THE FOURTH SAYING—REALIZE THE SERIOUSNESS OF SIN

THE FOURTH SAYING—REALIZE THE SERIOUSNESS OF SIN 

In Matthew 27:46 comes the saying with the most pathos: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Jesus died understanding the seriousness of sin. He died resenting its implications. Sin separates from God. “Forsaken” is one of the most painful words that a person could use to describe himself—alone and desolate. Jesus was forsaken. His cry meant, “My God, My God, with whom I have had eternal unbroken fellowship, why have You deserted Me?” Against that background of eternal intimacy, Christ’s forsakenness has profound significance. Sin is seen to do what nothing else in the universe could do. Men couldn’t separate the Father from the Son; demons couldn’t; Satan couldn’t. But sin caused the Son to suffer the most devastating reality in the universe—separation from God. He who was in the Father and the Father in Him, He who was one with the Father and the Father one with Him, He who had enjoyed eternally uninterrupted, perfect communion within the Trinity is now forsaken by God. Why? Because He’s bearing sin, and sin separates.

God is too holy to look on sin (Hab. 1:13). As a result, sin alienates man from God. When Christ bore our sin on the cross, He reached the climax of His suffering. The soldiers had mocked Him—crushed a crown of thorns on His head, scourged Him, struck Him, spit in His face, and pulled out the hairs of His beard. Even when suffering pain beyond description—His hands and feet pierced—He endured the cross and its shame in silence. Though taunted by the vulgar crowd, and suffering the curses of those crucified beside Him, He had not answered back. But when God forsook Him, Christ experienced a pain beyond even all that, and He cried out in agony.

No earthly struggle, trial, or trouble should come close to the distress our own sin should cause us because it will separate you from God. Like Christ, believers are to be profoundly anguished by the separation caused by sin. Jesus experienced personally the searing pain sin brings because it separated Him from the Father. We must understand the implications of our sin—that it wrenches us away from God.