This is one of our top devotions of 2020 published on the 10th of April 2020. Find the full article here
One of the worst aspects of the COVID-19 outbreak in Bergamo, Italy, is that thousands of its victims died alone, without the comfort of loved ones at their bedside. Regardless of culture or religion, the world has been forced to discard ancient rituals to say goodbye to the dying, to honour the dead and comfort the bereaved, for fear of spreading the virus further. But on this Easter Friday, Christians can know that we will never experience the horrific separation that Christ suffered as he gasped for breath on the cross. As our substitute, Jesus was weighed down, not only by his own broken body, but by the burden of sin he never committed. Christ became a curse for us (Gal 3:13) and emptied the cup of God’s wrath. Enveloped by darkness from noon until 3pm on the Friday of Passover, Jesus owned King David’s cry in Psalm 22:
‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (Matt 27:45-46; Ps 22:1a).
“Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from my cries of anguish?
2 My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
by night, but I find no rest (Ps 22:1-2).
Jesus’s cry of true abandonment gave voice to an immense spiritual grief. It eclipsed all other griefs, as the perfect Son bore the wrath of His beloved Father against every loathsome sin committed in the world. For the first time in all eternity, the righteous Judge of all the earth turned his face away from his beloved Son. He shut the door in Jesus’s face, to open the door to forgiven sinners.
Let’s go back to the Psalm that Jesus meditated on as he hung on the cross. Read Psalm 22 through on your own, then keep the text in front of you as we massage its truth into our hearts:
Despised by the people
“But I am a worm and not a man,
scorned by everyone, despised by the people.
7 All who see me mock me;
they hurl insults, shaking their heads.
8 “He trusts in the Lord,” they say,
“let the Lord rescue him.
Let him deliver him,
since he delights in him…”
The Psalmist clearly had his own enemies and personal torment. But David was also a prophet, inspired by the Holy Spirit to describe an infinitely more profound anguish to be suffered by one of his descendants (1 Peter 1:10-11)…Keep Reading