The Gift of God

“To the Chief Musician, on the deer of the dawn. A Psalm of David. My God, my God, why have You forsaken me, and are far from my deliverance, and from the words of my groaning?” (Psalms 22:1)

I reiterate two things. When David wrote his songs, he wrote prophetically at times, as he was led of the Lord. Another thing is that Psalms 22 prophetically describes in accuracy the sufferings of Jesus, including His last words which are recorded in Matthew and Mark as they are written by David in this Psalm.

What do these verses mean? Did the Father Who sent Jesus abandon Him at His death? Did Jesus lose hope of being delivered? These and other questions surrounding this Scripture have abounded. The Hebrew word that David used means to loosen, that is, relinquish, permit, fail, forsake and refuse. We can assume many things from the definition. In this translation it was translated forsaken. I looked at about 30 translations to get a clear understanding. Eighteen have translated the Hebrew word to forsaken. Four have translated the original Hebrew word to abandoned. One each translated it “dumped me,” “turned away from me,” “left me all alone,” “rejected me” and “deserted me.” So we do get a general idea that the Father at that time was separated from the Son which makes sense and yet we know that because Jesus is God and is omnipresent, He was dying on the cross with our sins, separated from the Father, but at the same time, in His heavenly presence He was still one with the Father. Again, we see that our limited earthy brain cannot understand the heavenly things of God and how it all operates. But one thing I do know for sure is that God will not be in the presence of sin. So the Father had to separate Himself from Jesus and sin. And yet the Godhead is always one. The only explanation is His omnipresence. He is everywhere at once. His human body with our sin and suffering was on the cross, but His divine presence was with the Godhead.

Matthew and Mark do not include the two phrases that are included in David’s prophecy, “... are far from my deliverance...” and “... from the words of my groaning.” In these two phrases we see how abandoned Jesus felt. The Father did not abandon Him. He separated Himself from the sin He was carrying. Jesus had never felt that, but as a man at that hour, He did.

Jesus still knew that His deliverance was coming. His groanings and cry that He felt the Father was far from His deliverance isn’t an indication that He’d lost hope. He was asking why the Father was far from it. We must remember all the suffering He was going through. It must have seemed never ending. He was wanting it to be over.

It may seem gruesome and so negative to review His sufferings, but we must remember, those agonies are ours that He took. It’s to our advantage and good to review it and meditate on it to realize the grandiose gift this is. It is from a good God Who loves us. Without it is death. “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:23) The gift of life can only come from the Living Bread, the Bread of Life, Jesus our Lord Who came from the Father. “For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God,” (Ephesians 2:8). Believing and accepting Jesus is the only way to escape the bondage of the kingdom of sin and death. “Jesus said to him, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father but by Me.” (John14:6)