Monday, February 18, 2008
Psalm 22:1-2 My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me, And from the words of My groaning?
CRY OF AGONY
The heart of the sinner cries out to the Lord in agony. For the heart does not know what to do with itself. "What am I going to do?" the heart says. "I have tried to live a good life, I have tried to do the right things, but I have not done them." Even the apostle Paul makes the same heart-wrenching groan of agony, "O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" (Romans 7:24).
Faithless and perverse heart, ugly distorted mind and flesh, will of man -- that constantly strives after what it should not desire and what is beyond all things most hateful to God.
In the time of our distress, in the time of our agony, when we think that the Father has left us and there is nothing left for us; when we feel the weight or our sin pressing down upon us and we don't know where to turn; when we feel as though all the sins of our past have come back to haunt us. At such a time we recognize that all through these words our cry ought to be, "My Father has forsaken me." And we know why. It is because of my sin.
Although these words of Psalm 22 ought to be ours, they aren't. They are Christ's words.
And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" which is translated, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" (Mark 15:34).
Christ was forsaken so that we would not need to be. It should have been us crying in agony, but it was Christ instead. Christ groaned in agony from the bottom of His soul asking, "Why have you forsaken me, O God?" And at His plea, God did not respond -- in order that He might be able to respond to me, "I have not forsaken you."
