Did Jesus Feel Abandoned by God?

Why did Jesus holler out, “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?”

One possible explanation was that he was truly feeling abandoned in that moment. Think about it. Jesus is the only human being—ever—to live with the indwelling Holy Spirit from conception to death. Not a moment of His life was He ever without God’s perfect presence. He may have felt moments of aloneness during his life, such as when He was tempted by the devil in the desert. But even in such moments, the lifelong rich experience of perfect unity with the Father always sustained Him, allowing Him to be the man we read about in the Gospels. This was true when He was rejected and then even betrayed.

But then things changed. In the Garden of Gethsemane just prior to his arrest, we get a glimpse of a Jesus we hadn’t seen before. The knowing pain of His approaching torture and crucifixion became so intense that Jesus, the man, showed us for the first time that perhaps what the man in Him wanted was different from what God’s Spirit in Him wanted. Jesus pleaded with the Father that if it would be His will, to take the pending suffering away from Him. Before the Apostle Paul pleaded three times with God to take away his, “thorn in the flesh,” Jesus pleaded in prayer three times with His Father to take away the thorns that soon would be crushed into His skull, along with the torture and execution. His disciples couldn’t stay awake to pray with Him in the Garden so he possibly felt alone. But then the Father, in a merciful gesture, sent an angel to strengthen Him for what was coming (Luke 22:43).

Fast forward a few hours. Jesus had been beaten and tortured beyond imagination and had now been hanging on the cross for a full three hours. The mind can’t conceive of the emotional suffering for anyone in this situation. For the criminals beside Him, they might have been feeling deep regret for their poor choices, or anger and bitterness, or perhaps simply the complete loss of hope. As for Jesus, we can only speculate. Might He have been experiencing a brand new emotion … the incredulity that His Father, Who had always granted His requests, was really NOT coming to rescue Him? Was this perhaps the first time that God had asked Jesus to do something that He didn’t want to do? Was this the first time Jesus prayed for something, yet got a different outcome?

What we do know for certain is that while this would be impossible to endure for anyone else, Jesus had been strengthened by an angel so that His mind, heart, body and soul was divinely sustained so that He could endure it all. The Father had made it clear in the Garden that He was not going to save Him from death … he was going to deliver Him through it. So if Jesus did feel abandoned by the Father, He came through it quickly because with His final breath He said: "Father, into Your hands I commit My Spirit."

Please join me in prayer: Heavenly Father, when Greg spoke about the earthquake on that dark day, I thought about the tectonic shift that must have taken place in Jesus during His ordeal. Yet, because of His trust in You, He came through it and glorified You by His death. Likewise Lord, please strengthen me when the upheavals from aloneness or abandonment ravage me, reminding me that Your first call on my life is to trust You and to seek your presence. Regardless of the cost, time or sacrifice, I want to bring You glory by doing Your will. I pray this is the power of Jesus’ Name. Amen!