Psalm 22:1, 14
Our topic for this chapter is again from Psalm 22. We will consider two verses 1 and 14, as one. Christ on the cross cried out in forsakenness. In that terrible state of mind, He quoted Psalm 22:1: “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me, and from the words of My groaning?”—or as the King James Version puts it, “from my roaring?”
The word roaring comes from a root word that means to howl in pain like a beast. Christ, in mental anguish screamed in pain, sounding more like the agonizing cry of a wild beast in pain than a human being. The cacophonous screams of His voice echoed the state of His mind as He felt the breakup of His union with His heavenly Father. This was the only time from eternity that such a separation took place within the Godhead.
As much as we can understand of it, let’s consider Christ’s mental anguish. But when we are through here, there will be much more to it than we can possibly understand.
Verse 14: “I’m poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it has melted within me.”
Strong muscles became like liquid through the torturous ordeal He went through. The physical coming apart at the joints was a faint reflection of His mental state as He felt the full force and load of the sin of us all as it was laid upon Him. His heart became like wax under the heat of fire. The heart in Hebrew thought means the intellect as well as the emotions. His mind was going through the process of a meltdown from the crushing pressure of grief, just as wax changes to a liquid state by the application of heat.
Sin burns like a fire in the mind (Isaiah 8:18). It melts and consumes the nervous system. Anyone unprotected from its raging fierceness is destroyed.
The word “melt” means to be dissolved by fear or terror, or by the wasting of disease. It is applied also to fainting that comes from fear, grief, or sorrow. As used here it describes the disorientation of Christ’s mind as He felt the guilt and shame of our sins within His nervous system. The pent up fires of hell burst upon Him at Calvary with all the fury of atomic energy. Sin was consuming Jesus. This was equivalent to the experience of the lake of fire about which the Revelator writes (Revelation 20).
This experience was the previously anticipated hour that caused Him to tremble. Recorded in John 12 when the Gentiles came to see Him in the temple court, He knew their coming was a fulfillment of prophecy. He knew that their coming to Him would be one of the evidences that He was on target with His mission to redeem mankind. He cried out, “God, save Me from this hour.” There was a fierce struggle within, between His emotions and His determination to do God’s will. Then He said in submission, “But for this came I into this hour. Father glorify Me.” The cross was the glorification of Christ.
What we observe in this psalm and others is the meltdown of the mind of Christ.
It was melting like wax as He was made to be sin for us. Sin worked its defeating and disheartening effect upon His mind. Convulsions of agony racked His mind as well as His frame. Agony suggests mental or physical torment so excruciating that body and/or mind are convulsed from the force of it. The horrors of the curse were upon Him. Feelings of guilt and condemnation tortured Him. This is a horrible sight. But its awfulness is our salvation.
Although He knew no sin, He was made to be sin for us. He did not sin, but sin destroyed Him. Our sin, guilt, and condemnation were imputed to Him. This was just as certain and real to Him as it is when His righteousness is imputed to us. He was conscious of imputed sins to Himself. He felt the weight of them. They devastated and demolished Him. There were disturbances in His mind and in His feelings. But even through this meltdown, the faith of Jesus held. The beginning verse of Psalm 22 presents the faith and the feelings of Jesus. “My God! My God!” Those words express the faith of Jesus. Then His feelings spoke: “Why have You forsaken Me?” Faith spoke first and it spoke twice.
There are two aspects of faith. Belief is one of them. This is not necessarily saving faith. Devils believe, they tremble. But it doesn’t save them. Appreciation is another aspect of faith. There are times when we feel good. We have joy. This comes from appreciating what God has done for us and for His goodness toward us when we know we deserve it not. But even this is not saving faith. Saving faith is the faith of Jesus. This is the faith that not only believes in the absence of feelings, but against them. In the last days of earth’s history, God’s people will receive the full cup of Christ’s faith (Revelation 14:12). It comes through the message of Christ crucified and His righteousness. Christ on Calvary came to the end of His rope. But His faith held.
There were disturbances in the thoughts and in the feelings of Jesus, but not in His attitude or in His faith. Never before had He undergone anything like this. He sinned not. He was sinless in His choices and in His thinking, though powerfully pulled to yield. The devil was trying to break Him down so that He might sin. While it is true that He experienced despair, despondency and discouragement, He did not descend to the level of personal sin in these feelings. There are some today who believe these feelings are sins. But this is not so in all cases. They can become sin. Despondency and despair can come because of selfishness, but not always. There are times when these negative feelings come from a physical weakness.
Chemical or hormonal imbalances can likewise upset our mental state.
These are not to be classed as sin. Some persons love to feel depressed or despondent. Some love to feel sorry for themselves. This is sin. But feelings of despondency and despair are not sins in and of themselves. Jesus felt the full force of despair and never sinned. He knows by experience what we from time to time go through. He also knows how much grace we need in those terrible times, for He is touched with the feelings of our infirmities and He knows how to bring to us help in those times of temptation.
In Christ’s experience, it was human sin that caused the intense burning suffering within His emotional and mental faculties. Although He felt as though God had forever forsaken Him, His faith held fast to the throne of God’s grace. He refused to be denied. His faith was His anchor during this storm. It took thirty-three years of submission to His Father’s will, thirty-three years of temptation and trial, to prepare Christ for this time of supreme testing.
He could not have withstood this trial as a child. As a child He had the experiences of a child. He grew as a child, He spoke as a child. He developed as a child. He had the faith of a child. When He grew to manhood He put away the ways of His childhood. But the character developed by faith that always obeyed in His childhood—that was foundational to all the temptations of His life, especially the last temptation. The faith of the little child developed continually to the point of His death. Christ’s entire life was one of faith. He learned by faith; He was sanctified by faith, He walked by faith; in short, He lived by faith. There was only one thing He did not do by faith and that was to die, but He died in faith that His Father would resurrect Him from the grave.
Christ was tempted by the devil in the wilderness shortly after He was baptized. The words of the Heavenly Father , “This is My Beloved Son in whom I am pleased,” were ringing in the devil’s mind. Those words of affirmation were the first audible words from the Father to Christ, and thus to the human race since sin entered the human race. In those words God spoke to the human race, fallen as it was and yet is. The pronouncement was that “He has made us accepted in the Beloved” (Ephesians 1:6). Christ became the Public Man, the Representative Man, the last Adam. Christ as the Head of the race met and defeated the human foe in the wilderness temptations. Faith in the word of God was the first public test.
The devil first tempted the Representative Man, Christ Jesus, on the point of appetite just as he did the first Adam. He tried to get Christ to act as God in creating food to save Himself. Jesus replied as the Public Man: “It is written that man shall not live by bread only, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). This “it is written” comes from Deuteronomy 8:3 that says literally, in the original language, “adam shall not live by bread alone, but by every word coming out of the mouth of God.” This means living by faith. Christ, by faith in God’s word, on behalf of the human race, defeated the devil in the wilderness. But this was not His supreme test.
In Gethsemane and on the cross, Jesus again met this temptation in all the fullness of its force. Bearing the full weight of the sins of the world, in the weakness of human nature, and weakened to the point of exhaustion, Christ was again tempted to use creative energy to escape from the pit of despair and despondency in Gethsemane, and from destruction on Calvary.
Although Christ was tempted at every step of His human life, beginning with Gethsemane was the hour of “the power of darkness” which Jesus dreaded to enter. But He knew He must. This was the final testing hour, the last hour for the last Adam, for the last time. And it was the last time for the devil also. It was now all or nothing. The stakes were high for both warriors.
These two who in another world at another time were the closest of friends now were enemies. Lucifer because of insubordination was dismissed from his position and place in heaven. Now he had the advantage. Christ, his commander in heaven, who became part of His own creation to save that part of His creation, was much weaker in physical strength and in mental ability as a man. Could Christ, the Son of Man, withstand the onslaught that awaited His mind for the next 18 hours?
Their time had fully come. Christ would be given completely into the hands of the devil, to find if the devil could shake Christ from His faith. That shaking time proved decisively the superiority of the Word of God and the faith of Jesus, weak as He was as a man. God demonstrated that with all the weaknesses of the flesh, with all the committed sins of the world heaped upon Christ, God’s grace is stronger than all the power of the Devil.
But God, the Father, must have trembled in that fearful hour.
All heaven was risked at Calvary. Had Christ failed (and that was a real possibility!) more than the human race would have been involved. There were cosmic proportions of which we know nothing. We can only get hints of them from the inspired word. These will have to wait until the second coming of Christ when He shall explain all things.
Psalm 18 reveals David’s ordeal with his enemies and his deliverance.
This typifies Christ and His death. In verse 4 we learn of fear on the part of Christ because of the onslaughts of the Devil. Waves of sin and death engulfed Christ. This made Him experience fear as no one else has. To repeat, there is a fear that is not unto sin. The feelings of fear may seem to overwhelm us. But as David wrote in another place, “Whenever I am afraid, I will trust in You” (Psalm 56:3). Even in times of heartbreaking, abject fear, the faith of Jesus will hold us fast in God’s care.
This psalm is a promise— one that no doubt blessed Christ. It is a promise for you and for me today also. The Devil will at times terrify you. He may awaken you from sleep in the night. There may be a heaviness that can be felt in your room. You may experience difficulty in breathing. You may not be able to utter a sound from your lips. But in your mind you can still pray, “Jesus save me, Jesus help me.” He understands. He will deliver. When afraid, you can trust God.
Psalm 18: 5. “Then the sorrows of Sheol (hell) surrounded me; the snares of death confronted me.” That place, that hell, that death, is not the grave to which all our feet are directed. That is the place of separation, equivalent to the second death at the end of the thousand years recorded in Revelation 20. Christ paid that penalty. The penalty is not the first, but the second death, our wages for our sin. The first death is called a sleep by Jesus (John 11:11-14). The first death is a consequence of sin and not a punishment in the most strict sense of the meaning. In the superhuman agony into which Christ was plunged, it is written, “In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried out to My God; He heard My voice from His temple, and My cry came before Him, even to His ears” (Psalm 18:6).
In the following verses we see the reaction of nature as the footsteps of God approach Calvary:
“Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations of the hills quaked and were shaken, because He was angry. Smoke went up from His nostrils, and devouring fire from His mouth; coals were kindled by it. He bowed the heavens also, and came down with darkness under His feet. And He rode upon the cherub, and flew; He flew upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness His secret place; His canopy around Him was dark waters and thick clouds of the skies” (Psalm 18:7-11).
As sin worked its destructive way through the nervous system of Christ, while the devil was manifesting the malignity of his hatred against Christ, God came from heaven to be by the side of His beloved Son. Although there was a violent severance between the Persons of the Godhead because of sin, yet the Father came as close to Jesus as He could. He could not remain in heaven. He longed to bring Christ some assurance and hope as He was being put to death, but He could not. He could look on in horror, but He could not help the Man who was His fellow Companion from eternal ages.
In your mind’s eye, picture the Father standing next to His suffering Son, trembling and weeping, longing to comfort Him. God put His own Omnipotence under restraint as He refrained from breaking through the darkness to deliver His agonizing Son. The sufferings of the cross give a glimpse into the agony that exists in the heart of God because of sin. That agony did not end, neither did it begin there.
As Christ died, the Father could not speak of what was then transpiring. The heavenly angels were silent, for they did not know all there was to know about what was happening to the mind of Christ. Christ’s disciples were in total darkness. Their minds were as dark as the day turned night, as the sun refused to shine. In the silence of any spoken word, inanimate nature cried out and preached the gospel. Nature spoke with a clear loud voice.
The testimony of Jesus was revealed in the hiding of the sun’s rays that day. As with the day, His mind was covered with a pall of darkness, darker than midnight pitch. No hope presented itself to the mind of Jesus as the full weight of sin settled down upon His mind and spirit. Christ committed no sin, but He felt as though He committed all the sins of the world. He was made to be sin itself in order for us, in Him, to be made the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).
The darkened heavens speak of a deeper gloom that engulfed the mind of Jesus: