His Heart, My Home

People use the term “god-forsaken” to describe some place or thing that is “miserable, wretched, desolate, and hopeless.” The phrase infers “abandonment” by God. But can any person, place or thing really be forsaken by God, since He is omnipresent? Amazingly, Jesus, the Word of God, the Author of Life, testified that He had been forsaken by His Father! How could He, the source of light, love, and of every good and perfect gift ever be described as God-forsaken? How could He go from the highest place of glory and honor in all eternity to a state of utter wretchedness? The answers we need are forthcoming from the heart of God.

God said in Hebrews 13:5 that He would never leave us, nor forsake us. So far, we have only focused on the word “leave” in this verse. So there is still much more for us to discover.

Let’s look at the word “forsake.” This word in the Greek text is “enkataleipo.” It means, “to lower; to let down; to let fall; to drop; to turn one’s back on; to leave helpless; to abandon; to quit; to desert.” It was also used in mathematics meaning, “to subtract; to reduce so as to leave the smallest remainder; to empty altogether; to express a negative number.”

This exact same word (enkataleipo), is translated as “forsake” and is used in both Matthew 27:46, and in Mark 15:34, when Jesus voiced His agony from the cross, by crying out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Throughout the four gospels, whenever Jesus directly spoke to God, He always called Him “Father”. But not this time! At that climactic moment on the cross, being forsaken by His Father, Jesus, in His naked humanity, and in His vulnerability to death, called out, “my God, my God!”

The physical abuse and cruel torture Jesus suffered before His crucifixion was violent and brutal. From our historical knowledge, we can confidently say that the portrayal of Jesus’ bloody scourging in “The Passion of the Christ” was heartbreakingly accurate!

The beatings He received, the crown of thorns that were pressed into His scalp, the stress, the dehydration, and the appalling loss of blood from the scourging were all so severe they would likely have led to His death, even if there had been no cross to endure!

But the physical suffering and anguish leading to the cross were only the beginning. There was still much more to be “subtracted” from our Substitute.

“Surely He has borne our griefs, sicknesses, weaknesses, and distresses, and carried our sorrows and pains of punishment, yet we ignorantly considered Him stricken, smitten, and afflicted by God, as if with leprosy. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities; the chastisement needful to obtain peace and well-being for us was upon Him and with the stripes that wounded Him we are healed and made whole.” (Isaiah 53:4,5, Amplified Bible)

Jesus bore (Hebrew word, “nasa“, means “to lift up and carry away”) our sicknesses, diseases, pains, and weaknesses. Every horrific disease known to man: tuberculosis, smallpox, HIV, malaria, polio, cancer, cholera, ebola, leprosy, parkinson’s, stroke, meningitis, alzheimer’s, lupus, arthritis… all mankind’s ills came upon Him simultaneously and collectively, as a crushing burden. It’s impossible to even comprehend the combined and compounded effect of these diseases on His body and mind! But He carried them all, bearing the burden of every one of our diseases, so we wouldn’t have to bear them.

Isaiah 52:14 tells us that Jesus:

“became an object of horror” (Amplified Classic)

“no longer looked like a man” (Passion Bible)

“hardly seemed human” (The Voice Translation)

“had a ruined face, disfigured past recognition”
(The Message)

He was so horrible to behold, we “hid our faces from Him” and God, in His loving mercy, covered the disjointed, devastated, disfigured, damaged, disease-filled body of His Son with a cloak of darkness for three torturous hours.

But there was still more to be subtracted… still more of our debt to be deducted from Jesus’ account!

Bearing our sickness and disease was a big part of Jesus’ visible, physical anguish, but there was still much more suffering taking place that was unseen and unknown to the crowd of onlookers standing on Golgotha’s hill that day. Far deeper than our need for deliverance from the curse of disease, was our desperate need for salvation from sin and its penalty, spiritual death.

We know Jesus never sinned, and was perfectly innocent in the eyes of God. Yet we also know that the entire purpose of His human life was to bear the sin… all of the sin, that had ever been committed, or would ever be committed, by the billions of people who have lived on this planet. All of our sins, all of our iniquities, all of our guilt, and all of our shame, was laid upon Jesus. He bore it all! What a heavy burden He bore. Our sins piled upon Him, higher and higher, more and more, taking Him lower and lower, crushing the very life out of Him ! What a heavy price He paid!

One sacrifice, for all mankind, for all time!
(Hebrews 10:12-14) What a Hero! What a Redeemer! What a Savior! What a Champion!

Jesus did more than “bear” our sins. He was actually “made to be” our sin! Every one of our sins, and even our sin-nature, was transferred to Him. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

[*Example: I might pick up a snake and wear it as my necktie! But, as unpleasant as that might be, it would be nothing compared to the nightmare I would experience if I somehow actually became a snake!]

Jesus didn’t just bear, or we could say “wear” our sins. He “became” our sin on the cross. The perfect, sinless, holy Son of God “was made to be sin.” Yes, He actually became the degrading, disgusting, filthy, horrible, loathsome, hateful personification of sin! He was reduced, lowered, and diminished even further by our sin, but He held back nothing, paying the ultimate price for our redemption!

“But I am [treated as] a worm [insignificant and powerless] and not a man; I am the scorn of men and despised by the people.”
(Psalm 22:6, Amplified Bible)

We can see the Old Testament shadow and type of this transformation in Numbers 21:4-9.

And we can see the New Testament fulfillment of this in Galatians 3:13, The Passion Translation, which says: Yet, Christ paid the full price to set us free from the curse of the law. He absorbed the curse completely as He became a curse in our place. For it is written: “Everyone who is hung upon a tree is cursed.”

Jesus was held personally responsible for all the sin of mankind. And with that immense load of sin and guilt, on Him, and our sin-nature in Him, He became subject to the wrath of a holy God against sin.

God literally couldn’t stand the sight of His own Son, and had to turn His back on Jesus as He suffered the ultimate punishment for sin. Jesus was completely separated from God for the first and only time in eternity.

Isaiah 59:2 says, “But your iniquities have separated you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear.” Jesus bore that! He experienced that separation from His Father for you!

Isaiah 53:8 says, “He was taken from prison and from judgment, And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.” Jesus did that for you!

Jesus was completely abandoned, forsaken, deserted, separated, cut off, dropped, crushed, and emptied. He surrendered and sacrificed His total being for us. He exchanged His “positive”, for all our negatives!

Up to now He had endured the suffering and shame of the cross, finding the strength to endure by focusing on the joy that was set before Him, (bringing many sons to glory)! (Hebrews 2:10 and Hebrews 12:2)

But to be forsaken and separated from His Father was almost more than He could bear! To be cut off from His Father was spiritual death itself! Finally, He had reached the lowest point! It was then that Jesus cried out from the depths of His soul’s agony, “Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani?” which literally means, “My God, my God, why did you leave me… down here… in here?”

He did it all for us! It was our sin that separated Jesus from the Father. He was forsaken, so that we would never be forsaken, and forever favored! (Hebrews 13:5)

Jesus was separated from His Father, so we would never be separated from our Father’s love. (Romans 8:38,39)

Charles Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher of the 19th Century, said, “You shall measure the height of His love, if it is ever measured, by the depth of His anguish, if that can ever be known.”

After His crucifixion, Jesus’ body was placed in the tomb, but His spirit went to Hades, taking our place of punishment in the realm of the dead. The enemy thought he’d won the victory when Jesus came into his domain. But what satan failed to understand was that Jesus had never once committed a single sin! His only interaction with sin was as our Sin-Bearer, our Substitute. So, He was not deserving of sin’s punishment. Satan, death, and the grave could not legally hold Him. Now, unshackled and unfettered, the Spirit of God powerfully resurrected Jesus from the dead! (Acts 2:27-31)

Satan thought he was the conqueror, but he quickly became the conquered! Jesus triumphed over sin, death, and the grave (Revelation 1:18) and forever stripped satan of his power over death! (Hebrews 2:14-15)

By our faith in Jesus as our risen Lord and Savior, we can now live with God for all eternity, never forsaken, and never separated from His love! The Father will never forsake us because Jesus was forsaken in our place!

Hebrews 13:5b, Amplified Bible, Classic He, [God] Himself, has said, “I will not in any way fail you, nor give you up, nor leave you without support. [I will] not, [I will] not, [I will] not in any degree, leave you helpless, nor forsake, nor let you down (relax my hold on you)! [Assuredly not!]”