Saying #4
Mark 15:34
And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Not only do believers have a broader and tighter circle of brothers and sisters (think about yesterday’s devotional where Jesus knit together his mother with his disciples), but we have a higher and more glorious Father. This doesn’t diminish our earthly families but completes them because now we don’t have to burden others with the impossible task of “completing us” because our Father has already done that.
This was made possible because of the Father forsaking Jesus on the cross. We read over and over and over (etc etc) throughout scripture that all of us have perpetually forsaken God.
Jeremiah 2:13
For my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
broken cisterns that can hold no water.
Because God is perfectly just, he couldn’t just turn a blind eye to our rebellion. But because God is also perfectly loving, he was able to put our justice onto Jesus on the cross. And how horrifyingly painful that was because “forsaken” doesn’t mean to simply ignore or passively forget, but an active rejection of his only Son. So pain that that it led Jesus to quote Psalm 22:1 “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?”
Because of this dark rejection, the penalty for us forsaking the Lord has been fully paid, AND we have been “Un-Forsaken” by our Father. He has brought us back into his family and assured us that, since our payment has been full paid, we will never been separated from him again. So much so that, even when this world forsakes us, our true Father gives us hope, love and strength.
2 Corinthians 4:8-10
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.