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1/27 Reading Portions: Genesis 28; Matthew 27; Esther 4; Acts 27
Matthew 27:46
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying,
“Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
WRATH
Although we can intellectually acknowledge the holy wrath Jesus Christ suffered while hanging upon the cross, we can never know this truth intimately and thoroughly. Jesus Christ knew perfect, unbroken intimacy with His heavenly Father. So close was their relationship that John describes it as Jesus being…
…in the bosom of the Father. John 1:18, KJV
No other man has ever known this kind of relationship with Father God— Adam only knew it fleetingly.
Therefore, when Jesus suffered God’s holy anger for sins He did not commit, the difference between experiencing the joy of the heavenly Father and the judgment of holy God was a greater punishment than the judgment to be dispensed upon the vilest, Christ-rejecting, God-hating sinner in the Day of Judgment when Christ returns. On that Day, the condemned have never known intimacy with the Father. They have only known the indulgence of their sins and the pleasure of their corrupt flesh. And since they will only suffer eternal punishment for the sins they have committed individually against a holy God, their punishment is full of mercy in comparison to what Jesus Christ suffered.
Jesus suffered the unbridled, unrelenting, eternal wrath of God for the sins of every soul God has saved and will save by His grace until the day of Christ’s return. Moreover, Christ’s blood is so precious and powerful, that not only do we have forgiveness through it (Heb 9:22; 1 Jn 1:9), the old heavens and earth will be purged and destroyed by it (2 Pet 3:12), and the new heavens and new earth will spring forth from it (2 Pet 3:13). Christ’s cross is everything; and if we have not Christ’s cross, we have nothing.
But God forbid that I should glory,
Save in the cross alone—
Of Jesus Christ our Lord who died:
And for our sins atone.