A Fishy Confession

Matthew 27 describes one of the most heart-wrenching episodes ever recorded. After hours of physical beating, the Son of God, the promised Messiah, is now on trial before Pilate. He is there because Judas, one of His disciples, has betrayed Him. The other disciples, some of whom declared their allegiance to Him only hours before, have scattered. Now Jesus stands alone before Pilate, the Roman governor who is supposed to uphold the rule of law. On three separate occasions, Pilate states that he finds Jesus “not guilty.†But despite knowing Jesus’s innocence, Pilate yields to the crowd and condemns Jesus to death (John 18:38-19:22).

After a grueling night of physical, mental, and emotional pain, Jesus is finally nailed to the cross, an excruciating form of execution. The Scriptures tell us He made seven different statements from the cross, but none as dramatic as His cry in Matthew 27:46, when He quoted Psalm 22:1, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?†In this very moment, Jesus was bearing the sins of the world. The perfect Lamb of God, unblemished and without fault, accepted the guilt and shame of our sins.

Jesus and the Father had always enjoyed perfect fellowship. But now, carrying the sins of the world, Jesus stood in judgment from His Father. No wonder Jesus had prayed earlier in the Garden of Gethsemane, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine†(Matthew 26:39).

As horrible as the experience had been up to this moment, suffering His Father’s wrath was surely the low point of Jesus’s suffering. But this was the only way to fulfill the holy justice of God and open the door of relationship that our sins had closed. In love, Jesus provided the perfect, ultimate sacrifice. And after three days, God raised Jesus from the dead! Jesus’s willingness to suffer the Father’s just wrath allows us to be adopted by the Father. Because Jesus cried out from the cross, “Why have you abandoned me?†we can now shout in the joy of adoption, “Abba, Father†(Romans 8:15). • Mike Hurley

• How does what Jesus did on the cross reveal God’s love for us? (Check out our “Know Jesus” page.)

• If you’d like to dig deeper, read Acts 2:22-36 and Romans 8:15-39.

Jesus called out with a loud voice…“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?†Matthew 27:46b (NLT)

Read Verses:

Luke.5.1-Luke.5.11