If Jesus wasn’t truly condemned on the cross, then we are not truly justified before God. If Jesus did not objectively suffer the equivalent of hell in his body and soul, then there will be hell for us to pay. Praise God that there was hell to pay for Jesus when “in my place, condemned he stood….Hallelujah! What a Savior!”

Eighteen years ago, I heard a sermon on Matthew 27:46—Jesus’ cry of dereliction on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” At one point, the minister who was preaching this message said, “Jesus wasn’t really forsaken; he just felt forsaken by his Father in his soul.” I remember sensing anger welling up within me at those words. I thought to myself, “That’s a denial of the Gospel. If Jesus wasn’t really forsaken, then I have no grounds to believe that I will never be forsaken.”
Sadly, I have subsequently come to discover that there are quite a number of Protestant theologians who have shied away from asserting that Jesus was really and truly forsaken by his Father when he hung on the cross. Nevertheless, I want to explain what we lose if Jesus wasn’t, in fact, forsaken by God when he stood in our place.
What truly happened to Jesus on the cross?
Thomas Brooks, the seventeenth century English Puritan theologian, explained why we must never downplay what truly happened to Christ on the cross. He insisted,

The more we ascribe to Christ’s suffering, the less remains of ours; the more painfully that he suffered, the more fully are we redeemed; the greater his sorrow was, the greater our solace; his dissolution is our consolation, his cross our comfort; his annoy our endless joy; his distress in soul our release, his calamity our comfort; his misery our mercy, his adversity our felicity, his hell our heaven.[1]

Brooks then proceeded to explain exactly what happened to Jesus at Calvary, when he said,

Christ did actually undergo and suffer the wrath of God, and the fearful effects thereof, in the punishments threatened in the law. As he became a debtor, and was so accounted, even so he became payment thereof; he was made a sacrifice for sin, and bare to the full all that ever divine justice did or could require, even the uttermost extent of the curse of the law of God. He must thus undergo the curse, because he had taken upon him our sin. The justice of the most high God, revealed in the law, looks upon the Lord Jesus as a sinner, because he hath undertaken for us, and seizes upon him accordingly, pouring down on his head the whole curse, and all those dreadful punishments which are threatened in it against sin.[2]

Jesus experienced “an objective God-forsakenness” at Calvary.
Herman Bavinck, in his Reformed Dogmatics, stated the importance of understanding that Jesus did not merely undergo the feeling of forsakenness on the cross. Rather, Jesus experienced “an objective God-forsakenness” at Calvary. He insisted,

In the cry of Jesus we are dealing not with a subjective but with an objective God-forsakenness: He did not feel alone but had in fact been forsaken by God. His feeling was not an illusion, not based on a false view of his situation, but corresponded with reality.[3]

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The wise counselor is, in a sense, a realist. He knows from Scripture that we live between the ages. And so, he helps the counselee to see how his desires and expectations point to a deeper longing for eternal pleasures that are only found in God (Ps. 16:11). Not only that, the faithful counselor points to Christ—crucified, raised, ascended, seated in heaven, and given to and in us by the Spirit. He is our hope of glory.

We live and suffer according to the hopes and expectations we hold. I mean this in a general sense. The things we long for drive how we behave. And that longing makes the wait to be experienced as a type of suffering. To not have what is deeply desired is painful. It makes the heart sick.
The author of Proverbs noticed this reality: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life” (Prov. 13:12). Like my initial statement, this verse seems to depict a general reality about human psychology. When the object of our longings—of our hopes—is delayed, our hearts grow tired and discouraged. The continuous lacking that is perceived becomes a burden in prolonged waiting.
In contrast, the desire that is met and fulfilled is compared to the tree of life. There is joy and delight in having that which has been anticipated and wanted. When that baby girl is finally held in her mom’s arms, everything in life takes new colors. When the doctor declares dad to be cancer-free, the tastes of grace in life are accented in new ways. When that promotion finally comes after years of hard work, the scents of life grow more fragrant. The fulfilled desire is like a source of new energy and motivation, a tree that produces life.
What Kind of Longing?
It may seem that the solution for our anxieties and angsts is straightforward. All we need is to get what we long for most deeply, and then all pain will fade away. I would say that is true, depending on how we look at these longings. Created with desires, we were meant to long for something. The problem is that our wants are based on longings that shoot too low. We expect ultimate fulfillment from things that cannot deliver the delight for which we were made. And so, our hearts find no peace until they rest in God.[1]
Now, the fact that we do have desires is revealing. The reality that we find delight when desires are met points to a greater reality of ultimate delight. The temporary quality of the delight we experience from inferior desires exposes the reality that our hearts yearn for final peace and permanent blessedness. Our souls are thirsty for God, the only source of living water (Ps. 42:1-2).
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Written by Gregory R. Lanier |
Tuesday, June 11, 2024
Paul’s argument in Romans (and in Galatians) moves from unbelief where law-keeping fails (Rom. 1:18–3:20), to being declared right before God through faith (Rom 3:21–4:23), to adoption and sanctification that flow from justification (Rom. 5–8). In other words, Paul’s statement about justification by faith rather than works falls in his argument about how one becomes saved. James is making a different argument. He is speaking to those who claim to have faith (James 2:14) but lack any kind of Christian charity to go along with it (James 2:16). Such “faith” is not truly faith if it lacks resulting “works” (James 2:17). It is empty or dead, and thus no different from the bare cognitive assent that even demons exercise (James 2:19).

The epistle written by James kicks off the sub-collection known as the “catholic” or General Epistles, so named because they are addressed not to specific churches or individuals but to (more or less) the entire church. In this case, the letter is penned to the “twelve tribes in the Dispersion” (James 1:1), a richly symbolic way of denoting all of God’s people scattered throughout the world. In this article, we’ll consider three things to know about this epistle.
1. Jesus’ Half-Brother Probably Wrote It
Let’s start with authorship. Four men named “James” are contenders. James the brother of John (sons of Zebedee, Matt. 4:21) died too soon to be the author (Acts 12:2). James the son of Alphaeus (Matt. 10:3) and James the father of Judas (Luke 6:16) are too unknown in the early church to pull off simply identifying as “James” in the epistle. This leaves James the brother of Jesus (Matt. 13:55) as the most plausible contender. This James began as an unbeliever (John 7:5), but through a dramatic encounter with the resurrected Lord Jesus (1 Cor. 15:7), he became a pillar of the early church and possibly an Apostle (Gal. 1:19; 2:9). Why does the identity of the writer matter?
First, James had been transformed by the power of the gospel, yet he does not press his earthly ties to Jesus for clout. He simply refers to himself as a “servant . . . of the Lord Jesus Christ” (James 1:1). Second, this James makes the pivotal speech at the Jerusalem Council, drawing on Amos 9:11–12 to articulate how the death and resurrection of Christ unites gentiles and Jews under the same banner of faith, not ethnic markers or works of law (Acts 15:13–21). He experienced the gospel and preached the gospel. Third, James inserts direct teachings from his brother Jesus into the letter, such as the poor will inherit the kingdom (James 2:5; Matt. 5:3–5), mourning and laughing (James 4:9; Luke 6:25), exalting the humble (James 4:10; Matt. 23:12), and “yes”/“no” (James 5:12; Matt. 5:34–37). His brother’s gospel has become his gospel.
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