Reflections on the Cross

The words of Jesus on the cross to his Father of: "My God, My God, why have you foresaken me?" will never be fully understood by me because Christ has born the full weight of the wrath of God for my sin. Because He has experienced this I will never need to. And while many Christian communities talk about this phrase as the time when Jesus cried out to His Father as He felt the weight of God's wrath against sin I have learned that this holds much deeper meaning then this.

Remember that God Himself exists in a relationship of three persons; He is relationship: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When Jesus died on the cross for our sin He did not consider equality with God something to be grasped (Colossians.) While this means that He did not use his divinity to come down off the cross He still had to be divine to live the perfect life and to bear the wrath of God. Only God could have born the wrath of God.

But at the same time, He subjected Himself to breaking this perfect relationship. Maybe when Jesus cried out these words He also felt the weight of:

1) The brokeness of His relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit (so part of Himself) and 2) The full reality or experience of the brokeness of our relationship with God.

In that moment He fully understood what sin had done to the world. Sin had broken everythings and everyone's relationship. To be God and to foresaken by God broke Him. And to be human and to be rejected by God and humanity broke Him.

How great this lament!

And how much more victorious His death & resurrection. His death because it reunited Him within His proper relationship with Himself - and His resurrection because it redeemed his humanity for us in proper relationship with God.

How great is this sacrafice! How great His resurrection! How wonderful our relationship with Him because of Him!

\manda