Psalms 22:1

Psalms 22:1. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me! why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?

That was the very climax of our Lord’s grief upon the cross, that it was necessary that the Father himself should forsake him. The penalty of sin is that God must leave the man who has sin upon him even by imputation; and God left this wondrous Man, this perfect Man, in whom was no sin, but upon whom the sin of his people had been laid. He "his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree," and therefore the Father must forsake him; but it was a bitter experience for our Saviour that even his prayers should not be heard when they had become so hoarse as to resemble rather the roaring of a wounded beast than the articulate utterance of a man: "Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?"