Father, Why Have You Forsaken Me?

These mournful and heartbreaking words were uttered by our Lord just before He perished on the cross. They are a quote of Psalm 22, a prophetic psalm that described what Christ would go through as He sacrificed Himself for us. It is difficult to reconcile this utter “loss of faith” by Jesus in the Father whom He had always followed and obeyed throughout His life and ministry. What could it possibly mean for Him to acknowledge that He was abandoned in that moment by the Godhead of which He was a part and would soon be returning to?

In order to understand this, we need to address some misconceptions regarding God and sin. We are often told, as Christians, to love the sinner but hate the sin. And I believe this is the correct policy for us as it was commanded us that we should not only love our neighbor but love our enemies as well. In Matthew 5 Jesus devotes much time to this principle. We are to extend our love to all, as this is the only way to win anyone over to the truth of the Gospel. Jesus did model this very principle. But lets look a little deeper at God’s feelings toward sin AND the sinner.

God has made it clear throughout scripture that He not only hates sin but HATES THE SINNER! This is a frightening realization when we consider that we often refer to OURSELVES as sinners. Does God hate us? To answer this we must look, not on human ideas and definitions of love and hate, but on GOD’s definitions of these terms that He has given and demonstrated to us throughout the centuries.

Love has a couple of definitions for us today. One is something we commonly understand as “an intense feeling of deep affection.” This is the love we feel for that special someone or for close family. This is also the type of love that results in selfish desires and behaviors. We often judge a person by how they “make us feel” or what we can get out of the relationship. The other common definition of love or us today is “a great interest and pleasure in something.” This is often applied to superficial things like a sport or a hobby. Yet it can also be applied to a selfless feeling or desire. “I love helping others.” “I love feeding and clothing the homeless.” This gets closer to God’s form or definition of love but doesn’t quite complete the picture.

I scripture, love is termed in three different ways in Greek. There is eros, which is romantic love. There is phileo which is a familiarity or brotherly-type love (think Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love), and there is agapeo. Agapeo is the highest form of love we can have and represents God’s love. It can be defined as “a self-sacrificing, unconditional type of feeling that seeks the best or what is in the best interests of the other person.” With this type of love, even though we abhor the behavior or actions of another, we seek their salvation and reconciliation, not condemnation or suffering punishment.

God tells us repeatedly that he hates sin as well as the one perpetrating the sin. Hate has a couple definitions as well. Hate can be intense loathing of a quality, action or behavior, or hate can be beyond that to become an intense desire or intention to hurt or destroy. God is a perfectly holy God and cannot be in the presence of sin. Sin is so hated by Him that those who perform it are detestable to Him just as the sins are. God will always turn away from the sinner. And this is what happened on the cross. Christ had literally taken on the sins of the world. He took on your sins and my sins. He took on the very nature of sin. We often hear it said that He literally BECAME SIN for us. In so doing, the Father, at that moment, had to forsake the Son. He turned away from Jesus, prompting the quote from Psalm 22 to be uttered by Jesus just before His death.

So, does God hate the Christian? No. God loves the Christian. As for the world, He both loves and hates at the same time! God is love. He is also wrath. He is also vengeance. He is also righteous indignation and hate. The point is that in all of His attributes God is JUST and He is RIGHTEOUS. Does God hate a sinner? Yes. But what is a sinner? The very term implies one who intentionally, willfully, remorselessly lives a life of sin. It does not refer to a saint who shuns a life of sin, though he may still sin from time to time. We are imperfect people in a fallen and imperfect world. Will we sin? Yes. It is impossible for us not to.

Yet Jesus often spoke of our need to be perfect, as our Father in Heaven is perfect. We are admonished to be holy, as our Father in Heaven is holy. He told people whom He healed to “go and sin no more.” Why would He tell us these things if He knew we could never live up to them? Because He was referring to a lifestyle, not just an act. We are to avoid a lifestyle of sin. Having a sinful lifestyle is the difference between a true sinner and a saint who occasionally and unintentionally sins.

Why is this important to know? For one it clears up what many would call contradictions in scripture which, we can now see, are not contradictions at all. For another, it helps us to understand the truth of how we should view our relationship to the world and those who insist on continuing in their blindness to the truth of the gospel and salvation. It gives us a roadmap of pitfalls to avoid so that we don’t fall into the trap of a sinful lifestyle, and it helps us to keep in perspective our expected and intended relationship with those in the world for whom we are modeling the Kingdom. We are to continue to work to bring the gospel to those who need salvation and do not yet have it, and we can identify those situations in which we are to “shake the dust off our feet” and move on. In every case, though, we must always display love. In judging behavior and pointing out sin, we must always do so in love as well.

A final note on the subject of hate: Hate is something too dangerous and fickle for sinful man to wield. We have never used hate in a manner that was righteous or good, no matter how WE have tried to define it. Leave hate for God. He is the only One who can and does wield it in righteousness and true justice. We should always seek after righteousness and justice to be sure. We are promised that we are blessed in doing so. But leave the hate for the only One who knows how to truly use it. He never gave us this as a tool. He gave us LOVE.