Abandon. Such a haunting word.
Abandoned by family.
Abandoned by a spouse.
Abandoned by big business.
But nothing compares to being abandoned by God.
“Jesus cried out with a loud voice” (Matt. 27:46 NASB). Note the sturdy words here. Other writers employed the Greek word for “loud voice” to describe a “roar.”1 Soldiers aren’t cupping an ear, asking him to speak up. The Lamb roars. “The sun and the moon shall be darkened. . . . The LORD also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem” (Joel 3:15–16 KJV).
Christ lifts his heavy head and eyelids toward the heavens and spends his final energy crying out toward the ducking stars. “‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why did you abandon me?’” (Matt. 27:46 GNT).
We would ask the same. Why him? Why forsake your Son? Forsake the murderers. Desert the evildoers. Turn your back on perverts and peddlers of pain. Abandon them, not him. Why would you abandon earth’s only sinless soul?
Ah, there is the hardest word. Abandon. The house no one wants. The child no one claims. The parent no one remembers. The Savior no one understands. He pierces the darkness with heaven’s loneliest question: “My God, my God, why did you abandon me?”
Wait a second. Didn’t David tell us, “I have never seen the righteous forsaken” (Ps. 37:25)? Did David misspeak? Did Jesus misstep? Neither. In this hour Jesus is anything but righteous. But his mistakes aren’t his own. “Christ carried our sins in his body on the cross so we would stop living for sin and start living for what is right” (1 Peter 2:24 NCV).
Christ carried all our sins in his body . . .
Suppose your past sins were made public? Suppose you were to stand on a stage while a film of every secret and selfish second was projected on the screen behind you?
Would you not crawl beneath the rug? Would you not scream for the heavens to have mercy? And would you not feel just a fraction . . . just a fraction of what Christ felt on the cross? The icy displeasure of a sin-hating God?
Christ carried all our sins in his body.
See Christ on the cross? That’s a gossiper hanging there. See Jesus? Embezzler. Liar. Bigot. See the crucified carpenter? He’s a wife beater. Porn addict and murderer. See Bethlehem’s boy? Call him by his other names—Adolf Hitler, Osama bin Laden, and Jeffrey Dahmer.
Hold it, Max. Don’t lump Christ with those evildoers. Don’t place his name in the same sentence with theirs!
I didn’t. He did. Indeed he did more. More than place his name in the same sentence, he placed himself in their place. And yours. With hands nailed open he invited God, “Treat me as you would treat them!” And God did. In an act that broke the heart of the Father, yet honored the holiness of heaven, sin-purging judgment flowed over the sinless Son of the ages. Everything the story had been building to landed at this moment with one final phrase.
Stop and listen. Can you imagine the final cry from the cross? The sky is dark. The other two victims are moaning. The jeering mouths are silent. Perhaps there is thunder. Perhaps there is weeping. Perhaps there is silence. Then Jesus draws a deep breath, pushes his feet down on that Roman nail, and cries, “It is finished!” (John 19:30 NKJV).
What was finished?
Our inability to finish what we start is seen in the smallest of things:
A partly mowed lawn
A half-read book
Letters begun but never completed
An abandoned diet
A car up on blocks
And it shows up in life’s most painful areas:
An abandoned child
A cold faith
A job hopper
A wrecked marriage
An unevangelized world
Am I touching some painful sores? Any chance I’m addressing someone who is considering giving up? If I am, I want to encourage you to remain. I want to encourage you to remember Jesus’ determination on the cross.
Jesus didn’t quit. But don’t think for one minute that he wasn’t tempted to. Watch him wince as he hears his apostles backbite and quarrel. Look at him weep as he sits at Lazarus’s tomb, or hear him wail as he claws the ground of Gethsemane.
Did he ever want to quit? You bet.
That’s why his words are so splendid.
“It is finished.”
The history-long plan of redeeming humanity was finished. The message of God to humans was finished. The works done by Jesus as a man on earth were finished. The task of selecting and training ambassadors was finished. The job was finished. The song had been sung. The blood had been poured. The sacrifice had been made. The sting of death had been removed. It was over. A cry of defeat? Hardly. Had his hands not been fastened down, I dare say that a triumphant fist would have punched the dark sky. No, this was not a cry of despair. It was a cry of completion. A cry of victory. A cry of fulfillment. Yes, even a cry of relief.
The fighter remained. And thank God that he did. Thank God that he endured, because you cannot deal with your own sins. “Only God can forgive sins” (Mark 2:7 NCV). Jesus is “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29 NCV).
How did God deal with your debt?
Did he overlook it? He could have. He could have burned the statement. He could have ignored your bounced checks. But would a holy God do that? Could a holy God do that? No. He wouldn’t be holy. Besides, is that how we want God to run his world—ignoring our sin and thereby endorsing our rebellion?
Did he punish you for your sins? Again, he could have. He could have crossed out your name in the book and wiped you off the face of the earth. But would a loving God do that? Could a loving God do that? He loves you with an everlasting love. Nothing can separate you from his love.
So what did he do? “God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. . . . How? you ask. In Christ. God put the wrong on him who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God” (2 Cor. 5:19–21 THE MESSAGE).
The cross included a “putting on.” God put our wrong on Christ so he could put Christ’s righteousness on us.
Something remotely similar happened to me at a restaurant. The maître d’ tried to turn me away. He didn’t care that Denalyn and I were on our honeymoon. It didn’t matter that the evening at the classy country club restaurant was a wedding gift. He couldn’t have cared less that Denalyn and I had gone without lunch to save room for dinner. All of this was immaterial in comparison to the looming problem.
I wasn’t wearing a jacket.
I didn’t know I needed one. I thought a sport shirt was sufficient. It was clean and tucked in. But Mr. Black-Tie with the French accent was unimpressed. He seated everyone else. Mr. and Mrs. Debonair were given a table. Mr. and Mrs. Classier-Than-You were seated. But Mr. and Mrs. Didn’t-Wear-a-Jacket?
If I’d had another option, I wouldn’t have begged. But I didn’t. The hour was late. Other restaurants were closed or booked, and we were hungry. “There’s got to be something you can do,” I pleaded. He looked at me, then at Denalyn, and let out a long sigh that puffed his cheeks.
“All right, let me see.”
He disappeared into the cloakroom and emerged with a jacket. “Put this on.” I did. The sleeves were too short. The shoulders were too tight. And the color was lime green. But I didn’t complain. I had a jacket, and we were taken to a table. (Don’t tell anyone, but I took it off when the food came.)
For all the inconvenience of the evening, we ended up with a great dinner and an even greater parable.
I needed a jacket, but all I had was a prayer. The fellow was too kind to turn me away but too loyal to lower the standard. So the very one who required a jacket gave me a jacket, and we were given a table.
Isn’t this what happened at the cross? Seats at God’s table are not available to the sloppy. But who among us is anything but? Unkempt morality. Untidy with truth. Careless with people. Our moral clothing is in disarray. Yes, the standard for sitting at God’s table is high, but the love of God for his children is higher.
So he offers a gift. Not a lime-colored jacket but a robe. A seamless robe. Not a garment pulled out of a cloakroom but a robe worn by his Son, Jesus.
The character of Jesus was a seamless fabric woven from heaven to earth . . . from God’s thoughts to Jesus’ actions. From God’s tears to Jesus’ compassion. From God’s word to Jesus’ response. All one piece. All a picture of the character of Jesus. But when Christ was nailed to the cross, he took off his robe of seamless perfection and assumed a different wardrobe, the wardrobe of indignity.
The indignity of nakedness. Stripped before his own mother and loved ones. Shamed before his family.
The indignity of failure. For a few pain-filled hours, the religious leaders were the victors, and Christ appeared the loser. Shamed before his accusers.
Worst of all, he wore the indignity of sin. “‘He himself bore our sins’ in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24).
The clothing of Christ on the cross? Sin—yours and mine. The sins of all humanity.
I can remember my father explaining to me the reason a group of men on the side of the road wore striped clothing. “They’re prisoners,” he said. “They have broken the law and are serving time.”
You want to know what stuck with me about these men? They never looked up. They never made eye contact. Were they ashamed? Probably so.
What they felt on the side of the road was what our Savior felt on the cross—disgrace. Every aspect of the crucifixion was intended not only to hurt the victim but to shame him. Death on a cross was usually reserved for the most vile offenders: murderers, assassins, and the like. The condemned person was marched through the city streets, shouldering his crossbar and wearing a placard about his neck that named his crime. At the execution site he was stripped and mocked.
Crucifixion was so abhorrent that Cicero wrote, “Let the very name of the cross be far away, not only from the body of a Roman citizen, but even from his thoughts, his eyes, his ears.”2 Jesus was not only shamed before people, he was shamed before heaven.
Since he bore the sin of the murderer and adulterer, he felt the shame of the murderer and adulterer. Though he never lied, he bore the disgrace of a liar. Though he never cheated, he felt the embarrassment of a cheater. Since he bore the sin of the world, he felt the collective shame of the world.
It’s no wonder that the writer of Hebrews spoke of the “disgrace he bore” (Heb. 13:13 NLT).
While on the cross, Jesus felt the indignity and disgrace of a criminal. No, he was not guilty. No, he had not committed a sin. And no, he did not deserve to be sentenced. But you and I were, we had, and we did. We were left in the same position I was with the maître d´—having nothing to offer but a prayer. Jesus, however, goes further than the maître d´. Can you imagine the restaurant host removing his tuxedo coat and offering it to me?
Jesus does. We’re not talking about an ill-fitting, leftover jacket. He offers a robe of seamless purity and dons my patchwork coat of pride, greed, and selfishness. “He changed places with us” (Gal. 3:13 NCV). He wore our sin so we could wear his righteousness.
Though we come to the cross dressed in sin, we leave the cross dressed in the “coat of his strong love” (Isa. 59:17 NCV) and girded with a belt of “goodness and fairness” (Isa. 11:5 NCV) and clothed in “garments of salvation” (Isa. 61:10).
Indeed, we leave dressed in Christ himself. “You have all put on Christ as a garment” (Gal. 3:27 NEB).
It wasn’t enough for him to prepare you a feast.
It wasn’t enough for him to reserve you a seat.
It wasn’t enough for him to cover the cost and provide the transportation to the banquet.
He did something more. He let you wear his own clothes so you would be properly dressed.
“With one sacrifice [Jesus] made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (Heb. 10:14 NCV). No more sacrifice needs to be made. No more deposits are necessary. So complete was the payment that Jesus used a banking term to proclaim your salvation. “It is finished!” (John 19:30 NKJV). Tetelestai (It is finished) was a financial term used to announce the final installment, the ultimate payment.
Now, if the task is finished, is anything else required of you? Of course not. If the account is full, what more could you add?