The Cry of Dereliction

“My God, My God Why hast Thou Forsaken Me”: our Lord’s Fourth Word from the Cross

In our vocabulary-impoverished age we no longer often hear the word “derelict”. In an earlier age it was most often used to refer to buildings that were abandoned, forsaken, and broken down. At times it was used as a noun to refer to the homeless alcoholic—and referred to a person who was likewise abandoned, forsaken, and broken down.

The Church has called our Lord’s fourth word from the Cross, "My God, My God why has thou forsaken me" the Cry of Dereliction. It is an apt title, insofar as human language can be called apt when we are speaking of Golgotha—for we struggle to comprehend or describe what is now taking place. We acknowledge that when it comes to the Crucifixion of our Lord, we quickly reach the limits of our comprehension and understanding.

Yet the word “dereliction” is meaningful and helpful. It indicates that our Lord has indeed been abandoned and forsaken, and that He has been broken. Not merely abandoned by mankind. Not merely by the members of His table—those who had enjoyed closest covenant bound fellowship with Him. But, most terribly—abandoned by God, forsaken by Him, and consequently utterly, utterly broken.

In the first three hours of crucifixion, our Lord had uttered just three words—all to His fellow creatures. The first was a word of restraining grace, asking the Father to suspend judgement for the terrible thing that they were doing to His only begotten Son—until such time as they knew what they were doing and had done. He was giving an opportunity for His enemies to repent—and, praise God, we have indication from the book of Acts that some subsequently did repent of their terrible deeds that day (Acts 15:5).

The second word is to the hateful criminal who is subsequently converted. He repeatedly pants out his plea amidst his agony, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom”. Eventually, Jesus responds and pants out His benediction to His new brother, “This day, you will be with me in Paradise.” That blessed word brings comfort to all believers, everywhere, in all generations. That word confirms beyond all doubt that salvation is of grace alone. Our brother-thief is utterly helpless, can do no good work, can perform no sacrifice, act, or religious ritual. He is outside the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Yet our Saviour pronounces his salvation and inclusion in the Kingdom. It is the most vivid illustration in all of Scripture, in all of redemptive history, that salvation is by grace alone, through faith in our Lord Jesus.

We have said that the conversion of the thief brought our Lord solace and encouragement in those first three hours, for always His great love and desire upon earth was to gather His sheep. If the angels in heaven rejoice over the repentance of one sinner, how much more the Son of Man inwardly rejoiced in those desperate hours at finding this lost sheep and bringing him home.

Before the darkness fell, however, He had one last official duty to perform. He had to break all earthly ties with His mother so that when she saw Him again, she would no longer think of Him as her son, but she would believe in Him as her Lord and Saviour. She would no longer be known as the mother of our Lord so much as our beloved sister in Christ. All during His earthly ministry, His official duties had caused a separation between Him and His family. That separation is now complete and irrevocable. He abandons His mother—not, however, to dereliction, but to the loving care of one of His apostles. Even as takes upon Himself the official High Priestly duty of substituting Himself for all the people, in order to perform this work, He substitutes John for Himself.

He is on the verge of making atonement for His people. He will now commence His great High Priestly work. He has one more duty to perform before entering behind the veil away from the eyes of the watching congregation: He must fully assume the High Priesthood after the order of Melchizedek. That High Priestly order knows no human descent. Melchizedek, says Paul, was “without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, he abides a priest perpetually.” (Hebrews 7:3).

Our Lord is entering fully into that priestly order. In Psalm 110 we are promised: “Thou has made him a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.” And so our Lord firmly cuts off his earthly descent. Now He severs descent from His mother. He is now without descent from father or mother. He is ready to assume the high priestly order of Melchizedek.

Once that severance is complete He enters fully upon His High Priestly work of sacrificing Himself in our behalf. The darkness falls. He goes to Hell. The darkness fell at noon and lasted three hours (the sixth hour to the ninth hour, Luke 23:44). During that time the veil of the temple—the curtain between the holy place and the Holy of Holies—was torn asunder. His people could now come freely into the presence of God. But let us think further about how this wonderful privilege was won.

Let us begin by asking, Why did darkness fall? In the first place, we see a connection with the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle. Before the face of God no man could come, except the High Priest once per year. For everyone else, the face of God was veiled and hidden. Sinners could not come near to the Holy One. The darkness at Golgotha is the ultimate fulfilment of the veil in the temple and all it represented. Our Lord is now being dealt with by God. He, as our High Priest, is dealing with God in our behalf; in these matters we have no place or part to play—although in them we have a most vital interest.

Further we sense that the darkness has something to do with the horror of what is transpiring. All the guilt of all the sins of all His people is being laid upon the Saviour. As the sin-bearer, He is being punished by God the Father. As the sin bearer, He is enduring the torments of Hell which in turn carry and execute the eternal wrath and hatred of God, the Judge of all the earth, upon sin and sinners.

No living man—none amongst us—can adequately grasp the depths of utter devastation, the extreme extent of suffering entailed. For we know that there are degrees of suffering and punishment in Hell. We believe that our Saviour suffered to the uttermost because of the enormity of guilt put to His account. He suffered more than any other before Him or after Him. The suffering was so extreme, so terrible, that the darkness graciously hides it from us for it is too terrible to look upon. Isaiah prophesies that His appearance was marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men. We believe this to be literally true on Golgotha. He was one from whom men hide their face—because the horror of the sight is too great to bear. The darkness spares the watchers, His sheep—it is a collective hiding of our faces. Had the disciples seen His face in those hours it would no doubt have driven them to insanity.

No living man has ever experienced forsakenness by God in any complete sense, apart from One. Even when God brings chastening judgements upon peoples and individuals, the sun still shines, food still sustains.

Let us try to express something of what was happening during those hours of darkness. Let us do so with fear and reverence, for the darkness is a warning not to intrude, nor to speculate. We believe that all that has been happening is summed up in the words of the cry of dereliction—which He utters towards the end of the three hours of being in Hell. Our Lord was, in every absolute sense of the word, forsaken by God.

In the Gospels it is one of the few sayings of our Lord that is recorded phonetically from the original Aramaic, and then translated into Greek (and ultimately, for us, into English). “Eloi Eloi, lama sabachthani”. This is deliberate. It helps to transfix these words in our hearts for all time. How often these words run through our minds as we meditate upon the Cross.

But, in addition, these words are a formulary. For Jesus is quoting the Scripture—and the deliberate citation in Aramaic is designed to reinforce that fact for the Church. It is wonderfully fitting that our Lord should quote Scripture at this time. Many of us have experienced depths of great suffering, and at such times, the only thing left oftentimes is to express those depths in the words of Scripture. Only the Scripture can convey our passion. That is why the Psalms are priceless. Jesus seeks to give expression to His anguish, and He takes hold of the words of Scripture, and utters the opening cry of Psalm 22.

Our Lord is taking this whole Psalm upon Him, not just the opening words. It is like announcing the text put before a congregation. His extreme weakness and the resulting breathlessness of crucifixion mean that He cannot quote more.

We can say safely that David’s cry of desolation and suffering is a foreshadowing, a forerunner of David’s greater Son. But the elements are there, in David’s experience, at least superficially. David complains that God has deserted him, does not answer him, does not deliver him. He laments that he has been given over to the ravages of the wicked, the evildoers are tearing him to shreds and his life is in tatters. Once he was close to God, once God heard and delivered him, but no longer. But yet he believes still in God and he vows that upon his deliverance (for God cannot break His Word) he will praise God in the midst of the Church.

We say again that David’s experience and lament, terrible though it be, is only a type, a pale reflection of what Our Lord is experiencing at Golgotha. In taking up the opening words of this psalm, our Lord is taking the whole psalm to Himself—the lament about not being heard, the complaint about being torn apart by the cruel despite of the wicked, the fact that God did not answer. All are there. And so, by implication, is the expression in the Psalm of faith in His Father that He will not be lost forever, and that He will be restored to the congregation of the Lord.

We cannot fathom the depths of His dereliction, nor the suffering that resulted from it. We do know, however, that to be in fellowship with God is the highest joy and greatest blessedness of mankind. Every believer has tasted something of that. We also know that our Lord throughout His life experienced that closeness and fellowship and it was His great joy and delight. He often spoke of it. His experience of God, His knowledge of God, His communion and closeness with His heavenly Father was throughout His life far, far greater than anything we have ever known. The Son loved the Father and the Father loved the Son.

Consider the words of our Lord at the raising of Lazarus: “Jesus raised His eyes, and said, ‘Father, I thank Thee that Thou heardest Me, and I knew that Thou hearest Me always’ . . . “ (John 11: 41,42). That statement illustrates the deep intimacy between the Father and His Christ.

Now the hour is come when God no longer hears Him. But Jesus does not cease from raising His eyes and praying in faith.

We will have more to say about this later, but we begin to understand that in those hours of darkness the Father has left the Son, but the Son does not leave the Father. He does not stop believing. He does not stop seeking. He does not stop crying out. There are two pictures in Scripture which go some way to helping us understand the significance of this.

The first occurs in Job. The extreme sufferings of that holy man are documented in Scripture and the point comes where his wife utters the counsel of Hell: “Job, curse God and die!” Job was rejected by God; his boast, his hope, his faith in God were nothing more than cruel mockeries. His wife catalogues the natural and ordinary response of a sinner in such circumstances. God has let you down. Curse Him. That is, God has rejected you. You reject Him! Get your own back!

As Jesus experiences the full dereliction of God forsaking Him, the full weight of divine vengeance upon the sin He now bears, He becomes utterly broken. But in this terrible hour He is also being tempted—like as we are—to retaliate in anger and unbelief. “Curse God, and die!” is Satan’s counsel.

The second picture occurs in the Garden of Eden after the Fall. Man had sinned, and yet God seeks for man, but man hides himself. Now at Golgotha, in the darkness, this is reversed. It is God Who has rejected the Man. It is God Who has hidden Himself from the Christ. But it is the Man Who seeks, Who will not let God go, Who continues to believe and hope, Who refuses to curse God and give up. He cries out to His Father.

Out of the great darkness, He comes to God, though God does not bid it. He is not summoned, but He believes in His Father, and He comes. He speaks to God, though God is silent and will not, cannot, answer. Yet. He continues to believe that He will be heard. He calls out in the darkness.

Satan wants Him to curse God and die. But He will not comply. Instead with a loud voice He cries out, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me?” He still believes. He still clings to God.

He loves His Father still. Adam hid. The Second Adam will not hide. He clings to God, though He is the bearer of Adam’s sin—and yes, of all his descendants.

What glory and triumph is conveyed in one small word in that Cry of Dereliction. It is the word, “my”. “You are My God. I will not let You go. I love You still. I believe in You. I believe in Your goodness. I believe that You are faithful to Your Word.” God has forsaken Him. God has let Him go. He is utterly spent and broken beyond recognition—for us.

But still He clings to His heavenly Father. As we contemplate this, the waves of emotion break out over us.

“Alas! and did my Saviour bleed,
And did my Sovereign die?
Would He devote that sacred head
For such a worm as I?

”Was it for crimes that I have done
He groaned upon the tree?
Amazing pity, grace unknown,
And love beyond degree!

“Well might the sun in darkness hide,
And shut his glories in,
When Christ the mighty Maker died
For man the creature’s sin.

“Thus might I hide my blushing face
While His dear cross appears;
Dissolve, my heart, in thankfulness!
And melt, mine eyes, to tears!”