The Cry from the Cross

And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? MATTHEW 27:46

MacDonald approached the cry of desolation from the cross with reverence. His sermon on it, The Eloi, opens with an admission that he would hardly have dared to write about those words at all if he had not believed that they hold the deepest practical lesson the human heart has to learn. He thought that in the darkest moment of the Lord’s suffering we see the purest form of faith that has ever been, and that this faith is meant to be ours.

Faith without feeling

MacDonald’s reading of the cry begins from the humanity of Jesus. The Son of God, he said, had always known the presence of His Father. Now, in the extremity of His suffering, that sense of presence was taken from Him. He could not see God beside Him; He could not feel Him near. “Never before had he been unable to see God beside him. Yet never was God nearer him than now.” And in that darkness Jesus still cried My God. His will, stripped of every feeling that might support it, still chose to trust the Father.

And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. MARK 15:33

For MacDonald this was the victory. The cry came not out of happiness or peace or even hope, but out of desolation; and yet, he wrote, “It was a cry in desolation, but it came out of Faith.” The Son held on to God when there was nothing left to hold on with but His will. That, MacDonald believed, was the final temptation and the final triumph, and without it the Lord would not have passed through every region of human experience. There would have been a darkness into which His brothers and sisters must go where they could not call to their Captain and be heard.

A word for the troubled

From this MacDonald drew a word for every believer who has known the darkness. There are times when God seems far away, when prayer feels empty and the heart is cold. MacDonald did not say that such times are signs of failure. He said that they are the times when faith is most truly faith, because it has nothing to lean on but God. And he spoke directly to those in such times, in words that many have found a lifeline: “Troubled soul, thou art not bound to feel, but thou art bound to arise. God loves thee whether thou feelest or not.”

Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God. ISAIAH 50:10

The counsel is practical. Do not try to make yourself feel good when you are not good; cry to Him who is good. He does not change because you change. Arise in the darkness and say, I will go to my Father; and do the next thing He asks of you.

The voice of Job

MacDonald returned to the same theme in a long sermon in the second series, The Voice of Job. There he defended Job’s bold complaints against God as more honest, and closer to the truth, than the tidy theology of his comforters. He believed that honest doubt, brought to God, is no enemy of faith. “Doubts are the messengers of the Living One to rouse the honest.” The danger is not in asking hard questions, but in refusing to bring them to God, or in letting them become a settled distrust of His goodness.

But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. JOB 23:10

Weighing it

There is much here that is precious. MacDonald saw that the cry from the cross is a cry of faith — it is, after all, addressed to My God — and that the Lord’s trust in the darkness is a pattern and a comfort for His people. Many who have walked in darkness have found in this sermon a word that kept them going. His defence of honest lament has the Psalms and the book of Job behind it.

But evangelical readers will want to add what MacDonald’s reading leaves out, and it is the heart of the matter. Jesus took the words from Psalm 22, the psalm of the righteous sufferer; and the New Testament tells us why the Holy One was forsaken. It was not only that the feeling of His Father’s presence was taken from Him as a trial of faith. He was bearing our sins. He was made a curse for us. It pleased the Lord to bruise Him, and to make His soul an offering for sin. The darkness at noon was the darkness of judgement, and He went into it in our place. MacDonald, holding the view of the cross described in the last chapter, did not see this; but it is the reason the cry gives comfort at all. The believer in darkness can be sure he is not forsaken, because Christ was forsaken for him.

Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree. GALATIANS 3:13

Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed. ISAIAH 53:10

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Have you known a time when God seemed absent? Read Psalm 22 from beginning to end, and notice where it ends.

2. If you are in such a time now, take MacDonald’s counsel: do not wait to feel, but arise and do the next thing God asks.

3. Is there a doubt you have been afraid to bring to God? Bring it honestly, as Job did.

4. Read Isaiah 53:4–12 and Galatians 3:10–14. Give thanks that Christ was forsaken so that you need never be.

5. Think of someone who is walking in darkness. Pray for that person, and send a word of encouragement.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, in the darkness You cried My God, and held fast to Your Father when every feeling had gone.

Thank You that You were forsaken for me, bearing my sin and my curse, so that I will never be forsaken.

When I walk in darkness and have no light, teach me to trust in the name of the Lord and stay upon my God.

I am not bound to feel, but I am bound to arise. Help me to arise and go to my Father, today. Amen.