Forsaken and Forgiven

We've all experienced the feeling of being forsaken. Someone has left us.

Maybe it was after a parent died.

Maybe it was when the last child left the nest.

Maybe it was after a spouse walked out the door for good.

Maybe it was when a close friend stopped calling.

Those events happen in real life. The pain, the discouragement, the loneliness and even the fear that are experienced are real feelings as we grieve the loss.

But when we think of the relationship between God the Father and God the Son, even our closest relationships don't measure up to that intensity.  All of eternity. Always united. Never an argument. Never a time of separation. Working together perfectly. Communication and fellowship without any hindrances for all of eternity. We've never had a relationship like that.

And that relationship was broken.

Jesus said on the cross, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" (Mark 15:34).

The holy God who cannot look on sin, turned His back on His own Son as He bore the sins of the world. He forsook His own Son as He hung on the cross with your sins and mine (Col 2:13-14; 2 Cor 5:21).

And yet that abandonment did not last. There's no record of how long it was that God turned His back on Jesus. But we know that it didn't last forever. It was limited to a certain length of time.

The end of Eph 4:32 says, "...forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven you."

We read that and think of the great forgiveness that we have received through the death of Christ on the cross. But I think that is just a part of the story.

God, in His eternal, holy love for His Son, could not turn away from His Son forever. As Jesus hung on the cross, with the weight of the sins of the world, God's love moved Him to forgive us, so that the relationship between Himself and His Son could be restored.

Jesus was bearing the guilt of all of our sins. In order for God to be able to return to a loving relationship with His Son, He had to forgive us.

Rather than making us the center of the redemption story, that perspective puts us as recipients of a side benefit. Redemption did bring about the possibility of a relationship between sinful mankind and a holy God.

But even greater than that: Redemption restored the relationship that was broken between God the Father and God the Son.

Wow.