“He Has Done It”: Christological Reflections on Psalm 22

Tenebrae Homily, March 29, 2024

“Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (Mark 15:34; cf. Matt. 27:46).

According to the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, these were the final words of Jesus of Nazareth. Pinned to the cross by Roman soldiers, and pressed there by religious leaders, all because of the First Adam’s sin, here hung the Last Adam, the Son of Man, uttering the saddest, grief-filled distress ever recorded: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Some imagine this dejected cry as evidence of injustice, divine child abuse poured out from an angry Father upon an innocent Son. But this objection ignores Jesus’s own opinion in the matter, as though the voice of victims ought to be silenced. Just the night before, the Son prayed to the Father to “let this cup pass from me,” but He yielded to their collective divine desire: “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matt. 26:39). Child abuse is never wanted by the victim, yet the Son of God desired this moment, and because of “the joy that was set before him [Christ] endured the cross, despising the shame” (Heb. 21:2).

God’s Son, the second person of the all-knowing Trinity, knew all too well what was coming and desired it anyhow. As Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg so eloquently put it: “The Infinite Omniscience saw an unfathomable sea of pain before Him that we flooded prodigiously with our sins,” but “His misery meant less to Him than our joy.” It’s an abuse of the Son’s agency to assume He had no choice in the matter. “I lay down my life so that I may take it up again,” Christ clarified, “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have the right to lay it down” (John 10:17–18).

Others, though, imagine Christ’s cry as the heart wrenching moment when God the Father could no longer look at the face of His dying Son drenched in our sins. Because God “made [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin,” the Son forfeited His eternal relationship with the Father “so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). No wonder these lyrics resonate so deeply with our souls: “How great the pain of searing loss, The Father turns His face away.”

But is it the case that God truly turned His face away from the Son at the crucifixion? It depends on how we understand what it means for God ‘to face’ someone. We know, in a literal sense, God cannot turn His face away because He has no face. “God is Spirit” (John 4:24) and “a spirit does not have flesh and bones” (Luke 24:39), His Son taught us. Yet, even in an allegorical sense—though God may show favor or affection when he “makes his face to shine upon you” (Num. 6:25)—we ought to take care in knowing what this means.

Would God really turn away His face (would He cease His affections) from His son in whom He is “well pleased” (see, e.g., Matt. 3:17; 17:5; 2 Pet. 1:17) especially at the epicenter of redemption history, the cross on Calvary? When else was God more pleased than at that pivotal moment when His Son forever redefined true power—not through force but through sacrifice—as He inaugurated the new covenant, loosened sin’s grip, defeated Satan, and forged lasting peace, reconciliation, and unity between God and humanity?

Indeed, while God permits persecution, he does not forsake the persecuted (see 2 Cor. 4:9). If the Lord God “will not leave or forsake” the children of Israel (Deut. 31:6), would He truly leave and forsake His only begotten Son? To answer “Yes” is to imagine the unimaginable—a relational rupture within the Holy Trinity, Son torn from Father and Spirit, meaning that for the briefest of moments in all eternity the Trinity ceased to be Triune, and God ceased to be God.

So, what did Jesus mean when He uttered that most mournful lament?

Christological Reflections on Psalm 22

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

I don’t fault you for assuming I’ve quoted Jesus again. I haven’t, though. I’ve quoted David (see Ps. 22:1). This psalm was originally a hymn, written “to the choirmaster, according to The Doe of the Dawn,” a tune lost to history.

But herein lies the first clue to understanding what Jesus meant when He uttered those words: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Perhaps he didn’t utter them. Perhaps he sung them. Filling his lungs one last time, belting from his diaphragm with all his might, Jesus intoned the forlorn melody. 

And just as anyone today who, on hearing this simple line, “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,” could complete the refrain—“that saved a wretch like me”—so too would many people at Christ’s crucifixion know immediately the hymn He began to sing.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?” (Ps. 22:1)

Here, David’s voice transcends his life experiences to echo over the crucifixion, begging those with ears to hear to re-listen to the psalm considering the Son in whom God was well-pleased, even on the cross of shame. 

Christ’s suffering for our sins was not occasional in this moment, ebbing in relief only to later flow again in pain. It was persistently unrelenting. “O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest” (Ps. 22:2). The one who invited us to come to him “all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28), this same one could find no rest in His labor of our redemption.

Still, the Son honored God. “Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. In you our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them. To you they cried and were rescued; in you they trusted and were not put to shame” (Ps. 22:3–5). Christ knew His time in death is temporary because His righteousness is unending, and He completely trusted the Righteous One to spar Him from the shame of Sheol. The Lord God “will not leave you or forsake you” (Deut. 31:6).

But that was three days in the future from then. At that moment, Christ was “a worm and not a man” (Ps. 22:6a), or so the world saw its Creator this way—not merely a creature, but a disgusting, wriggling, worthless one at that. And so God’s Son, who “is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Col. 1:17), endured cruel mockery, “scorned by mankind and despised by the people” (Ps. 22:6b), though He was there for them, “reconciling to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col. 1:20).

“All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads; ‘He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!’” (Ps. 22:7–8). It sounded a little different at Golgotha. “Those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads” (Matt. 27:39), mocking him this way: ‘If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross’” (Matt. 27:40), not knowing that doing so would confine them, and not Him, to eternal death. “He saved others; he cannot save himself” (Matt. 27:42), they taunted, failing to grasp the Trinitarian mystery that, indeed, God would save Himself—the Father, by the Spirit, would pull the Son from death’s grasp—to save others.

“Yet you are he who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts. On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother’s womb you have been my God. Be not far from me, for trouble is near, and there is none to help” (Ps. 22:9–11). How unfathomable a paradox—a man, born of a virgin’s womb and dependent on His mother’s care, is yet truly God, ungenerated and eternal. The “Author of Life” (Acts 3:15) born to die that many dead might live forever.

“Dogs encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me” (Ps. 22:16) and in jest, they took the king’s regalia: “they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots” (Ps. 22:18). The same happened to Christ as Roman soldiers divided up the King of the Jew’s clothes by casting lots (see Matt. 27:35; Mark 15:24; Luke 23:34; John 19:23–24), if that is who He was, anyway. “Many bulls encompass me; strong bulls of Bashan surround me; they open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion” (Ps. 22:12–13). “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself!” (Luke 23:37)

Worse yet, “they have pierced my hands and feet” (Ps. 22:16), crucifixion’s cruel and torturous mode of operation, so feared and hated at the time that the Gospel writers all simply reported: “they crucified him” (Matt. 27:35; Mark 15:24; Luke 23:33; John 19:18).

“I am poured out like water,” (Ps. 22:14), pierced by a soldier’s spear (see John 19:34). “And all my bones are out of joint” (Ps. 22:14), yet to remain the spotless lamb, “they did not break his legs” (John 19:33) because it was prophesied: “Not one of his bones will be broken” (John 19:36). And they weren’t. “I can count all my bones” (Ps. 22:17), wrote David.

“My heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; my strength is dried up like a potsherd” (Ps. 22:15), the very moments before “he gave up his spirit” (Matt. 27:50). “And my tongue sticks to my jaws” (Ps. 22:15), though he would utter “I am thirsty” (John 19:28) to clear his voice enough to announce to earth, heaven, and hell “It is finished” (John 19:30).

“You lay me in the dust of death” (Ps. 22:15). Having suffered under Pontius Pilate, Jesus Christ—God’s only Son, our Lord—died and was buried.

But this suffering was temporary. Life would stir again soon, in three days to be precise. All because the Father would not turn His face away from His Son, which Psalm 22 helps us understand.

“For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him” (Ps. 22:24). The resurrection is coming; the first fruits of eternal life will blossom (see 1 Cor. 15:20–22). And “all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you. For kingship belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations” (Ps. 22:27–28).

Yes, “it shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation; they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn, that he has done it” (Ps. 22:30b–31) because the King of the Jews has already declared: “It is finished” (John 19:30).

—-

Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg, Meditations on the Incarnation, Passion, and Death of Jesus Christ, ed. and trans. by Lynne Tatlock (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2009), 63.