Did God Abandon Jesus on the Cross - Part 2

THE CRY OF DERELICTION

“And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” (Matthew 27:46, ESV)

Part 2

My interest in this subject was peaked when I watched an interview with Dr. McCall on the Logos YouTube channel where he joins Kirk E. Miller to discuss the cry of dereliction. This prompted me to purchase McCall’s book and engage with it. In my previous blog, I started a review McCall’s book,  ‘Forsaken, The Trinity, The Cross and Why It Matters‘  particularly his first chapter. There we noted he makes 4 points about the cry of Jesus. They are:

1. The cry quotes all of Psalm 22, not just verse 1a. McCall argues that Jesus has the whole Psalm in mind, expressing suffering but ending with faith in the Father.

2. “Forsaken” means abandoned to death at the hands of sinners, not relationally forsaken by the Father. In a sense McCall interprets the word ‘forsaken’ to be like delivered, handed over.

3. Solidarity with humanity, not penal wrath-bearing in the “God against God” sense.  To clarify, McCall means that Jesus enters fully into the human condition of abandonment (the alienation from God that we have caused by sin). He takes up our cries of dereliction as our representative and substitute. In his incarnate humanity, he experiences the horror and shame of death on our behalf. This is genuinely substitutionary and has a penal dimension (Christ bears the just penalty so we do not), but McCall resists framing it as the Father actively pouring out wrath on or against the beloved Son.

4. No ontological or relational rupture in the Trinity. McCall repeatedly stresses that the Father does not hate the Son, turn away from him, or interrupt their mutual love and communion. The Son remains the beloved Son even in his suffering and death. Any interpretation that implies “God against God” or a temporary division of the Trinity is mistaken.

Psalm 22

Certainly in Matthew’s account of the crucifixion he leans heavily on Psalm 22 in direct quotation and in allusion. Matthew 27:46, “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” This is a direct quotation of Psalm 22:1 (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). There are also these allusions to Psalm 22:

• Matthew 27:35 — “And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots.” This directly echoes Psalm 22:18 — “They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.”
• Matthew 27:39 — “And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads.” This alludes to Psalm 22:7 — “All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads.”
• Matthew 27:43 — The mockers say: “He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him.” This closely parallels Psalm 22:8 — “He trusts in the LORD; let the LORD deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!”

There is no doubt that Matthew is leaning on Psalm 22 in his account. However, McCall’s assumption that Jesus quoted Psalm 22:1a expecting His listeners to assume He was pointing to the whole psalm is an unproven assumption. He writes, “The connection between the cry of dereliction and Psalm 22, we clearly see, is not limited to Jesus’ citation of the first lines, important though that is. Rather, the whole narrative clearly and strongly echoes the Psalm throughout” (p.40).

It cannot be proven by the text that Christ’s cry of dereliction was meant to point us to the whole psalm. The plain reading of the text would simply affirm that Jesus was crying, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.”

Forsaken

“Properly understood, the cry of dereliction means that the Father abandoned the Son to this death at the hands of these sinful people, for us and our salvation” (p.47). Stated otherwise McCall is saying that God did not abandon the Son, relationally, but God abandoned the Son to the hands of sinful men. As I stated earlier, McCall is using the word “abandon” similarly to “delivered”. There is a case to be made there.  For example:

“. . . But for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” (Romans 4:24–25, ESV)

“He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32, ESV)

But such an interpretation must be considered in light of other passages:

“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted . . . and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:4–6, ESV).

“Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief . . .” (Isaiah 53:10, ESV).

“. . . Whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins” (Romans 3:25, ESV). Propitiation means the turning away of wrath, suggesting Jesus satisfied God's wrath on the cross.

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21, ESV).

“But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—” (Galatians 3:12–13, ESV). Both 2 Corinthians 5:21 and this passage teach that Christ being treated as the object of God’s wrath.

So I don’t think that McCall has made his case that Jesus was abandoned to the hands of sinners. The evidence of Scripture clearly teach that Jesus became sin, an object of God’s wrath, as a substitute for sinners.

 Penal Substitution

McCall’s view of the abandonment leads us naturally to the question of penal substitution. McCall affirms that Jesus substituted for us and dealt with the penalty of sin. But he wants a version that stops short of the Father actively pouring out wrath on or against the beloved Son. It appears that his intent is not to consider any interpretation that would somehow rupture the Trinity (of which I would also affirm) as being untenable. However, the clear instruction of Scripture (as noted above) teaches that God indeed poured out His wrath upon His Son. Therefore, we must believe that and somehow consider the union of the Trinity in a different way.

McCall does not throw away the idea that Jesus stood in our place to rescue us from judgment. He simply warns against vivid “Father punishing the Son” language that risks harming our view of who God is. His intent is valid, but his approach is not.

Tri-Unity

Again, we note McCall’s concern: The Son remains the beloved Son even in his suffering and death. Any interpretation that implies “God against God” or a temporary division of the Trinity is mistaken. To that we agree. Whatever is meant by Christ’s cry of dereliction, it did not mean that the Trinity was ruptured. That idea is utterly impossible. McCall would say that this was not the Father pouring personal wrath on or against his Son in a way that split their relationship. We say, “True.”

Unlike traditional expositors who affirm a real experience of God-forsakenness and wrath-bearing in Christ’s humanity (while carefully denying any essential break in the Trinity)—McCall is more cautious about language of the Father “turning away” or the Son experiencing divine wrath as personal abandonment.

My conclusion about Dr. McCall’s work is that it falls short of being convincing. He seems unwilling to embrace what is a mystery, or at the least a paradox. The Trinity is defined by one divine essence (being) eternally subsisting in three distinct persons who are consubstantial (of the same substance), co-equal, and co-eternal. You cannot divide the undivided God. The cross displays the harmony of the triune plan—Father sending, Son obeying and suffering, and the Spirit empowering. There’s no conflict between the Persons. So how do we understand the “forsakenness” so that Christ’s suffering is real, that His suffering was by the will and the hand of His Father, yet the unity of the Trinity remains unbroken?

To that we look to Part 3.