This devotion is selected from Marin Lutheran College’s seasonal devotional series:
We are thankful to Martin Luther College and the professors there for providing these devotions. The author Rev. Daniel Balge serves Martin Luther College as a professor of Greek and German.
About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). Matthew 27:46
Can you imagine a sermon just one paragraph long? Probably. One sentence? Maybe. One word? Unlikely. How about a sermon as short as a single letter-in fact the smallest letter of the alphabet? Yes, you can imagine that, if you know the preacher. It was Jesus. From his cross Jesus shouts the same one-letter sermon twice. Look at the Hebrew word Eli in Jesus’ quotation from David’s psalm in Matthew’s gospel. The “i” in Eli is a one-letter sermon. It’s the “my” of “my God” (El) in Matthew’s translation. That “my” speaks eloquent volumes.
As Jesus shouts to his God from his cross, three hours of darkness, begun at Good Friday’s noon, come to an end. God-forsaken, Jesus endures those hours in the agony of hell. Understand “God-forsaken” and “hell” literally. Forget the flippant way that our culture treats such words. What Jesus goes through for half an afternoon of blackest night does not just “hurt like hell.” It is hell. His God withdraws his love. His Father is no longer well-pleased. Jesus stops being his beloved Son. Instead, “God [makes] him who had no sin to be sin” (2 Corinthians5:21). Jesus is now sin itself indeed, The Sinner himself. And God punishes sin, all sin, in Jesus with the full force of his anger.
Yet “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” is not a rhetorical question, asked only to underline this apparent injustice. Jesus really prays for an answer. In a way we cannot understand, the all-knowing Son of God and Son of Man really did not know why. That means worse suffering. The answer-the world’s salvation-would ease his torture. Yet amid that unfathomable pain of body and especially soul-he still calls upon “my God.” Even in his agony, Jesus remains faithful to his God as our brother and substitute. He trusts perfectly that God is just and will answer justly.
You have that answer. You are not forsaken by God, because Jesus was forsaken for you. You are able to pray “my God,” because Jesus prayed it in your place. And his Spirit made you what God now calls you-“my child” in another one-letter sermon.
Prayer:
Jesus, my Savior, thank you for enduring the agony of hell so that I can know the joy of heaven. Amen.