The Darkness Over the Son
On the cross, Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He wasn’t crying out for someone to save him. He was crying out to show the kind of salvation he was securing. His cry was the first verse of Psalm 22, where the Psalmist David laments the feeling of forsakenness.
Do you know that feeling? Have you felt forsaken? Have you felt abandoned? On the cross, Jesus entered forsakenness. He wants us to know he identifies with us. His cry is our cry because our cry is his cry.
He who knew no sin was becoming sin for us. All our darkness was placed on him. As the prophet Isaiah said, “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows…the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” On the cross, all the iniquity of all God’s people throughout all history, past, present, and future, was laid upon his Son, and God’s wrath was poured out on him. And it killed him.
Jesus did not die a normal death of mere physical expiration; Jesus died the extraordinary death of spiritual expiation. He made amends for our guilt. He atoned for our sins. By his death, Jesus set us right with God. He went into God’s courtroom of Divine Justice as our substitute and received a guilty verdict. He was led to the place of slaughter and executed for our sins. Jesus hung there, covered in darkness, physically and spiritually, experiencing the very hell we deserve to give us the very heaven we long for.
So when Paul says in Romans 8:1, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus,” it means that, because of this act of Christ on the cross, there is therefore now no condemnation for any who receive this offer of salvation from Jesus. To whoever accepts this free gift, you are free from the eternal punishment of sin. You are free from condemnation. You might condemn yourself, but God won’t condemn you because he condemned Jesus instead. God fully approves of you because Jesus paid it all. Not some. All.
When Jesus died, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. Where there was once separation between man and God in the very heart of God’s temple, there is now open access. By Christ’s blood, we now have all the access to God we will ever need. We can come boldly to the throne of grace. God will hear us because, on the cross, Jesus wasn’t heard. We will never be forsaken because on the cross, he was.
Psalm 22 starts with lament, but it ends in praise for God’s deliverance. Jesus cried verse 1 to give us the rest of the Psalm. He asked for our deliverance through him, and we received it. Satan can’t condemn us. The world can’t destroy us. We can’t even ruin ourselves anymore. Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice conquered it all.
That’s why we call it Good Friday.