Mark 15:34 Commentary and Bible Study

At the ninth hour, the period of three hours darkness comes to an end. Christ’s sufferings during that period are covered over, just as by darkness, but something of what the Lord endured is seen in this quotation from Psalm 22:1. A thousand years before in Psalm 22 this was all predicted and prophesied. Psalm 22 is a psalm of David: ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? ² O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.’ Matthew has the first two words in Hebrew – ‘Eli, Eli’ – and the rest in Aramaic, while Mark has all in Aramaic. It is a psalm of deep agony and pain. It describes an experience of suffering that David never had. There is nothing in the life of David that corresponds to this. Although he is speaking as though it is his own experience, it is David speaking as a prophet of Christ. No human being has suffered to this extent, for the extent of this suffering is beyond the scope of all human literature. It is terrible, terrible suffering. In the New Testament, in a number of texts, when the people of God are pointing out that Christ was bound to suffer, they point, among other Scriptures, to this psalm. The Jews knew that this psalm was about a suffering Messiah. Matthew 27:43 has already recorded the words of the scoffers around the cross which come from verse 8 of the psalm: ‘He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.’ Mark 15:24 has described the fulfilment of Psalm 22:18. This psalm describes more vividly than any other Old Testament passage the horrors of the cross of Calvary. It also clearly implies the resurrection.What did it mean? Was Christ forsaken by Father? Yes, he was. Could the Father and Son be separated? No. He is God. But Christ had to suffer the experience of separation because he was suffering for us. We deserve eternal banishment and Christ had to bear it in every sense on our behalf. He suffered this terrible sense of sensation of, awareness of separation from the Father, a separation which he had never experienced in all eternity. He cries out to demonstrate what is happening to him. He is bearing the punishment of sin for his people. In becoming a substitute for us, he must be separated from his Father’s love, and feel the horror of being forsaken forever and ever. Jonah describes the same experience in his prophecy (Jonah 2:5-6). It is part of his substitutionary death. Christ must suffer alone. The Father and Holy Spirit cannot help him; he must suffer as a man would suffer, as we would suffer. He may not be excused any part of the suffering of our sin, because then he would not be making a perfect atonement for us. He must experience what was for him the worst thing of all, in his holy, divine being: to be separated from the Father. As the God-man he must – in a way we cannot understand – turn away from his divinity for a moment, and not feel its benefits, so that his human nature would be exposed to the forsakenness which we deserve to feel.But although the Father allowed His Son to be taken and crucified by men, and although the judgment due to sinners was poured out on Him, God’s underlying love towards his Son never changed. Although he had to experience what it was to be forsaken by God, yet it ever remained true that he was the beloved Son in whom God was well pleased (Luke 3:22). Even in the darkest moment Christ kept hold of his Father’s love for him by faith, and overcame that crushing sense of forsakenness when there was not a glimmer of light to comfort his soul (Isaiah 50:10). He used the Scriptures to comfort himself in confirming to himself why he must go through all this.