the fruit in Eden. He saw the failings of David when he took Bathsheba from her husband, who he subsequently had murdered in an attempt to cover up his own sin. God looked at His son and saw everything wrong that we would ever do.
That is why God had to turn His back on His Son. That is why the earth went dark. The Son had become sin, and a Holy God cannot look at sin. In that heartbreaking moment, the Father could not look at the Son. The people around the cross weren’t aware of the abandonment. There was no grand announcement where a voice rang down from Heaven and declared that the Son had become sin so the sinful could become sons. Instead, the earth simply went dark.
For the first time in His 33 years, Jesus was completely disconnected from the Father. When he was 12, Mary and Joseph lost Him at the temple. When they found Him, he asked them, “Didn’t you know I had to be about my Father’s business?” (Luke 2:49). At the outset of His public ministry, Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. When he came out of the water, the Bible tells how the Holy Spirit descended on Him like a dove and the Father proclaimed, “This is the Son I love, and my greatest delight is in him” (Matthew 3:17 TPT).
In that moment, Jesus was no longer the Father’s greatest delight. Instead, He was sin. He was your sin, and He was my sin. In that moment, Satan and his demonic spirits believed that they had won. The angels were silent, Heaven was heartbroken, and the earth went dark. However, just like the rest of Jesus’ life and death, this moment had been prophesied nearly a thousand years earlier.
Psalm 22:1 (NKJV)
My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me, and from the words of My groaning?
The abandonment of Jesus as He became the embodiment of sin and shame had been declared by God centuries earlier. As Jesus entered the final three hours of His natural life, the greatest pain that He felt was being forsaken by His Father. However, He still trusted Him. That’s why He was able to continue to call Him “My God.”
What Does It Mean for Us?
That moment on the cross was the darkest moment in all of human history. However, without that moment, you and I would be left to live in that darkness, that separation from God for all of eternity. Peter worded it like this:
2 Peter 2:24 (TPT)
He himself carried our sins in his body on the cross so that we would be dead to sin and live for righteousness. Our instant healing flowed from his wounding.
If Christ hadn’t carried our sins, we would have been responsible for them. Since He had lived a perfect life, He was the only acceptable substitute. We never could have paid that price. Jesus was left there, forsaken by the Father so we would never have to be. His abandonment ensured that we would always have the right to be called the sons and daughters of God (2 Corinthians 6:18).
Today, reflect on that moment. Allow yourself to imagine the pain that Jesus felt not only in His body, but also in His spirit as He experienced the separation from God that we would have known had He not given His life in our place. Understand that if He had not been cut off from the Father, we would have been.
A Closing Prayer
God, thank You for giving Your Son as the sacrifice for my sins. Jesus, thank You for willingly accepting the pain and the abandonment of separation from the Father so I would never have to know what that feels like. I repent of my sins, each and every one of them. I thank You for taking my place so I could experience eternal relationship with the Father. In Christ’s name I pray, Amen.