God Did Not Abandon Jesus on the Cross

Did God the Father abandon Jesus, the Son of God, on the cross because of our sins?  Did he withdraw from Jesus or hide his face from Jesus?

There are some intense views on this subject.  Going back to Calvin, some Christians have argued that Jesus was actually abandoned by his Father when he was on the cross.

Why do some people think God abandoned Jesus?

When Jesus is dying on the cross, he prays, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46)  Jesus is quoting the first verse of Psalm 22.  More accurately, he is praying Psalm 22.  However, some preachers take this statement of verse as the starting point for an argument that Jesus was literally abandoned by God – that he not only experienced what it felt like to be abandoned, but that he actually was abandoned by God.  In support of this interpretation, they draw upon a very literal reading of 2 Corinthians 5:21, which says that God “made him [i.e., Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  In their view, it was necessary for Jesus to actually be abandoned by God on the cross so that he could take the punishment of sin for us.  They then argue, based on Old Testament passages such as Habakkuk 1:13, that God cannot tolerate the presence of evil and therefore that sin cannot stand in the presence of a holy and righteous God.  Based on these premises, they conclude that God had to abandon Jesus when Jesus took on our sins for us.

The idea that God abandoned Jesus is seriously flawed

This notion that God abandoned Jesus is not consistent with Scripture and the nature of God.  Here are some of its flaws:

• It splits the one Triune God.  The idea that God the First Person of the Trinity could abandon God the Second Person of the Trinity would seem to split the one God into multiple gods.  Proponents of the argument can’t solve this problem by saying that God only abandoned the human part of Christ, because that would split Christ into a God-part and a human-part rather than the fully human, fully divine, undivided single person he is.  They also can’t solve the problem by saying that God only temporarily abandoned Jesus.  God cannot abandon himself.  Jesus was God.  He could not abandon himself.

• It misinterprets Paul.  The argument that God abandoned Jesus is based in part on an overly literal misreading of 2 Corinthians 5:21 (“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”, NRSV).  In that verse, Paul is saying that Jesus took the place of sinful humanity and at the same time became the sacrificial sin offering that allowed us to take on his righteousness.  Both halves of the sentence are metaphors that identify Jesus’s status and our status, not Jesus’s nature or our nature.  We are not literally “the righteousness of God,” we merely take on Jesus’s righteousness.  Similarly, Jesus was not literally “sin,” he took on the burden of our sin in relation to God and offered himself in sacrifice for us.

• It misunderstands the nature of Christ’s sacrifice.  In the words of Isaiah, he “bore” the sin of many (Isaiah 53:12) and made his life the “offering” for sin (Is. 53:12).  The sin itself cannot be the offering for the sin.  He was the offering.  He was the priest making the offering.  He was not the sin.  The book of Hebrews makes clear that he was sinless (Heb. 4:15) and that he offered himself without blemish (Heb. 9:14).  This further establishes that he was the offering for sin, not the sin itself.

• It makes an argument supposedly from Habakkuk that Habakkuk rejects.  In Habakkuk 1:13, the prophet says to God, “Your eyes are too pure to behold evil, / and you cannot look on wrongdoing” (NRSV).  Habakkuk is making this argument to God to try to convince God not to use the evil Babylonians to exact God’s judgment on Judah.  It is Habakkuk’s opinion, not a statement from God, that God is too holy to be able to look upon evil.  God rejects Habakkuk’s feeble attempt to deter God, as the rest of the book of Habakkuk shows.  God is quite capable of working through evil people when necessary, and those evil people through whom he works will also face their own judgment.  God never says in Habakkuk that he cannot look upon evil; that is merely a flawed human argument that God ignores.  The argument for the abandonment of God is based on a misreading of Habakkuk that is so flawed that it actually turns the message of Habakkuk on its head.

• It ignores the Bible’s many examples of God directly interacting with sinners.  The Bible clearly refutes the idea that God cannot look upon evil.  Throughout the Bible, God explicitly looks upon evil and appears in the presence of sinners.  For example, he seeks out and meets face to face with Adam and Eve after they have sinned in the Garden of Eden.  He allows Satan to come into his presence and speak with him in the book of Job.  In the story of the Prodigal Son, where the father stands for God, God welcomes the prodigal son and interacts directly with the unforgiving older son.  God is not bound by our legalistic idea that he cannot look upon sin or be in the presence of evil.

• It ignores the Incarnation.  God – God the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity – came to Earth and lived 33 years with sinful people.  Far from needing to shield his eyes from sinners or avoid being in the presence of sinful humanity, Jesus, who is God, embraced sinners, dined with them, taught them, touched them, spent every moment he could with them, and looked at them with love.  God does not have to run away from sin or hide his eyes from it.  He is so far superior to our sin that no sin, no matter how great, can force him to turn away or prevent him from entering into our presence.  (Our sin may make it hard for us to be in his presence, but that is a different matter.)

• It totally misunderstands Psalm 22.  Psalm 22 does not show God abandoning Jesus; it shows the opposite: that God was present with him to the end.  Jesus pointedly rejected their claim by praying Psalm 22.  Matthew only records Jesus reciting the first verse of Psalm 22, but Jesus would have known the entire psalm by heart and would have prayed the entire psalm.  As he did so, he would have reached the verse that says that God “did not hide his face from me,” but instead that God “heard when I cried to him” (Psalm 22:24, NRSV; Psalm 22:25 in the NABRE).  In praying the first verse, Jesus would have been expressing the feeling of abandonment.  But as he continued it would have been clear that the entire psalm is about him, not just the first verse.  He would have recited the verses describing how he was being mocked.  He would have prayed the verses that described explicitly what he was experiencing on the cross; for example, “they have pierced by hands and my feet”(22:16; 22:17 in the NABRE).  After praying verse 24, which explicitly says that God did not hide his face from Jesus (showing that the abandonment claim is wrong), he would have continued and reached the part where it says that he will (future tense) offer praise in the assembly and fulfill his vows (22:25/26), that the poor will eat and be satisfied, (22:26/27), and ending with the people proclaiming the deliverance God brought.  Psalm 22 is not a psalm of abandonment; it is a psalm of victory in the presence of God.

God did not abandon Jesus

In conclusion, God never abandoned Jesus.

Jesus, as a fully human person, endured the human experience of feeling abandoned by God, as any human being might feel while dying on a cross.

But there is a difference between feelings and reality.  Jesus was also fully God: God the Son, the second Person of the Trinity.  The one Triune God cannot be divided.  The Father was with the Son on the cross, for they are always, eternally, One.

Our God does not win our salvation by removing himself from the presence of sin but by overcoming it with self-sacrificial love.  When Jesus was on the cross, God was on the cross, pouring forth that love for us.  God was not absent; he was the central figure in the act of our salvation.

God never abandoned Jesus, and he will never abandon you or me or anyone else.