From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land. About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). (Matthew 27:45,46)
The initial title for this fourth word was “A word of anguish,” but that title—and especially the word anguish—is woefully inadequate. Anguish doesn’t do justice to what Jesus experienced that day. The unspoken answer to Jesus’ question—that God has forsaken him because he is punishing him not only for every sin you have ever committed (which would be an absolutely staggering burden all on its own) but also for the sins of the whole world—tells us what Jesus was experiencing, and it tells us why he was experiencing it. It doesn’t, however, provide the adjectives or the illustration capable of doing it justice.
Then what word does? What word could possibly be used to describe suffering the holy and just wrath of God for every sin you have ever committed? Anguish is a word to be used only in the most extreme circumstances, to describe only the deepest of human emotions and sorrow, the most painful feelings we’ve ever experienced. While I don’t mean to dismiss the depth of the deepest anguish you’ve experienced—it just doesn’t feel right to use the same word to describe what Jesus was experiencing on the cross.
Take the deepest emotional sorrow you have experienced and multiply it by the worst physical pain you have endured. Then take the result and crumple it up and throw it away— because that number can’t do justice to Jesus’ words here any more than the word anguish can.
So what word would do it justice? I don’t know, but I know this: I cannot find a word (or even a paragraph) to accurately describe what you hear from Jesus in this fourth word from the cross. I don’t even want to find such a word. If such a word existed, and I could comprehend even a tenth of the meaning of such a word, I feel like that knowledge alone would be enough to kill me. Being forsaken by God? I cannot imagine it, nor do I want to.
I believe we do best, in reverent awe, to leave this fourth word untitled. Do not let the fact that there are no words to describe it convince us there’s nothing to see here and hastily move on. There may be no words, but then let us stand mutely in reverent awe and wonder at the love—well, now love hardly seems to be a sufficient enough word either, does it? But it’s what we have to work with, so . . . may we stand mutely in reverent awe and wonder at the love that led Jesus to suffer hell in our place so that we would never have to experience its indescribable horror.