Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Is it possible that the Lord Jesus Himself could have learned a needed lesson during the last hour of His earthly life? We know that although He was the divine, eternal Son of God, in His humanity He had laid aside all the prerogatives of His divinity. He had to learn as we must learn. Now in His last hour He hangs on a Roman cross apparently forsaken by God. Everything possible is against Him. His grand mission seems utterly defeated; the most abject shame has overtaken Him. He screams in hellish agony, "My God, why have You forsaken Me?"
Does He have one more lesson yet to learn before He can close His eyes in death? The sun is getting low in the western sky; Sabbath has not yet come. Is His work of faith not yet fully done?
Yes, He has something yet to learn--one more lesson that He and we must learn: when someone has actually "become sin," has so sinned that He (or you or I!) has actually become guilty of all the sins that have ever been committed since the world began, if that person will pray to God, God will not despise His prayer!
"The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all (Isa. 53:6), that is, no one in all world history was more "sinful" than was Jesus when He was "made ... to be sin for us, who knew no sin" (2 Cor. 5:21, King James Version). You can't become more sinful than to be made sin! With that horrendous load of our world guilt on His soul, Jesus cries out in despair, "Why have You forsaken Me?"
But what was the lesson He learned? "[The Lord] has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; nor has He hidden His face from Him; but when He cried to Him, He heard" (Psalm 22:24, the psalm that Jesus prayed on His cross). And now, as He comes to His last hour of earthly life, He sings special music as Star Performer before the grandest convocation ever gathered: "My praise shall be of You in the great congregation; ... Let your heart live forever! All the ends of the world shall remember and turn to the Lord" (vss. 25-27). He dies our second death, but we shall live forever! He learns that God has not forsaken Him (nor us who will pray)--and never has.
You who wonder if God has given up on you, learn this last lesson that the Son of God learned.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: November 24, 2003.
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