R.C. Sproul

It's one of the most pregnant utterances that ever came from the lips of Jesus while he's on the cross.

There's been all kinds of interpretations.

Albert Schweitzer looked at that and said, here's proof positive that Jesus died in disillusionment.

He had all kinds of expectations that God was going to deliver him, and God let him down in the final moments, and so that Jesus dies as a disillusioned, tragic Shakespearean hero.

Or others notice that the words, of course, are found verbatim in Psalm 22, and they say, well, here Jesus is identifying himself with the suffering servant of Psalm 22 and is reciting poetry on his deathbed.

I don't doubt that the origin for the actual words comes from the psalm, and Jesus was aware of that psalm, and I'm sure he'd read it many, many times.

Others, in fact, my favorite hymn, my ordination hymn was "'Tis Midnight and on Olive's Brow," and I love that hymn in spite of the fact that there is a statement in there of heresy.

When it talks about Jesus, it says, "'Was not forsaken by His God.'"

And you see theologians say, well, Jesus in His humanity felt forsaken on the cross, but He wasn't really forsaken.

Let me say this, if Jesus was not really forsaken on the cross, you are still in your sins.

You have no redemption.

You have no salvation.

Because the whole point of the cross is that if Jesus is going to bear our sins and bear the sanctions of the covenant.

Let me ask you this, what was the sign of the old covenant?

Circumcision, talk about primitive and obscene signs.

Why did the Jew cut off the foreskin of his flesh?

It had two significances, a positive and a negative for the two sanctions.

The symbolic gesture of the cutting of the foreskin was that God is cutting out this group of people from the rest, separating them, setting them apart to be a holy nation.

to be a blessing.

The negative is that the Jew was saying this, oh God, if I fail to keep every one of the terms of this covenant, may I be cut off from you, cut off from your presence, cut off from the light of your countenance, cut off from your blessedness, just as I have now ritually cut off the foreskin of my flesh.