At 3pm Jesus cries out loudly, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?” It once again is a fulfillment of prophecy because the phrase is found in Psalm 22 which describes the suffering of the Messiah.

The reason why Jesus cried out like this is what is important for us – it was because of our sin.

As the perfect Son of God, Jesus had been in continuous, unbroken relationship with the Father for all eternity. There was never a moment when He was not in the Presence of His Father. Never a time when He did not enjoy face to face conversation with Him. Not once did a shadow of darkness fall between them.

The same cannot be said of us.

Following mankind’s fall into sin in the Garden of Eden, our relationship with God was broken and the Bible says we “were dead in our trespasses and sins.” (Ephesians 2:1) Death is an excellent way to describe our relationship with God because it is impossible to have any kind of relationship with someone who is dead.

This has been the condition between God and every person ever born since the Garden of Eden, including you and me. More tellingly, until we put our trust in Jesus, we are used to this condition – we don’t know any differently!

But Jesus did. On the day He died, Jesus took upon Himself the sins of the whole world, past, present, and future and as He did so, there was a sense in which His Father hid His face from His Son. And so, Jesus cries out in anguish as He experiences this sense of abandonment.

The cost to Jesus to bring about our forgiveness, and our difficulty in trying to understand it, is captured in an old hymn:

“We may not know, we cannot tell,

What pains He had to bear,

But we believe it was for us

He hung and suffered there.”

We will never comprehend what it cost Jesus to die for our sin, but we can be forever grateful that He “hung and suffered” for us.

Today’s Bible reading: Mark 15:25-28