“My God, My God, why have Your forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me, and from the words of My groaning?” Psalm 22:1
It was S. Crossman who wrote a beautiful, moving hymn entitled “My Song Is Love Unknown.” In that hymn he takes the reader along a path that illustrates what he declares: “My Savior’s love for me.” He writes that it was “…a love to the loveless shown, that they might lovely be.” From that eternal, and poignant theme, Crossman speaks of the Messiah who would come from His blessed throne, to bestow His salvation to men. But he writes how that man was “made strange,” and NONE the longed-for Christ would know. Why? It was because of the desperateness of the lost condition of men, blinded by Satan and sin’s deceptive, lying concepts, imaginations, and thoughts. Crossman illustrates this by the fact that one minute, at the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, the prelude to his trial, crucifixion, death and resurrection, the crowds would cry, “Hosanna” to their king, only shortly afterwards to cry, “Crucify.” A murderer would go free in the place of the innocent Christ. This One who had “no house, nor home, where on earth he might dwell, would find His resting place after His death in a stranger’s tomb. Crossman, in the light of such a sacrifice as Christ gave, would conclude his hymn by writing: “Here might I stay and sing, No story so divine; NEVER was love, dear King, NEVER was grief like Thine. This is my Friend, in whose sweet praise, I all my days could gladly spend.” Why did Crossman write such a hymn, depicting the suffering and death of Christ, to die alone, yet not alone, there on the cross to accomplish the only perfect work of redemption that the world would ever know? And why has this account of such a sacrifice in the Scriptures, both in the Old Testament, and in every divinely inspired gospel, been preserved so that we read today, two thousand years after the event? There is but one answer, and it is the holy love of God, a love which is unlike any other which has ever existed or ever will. It is holy because it is of God, the Creator and Redeemer. It is perfect, pure, and good, because of the depthless, yet ever expanding revelation of perfect selflessness, mercy, and grace. Among the final words of Christ, just before committing His spirit to the Father, He uttered the words: “It is finished.” In these words is encapsulated the everlasting, pre-ordained will and work of the Father and the Son by the Spirit, before the foundation of the world. The justification that sinful man would demand of God for allowing sin to enter into this world, with its consequences and suffering, has its answer in the eternal, unchanging love of God which is greater than all sin, revealed at a cost to God the Father, and in the slain Lamb of God, which is incomprehensible to lost humanity. However, on that cross is revealed the terribleness of sin and death, and at the same time, the greatest manifestation of the love of God, a love which would provide a singular, yet sure path, to know God, being forgiven of all sin, and given a new, eternal life in Christ.
When David wrote Psalm 22, being led by the Spirit, the terrible suffering of the “Suffering Servant” of Jehovah, Christ Jesus, was revealed. Some of these same words that Jesus spoke on the cross, were written down by David. Perhaps the most excruciating moment of those seemingly endless, last moments on the cross, were heard when Jesus cried out: “My God, My God, why have Your forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46) We cannot fathom the depth of sorrow in that moment that Christ knew. The love of the Father that He had forever known before that moment, was temporarily lost in the terrible lack of it. Such love was the greatest loss, that Jesus could ever know, that men could be saved.
Dear Father, Make us see Christ. In Jesus’ name, Amen.