The Most Accepted Heresy on the Planet
Torn flesh, bones out of joint, in anguish, nailed to a cross, Jesus cries out the heartrending words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
“My God, my God, in my darkest hour, when I am suffering, crushed by sorrow, disappointment and the horrors of this cruel world, broken by the weight of sin, here when I need You most, why have You left, deserted, abandoned, separated; why have You forsaken me?”
There is a suffocating hopeless sense of betrayal in those words. And for most of my life, I have had to navigate them as if they were true.
For most of my life, I have been taught from pulpits and platforms, by mostly well-meaning preachers and teachers, that in this heart-rending moment on the cross, a good God, the Father of Jesus, turned His back on His Son.
He looked away.
He turned His face.
It’s in our discipleship books. If you google the phrase “God turned His face” you’ll find endless teaching on the ‘forsaking’ nature of God.
My wife found it in the children’s bibles at our home church, “’Papa,’ Jesus cried frantically searching the sky. ‘Papa? Where are you? Don’t leave me!’ …nothing happened. Just a horrible, endless silence. He turned away from His boy…”
It’s in our songs; How Deep the Fathers Love contradicts its title with the unsettling lyric “How great the pain of searing loss – the Father turns His face away.”
The gospel of salvation I grew up with – at its very foundation – was built upon a Father who looks away, a God who leaves.
And it’s a fiction.
A myth.
A lie.
In the moment when Jesus cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” the Father hadn’t left, forsook, or abandoned His Son. Just the opposite.
“When you all run away from me and leave me alone, I won’t be alone, because My Father is with me” (John 16:32). That is what Jesus told His disciples before going to the cross. That seems pretty clear, doesn’t it? The Father wasn’t going anywhere. But if that’s true, what do we do with Jesus’ anguished cry to God on the cross?
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This is the pivotal scripture that has been used to propagate the idea that the Father turned His face from His Son.
But did you know this cry by Jesus was an echo of His earthly forefather? Jesus was quoting the poet king David from Psalm 22. And every Jewish person knew it.
If I said, “Our Father who art in heaven,” most of you would respond with, “Hollowed be Thy name.”
If I sang, “You may say I’m a dreamer,” most of you would sing, “But I’m not the only one.”
When Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” every Jewish person knew the song He was singing. They also knew that when a teacher quoted the first verse of a Psalm, as Jesus had, the teacher was drawing the listener’s attention to the entire Psalm.
As Davidic psalms go, Psalm 22 is fairly standard. Except on this day, it was powerfully prophetic. David’s words were coming to life before their very eyes.
“My God my God why have you forsaken me…” led to, “But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads…” (verse 6)
“My God my God why have you forsaken me…” led to, “ I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint…” (14)
“My God my God why have you forsaken me…” led to, “my mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth…” (15)
“My God my God why have you forsaken me…” led to, “Dogs surround me, a pack of villains encircles me; they pierce my hands and my feet. All my bones are on display; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment…” (16-18)
And then, the powerful revelation Jesus wanted us to know, why He quoted this Psalm in the first place, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me” led to the epic revelation of Psalm 22:24. “For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.”
On a cross, in His darkest hour, when He was suffering, crushed by sorrow, disappointment, and the horrors of sin, when He felt what all humanity has experienced, cut off from His awareness of His Father; when He was experiencing the devastating betrayal behind the lie that God abandons, forsakes, and leaves; Jesus quotes a scripture that reveals the power of the gospel unto salvation, GOD DOES NOT LEAVE.
The Father didn’t oscillate. He did not leave. As the old hymn writer wrote: “There is no shadow of turning with Thee.” God was in Christ, on a cross, reconciling all humanity to Himself! (see 2 Cor 5:19)
Adapted from Prone to Love.
A good Father does not leave.
And yet much of the church that we know today has been built on the disparate deception of a good Father who leaves, who forsakes, who practices distance and separation.
The very foundation of our Christian faith is the cross – it’s an epic love story that reveals God’s saving grace. And yet for many, because of how it’s been told, the cross is also a story of abandonment, a narrative in which we are taught that our Father left His beloved Son in the moment of His greatest need.
It is such a fractured and destructive telling of what a good father looks like. But this fiction is pervasive. Like yeast in the dough, this myth has infiltrated and undermined the very substance of our faith.
The teaching I so often received growing up, that still thrives today, that continues to be preached from pulpits and platforms mostly by well-intentioned ‘gatekeepers’, is the gospel of distance and separation. Its very foundation is built upon the lie that in this monumental moment on a cross, when Jesus hung between heaven and earth, His good Father abandoned Him.
I believe the singular most devastating lie humanity has ever believed is the lie of separation.
The idea that God rejects, abandons, or turns away is the most accepted heresy on the planet.
But God never left. A good Father never leaves…
“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)
The Father Never Turned His Back
Do you know that there is only one time throughout the gospels that Jesus refers to God in the first person as God?
Every other time He referred to God as Father. Jesus was on the cross when this happened. In pain and carrying the weight of sin and death He cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
It was a cry of absolute anguish, one that many have interpreted to mean that somehow Jesus was, if but for a moment, abandoned, left to Himself, even shunned by His Father. I have heard this moment described by many as God turning His back on Jesus.
It baffles the mind to think that an always good and loving Father would do this – leave His Son to carry the weight of sin and death alone, abandoned in His darkest moment?
And…
I would like to suggest that the Father never turned His back, He never left, or forsook Jesus, He never abandoned, not even for a moment. His love was just as good as it’s always been.
“When you all run away from me and leave me alone, I won’t be alone, because My Father is with me.” (John 16:32) This is what Jesus tells His disciples before going to the cross. That seems pretty clear, the Father wasn’t going anywhere. But if that’s true, what do we do with Jesus’ anguished cry to God on the cross?
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt 27:46) This is the pivotal scripture that is used to suggest that somehow God turned His face from His Son.
Did you know this statement from Jesus was an echo of Jesus’ earthly forefather? Jesus was quoting the poet-king, David, from Psalm 22. As Davidic psalms go, Psalm 22 was fairly standard. David wrestled through life’s mountaintops and valleys with the raw authenticity that makes him an Old Testament favorite.
What’s amazing is that in Psalm 22, several verses after “My God, my God why have you forsaken me,” David writes, “He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; nor has He hidden His face from him; but when he cried to Him for help, He heard.” (Psalm 22:24)
It’s not an accident Jesus points us to scripture that ultimately determines that God doesn’t hide His face, or “turn His back.” In fact, it’s quite the opposite, “but when he cried for help, He heard…”
The Father didn’t turn His back; He was still the always-good Father, even in Jesus’ darkest moment.
I saw Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion; I was overcome by the physical abuse Jesus sustained. I grew up in the church; I was taught how the horror of my sin, every sin from beginning to end, was placed on Jesus at the cross. I have been amazed by His love, that He would go through the physical torment and experience the horror of sin where He had never known sin (2nd Cor 5:21). These were the realities He was facing while praying in the garden of Gethsemane when an angel from heaven appeared to Him and strengthened Him. “And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.” (Luke 22:44)
But there is something I had never seen that has ravaged my heart in these last years.
While the physical pain is a part of the story and can’t be overlooked, I think the greater reason He was in such anguish, the reason He sweats
Think about it, Jesus hadn’t taken a breath without the wonder of His Dad’s presence. Every thought, every experience, every heartbeat was immersed in a revelation of His Father’s always-good love. Jesus lived in the lavish revelation of His Dad’s presence. Jesus lived in the sureness of His Father’s love; He lived consumed by His Father’s heart. That kind of intimacy is profoundly stunning.
Can you imagine an existence like this? It’s my life’s ambition and it was Jesus’ reality.
Can you imagine your very existence being love and then having it ripped away, inaccessible, and replaced by fear, doubt, insecurity, self-loathing, hate, and every other by-product of sin?
Jesus is in a garden and He asks His Father if the cup can be removed from Him, “Is there another way Father?” (Paraphrase). And I would like to propose, without belittling the physical sacrifice Jesus made, that the origin of Jesus distress was in the understanding that for the first time ever, He would be separated not from His Father, but from an awareness of His Father.
The Son, who only did what He saw His Father doing, would not be able to see His Dad. The Son, who only did what His Father did, would not be able to feel His Father. The Son, who was in the Father and in whom the Father dwelled, would not be able to know His presence, His love, His goodness. And this was a horror Jesus could hardly bear. But He did bear it because God is love.
Jesus made Himself as a sin offering, for your sin and mine. He took it all on Himself, past, present, and future. Sin, the lie that separates us from the revelation of our Father, from unhindered access to perfect love, was cloaked over Jesus like a second skin.
God hates
But while Jesus became a sin offering, He never stopped being the Son. To suggest that the Father’s disgust for sin somehow caused Him to abandon His Son is to suggest that just this once, sin was bigger than love – it’s ridiculous.
And yet its what I believed most of my life, that for just a moment, the Father had to excuse Himself because mans sin and Satan’s power was just too much for Him to bear; for just a moment, a good Father abandoned His Son.
It’s the exact opposite!
Jesus, cloaked in the horror of sin, a perfect offering on our behalf, is overcome. And at that moment He cried out like David, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.”
And at that moment the Father stood over His Son, He hadn’t left, abandoned, turned His back, or scorned His Son. He wasn’t punishing His Son. He was there. He knew His Son couldn’t know it, couldn’t sense it, couldn’t feel His always-perfect love. But He was there, loving His boy, proud of His Son, sharing His agony, but confident in
At the moment Jesus hung between two thieves He couldn’t see, touch, hear, or know His Dad. When Jesus became a sin offering He was cut off from His awareness of His Father. He had never been separated from His awareness of His Father, ever. And in the suffocating anguish of that moment, Jesus echo’s a prayer from His earthly forefather David, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
It’s a horrible moment, a moment where hope hangs in the balance; a moment where eternity holds its breath.
And in the agony of that moment, the Father never turned His back, He never left, His love never soured, His goodness never faltered, His light never darkened.
And then humanity is given the most stunning act of faith that has ever been, “Jesus called out in a loud voice “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.” (Luke 23:46)
The greatest act of faith that was and will ever be – “I can’t see You, I can’t know You, I can’t touch You, I can’t hear You, but I believe that You are my Father, that You will never leave or forsake me, that You are Love, that Your love is perfect, that You only have goodness and love for me. And “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”
“Father,” Once again, He called Him Father.
Jesus stepped past His feelings, past His circumstances, He pressed through the devastating, very real sense of separation He felt and called Him Father. Jesus believed that His Father was still there. He couldn’t sense His Dad’s presence but He was still convinced His Dad was there and that His Dad’s love was greater than what He was feeling. “Into Your hands, I commit my Spirit.” That’s faith – pure, true, world-changing, life-saving faith.
In the moment of absolute horror, “When everyone ran away from Him and left Him alone, He wasn’t alone, because His Father was with Him.” (John 16:32 paraphrase). Jesus stepped past what He was feeling, His last statement revealing that like David, who wrote “nor has He hidden His face from him; but when he cried to Him for help, He heard,” Jesus believed His Dad was there.
The Father never left or abandoned His Son. The Son just lost His awareness of His Dad. He experienced, like David did in his psalm, the feeling of being abandoned, but it wasn’t
The Christian life is about faith, a faith that believes Gods love is always good, that our Father has never, nor will he ever turn His back on His kids.
This article was excerpted from Jason’s book, Prone To Love
