"If "aloneness" were part of his descent, part of his infinite suffering, part of the climax of his agony, then that requirement seems not to have been fully consummated in the Garden, but on the cross where the angel was absent, the Father was withdrawn and the cry of abject loneliness was heard in all its stark reality---"My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34). Certainly the physical consequences of the cross did not dictate such a withdrawal of God's Spirit; rather it may have been a natural response to the avalanche of evil heaped upon the Innocent One. When the Savior reached the climax of his ordeal---when the infinite sins of infinite worlds pressed upon Him---God's Spirit retracted from the consequences of such universal evil. Isaiah taught this truth when he declared, "Our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away," and furthermore, God hid his "face from us...because of our iniquities" (Isaiah 64:6,7). If God withdrew his Spirit due to the worlds' iniquities being assumed by Jesus, then the sufferings of Gethsemane were indeed recurring on the cross."
love this!!
ReplyDelete