WHY DID THE LORD JESUS SAY ‘ELOI ELOI LAMA SABACHTHANI?

Why did the Lord Jesus say ‘Eloi Eloi Lama Sabachthani? Quoted from  Psalm 22:1, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46)? Did Jesus not understand why He was dying?

The most common explanation of the Lord Jesus’ cry on the cross is that, at that very moment, all the sins of humanity for all time came upon Him and He became sin.

Therefore, some have said, the Father could no longer look upon the Son and so fellowship between God the Father and God the Son was broken for the first and only time throughout eternity. According to this view, the crucifixion shocked the Messiah Jesus to such an extent that He exclaimed, “Why have you forsaken Me?” So widespread is this interpretation that we even find it in contemporary worship hymns. For example, Stuart Townend’s beautiful worship song “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” contains these lyrics (emphasis added):

How great the pain of searing loss -

The Father turns His face away

Clearly, it has become normative to believe that the Father turned away from His Son and the eternal fellowship of the Godhead was broken (at least for that moment) at the cross.

PROBLEMS WITH THE BROKEN-FELLOWSHIP

EXPLANATION

Jesus Was Not Shocked

So, what’s wrong with this explanation? First, the Lord Jesus clearly knew that He was going to suffer and die. He would not have been shocked. He told His disciples, “The Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn Him to death. Then they will hand Him over to the Gentiles, and they will mock Him, spit on Him, flog Him, and kill Him, and He will rise after three days” (Mark 10:33-34 HCSB). Not only did the Lord Jesus know that He would die, He also knew the reason for His death: to be a sacrifice for sin and to provide “a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

God Can Look at Sin

A second problem with this explanation is that it is founded upon a misinterpretation of Habakkuk 1:13. That verse states that God’s “eyes are too pure to look on evil” (CSB).

Therefore, it is said that when all humanity’s sins rested upon Jesus, the Father could no longer look at the Son. According to this view, God literally abandoned the Messiah when the sin of all the world fell upon Him at His crucifixion and the eternal fellowship of the Father and the Son was broken. The problem with this is that Habakkuk 1:13 is not saying that God cannot look at sin. If so, how could He see us? What the verse actually means is that God is too pure to look with approval at sinful actions. That’s why the NASB correctly translates this verse as “Your eyes are too pure to approve evil.”

He Bore, Not Became, Our Sin

Third, this traditional explanation is problematic because the Lord Jesus never became sinful for us. Although 2 Corinthians 5:21 says God “made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf,” it is best to understand this phrase as God made the Lord Jesus “to be a sin offering on our behalf” The Lord Jesus did not become sinful or morally culpable for our sins but rather He bore the penalty for our sin as our substitute.

For example, in the Old Testament Day of Atonement liturgy, Aaron, acting as high priest, was to “lay both of his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the sons of Israel and all their transgressions in regard to all their sins; and he shall lay them on the head of the goat and sent it away into the wilderness. ... The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a solitary land...” (Lev. 16:21-22).

The scapegoat (literally, “the go-away goat”) did not actually become morally sinful but symbolically demonstrated the removal of Israel’s sins. Similarly, with the sin offering (Lev. 4), the sinful party was to lay a hand on the sacrificial animal as a symbolic transfer of guilt before the animal was sacrificed.

Nevertheless, it was impossible for an animal to become morally culpable but was a substitutionary offering. Likewise, in 2 Corinthians 5:21, the Lord Jesus did not become morally culpable for our sins, causing the Father to break fellowship with the Son. Rather, He became a substitutionary sacrifice, bearing our punishment and taking our sin away.

Fellowship Cannot Be Broken

Fourth and finally, it is theologically impossible and inconceivable for fellowship within the Godhead ever to be broken.

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were always united, from eternity past to the eternal forever. Nothing could ever alter that, not even the Messiah Jesus’ death for the penalty of our sin.

The Reasons for Quoting Psalm 22:1

So why does the Lord Jesus quote Psalm 22:1 regarding God’s forsaking of Him? There are three reasons. First, the Messiah is using the psalm to express His prayer to the Father.

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer has said, the book of Psalms “is the prayer book of Jesus Christ in the truest sense.”** Second, He is using this quotation from Psalm 22 to draw attention to that messianic psalm and identify Himself as its subject. In this way, the Lord is demonstrating that He is the fulfillment of this messianic prophecy. Third, the Messiah Jesus quotes Psalm 22:1 as a rhetorical question, not a literal one. A rhetorical question is a figure of speech in which the questioner knows the answer but asks anyway for dramatic effect or to make a point. The Lord Jesus knew why He was dying and He knew the Father was not literally forsaking Him. It just felt that way. My students through the years have asked a rhetorical question when they see how much reading I require in the course syllabus. They ask, “Why did I take this course?” knowing all the while that they registered for it because it was needed to graduate. The question expresses how they feel. And, similarly, as He was suffering for the sins of the world, the Lord Jesus felt forsaken by His Father, although He knew it was not literally so.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The Lord Jesus’ words at His death are a great reminder for us that redemption was not cheap or easy. Rather, the glorious Messiah, the eternal Son of God, left His throne in heaven, emptying Himself of the rights of deity, and experienced the horrific suffering of crucifixion to provide atonement for our sin (cf. Phil. 2:5-9). Even so, knowing how painful this would be, the Lord Jesus said, “No one takes my life from me. I give it up willingly!” (John 10:18 CEV). This voluntary sacrifice of His life was an expression of His love for us, just as He said, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).