Forsaken

“He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”  Isaiah 53:3

Forsaken – “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  But we know why, don’t we?  God abandoned Jesus in that moment because of you and me.  This word is really an adjective.  It describes the character of the suffering servant.  In other uses, the word hadelcan mean refusing to be heard or refusing to respond.  Here it describes the passive result of being pushed away.  We know what it’s like to have someone turn his back on us.  But we know it from both sides because we also have forsaken others who did not deserve our rejection.

Jesus is the man we despised.  We wanted life our way.  We hated that he stood for submission and humility.  We wanted success, pride in accomplishments, recognition.  But he came with a message of volunteer slavery to God’s mission.  Our decisions to continue in sin in spite of the utter reasonableness of God’s request show how much we despised this man of the truth.  And now we see just how much we rejected him.  We refused to listen when he said that life’s joy was found in serving.  We pushed away his call for repentance.  We wanted to make a deal, not throw ourselves on God’s mercy.  We wanted control, not a call to give up our rights.  But most of all, we wanted not to listen to God’s words in Jesus’ voice, pointing out our miserable moral inadequacies. 

“Get away from me, God.  Leave me alone.  I don’t want to give up what I hold so dear.  It’s mine.” 

Jesus went to his death because I shouted, “It’s mine” to God.  Jesus suffered for my rejection.  He accepted every one of those blows because I refused to bow.  He paid for me.

Oh, yes, I know “forsaken”.  I forsook my Savior for years and years while he patiently waited for me to say, “Forgive me, I did not know what I was doing.”