The Bible Says the Father Turned His Face Away from Jesus on the Cross

Yes, the Father never stopped loving His Son on the cross. Yes, the Father was well pleased with Jesus on the cross. Yes, there was no break-up in the the eternal intratrinitarian relationship of the Father and the Son. But because Jesus, in His office as Mediator, was made sin on the cross – because all of His people’s sins were imputed to Him on that cross, the Father turned His face away and crushed His Son so that His people will never be crushed. This is the heart of the Gospel!

I had said in my alarm, “I am cut off from your sight.” Psalm 31:22

O LORD, why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me? Psalm 88:14

Sadly, in recent years, I’ve seen a denial of these glorious words of the song “How Deep The Father’s Love For Us”:

How great the pain of searing loss –

The Father turns His face away,

As wounds which mar the Chosen One

Bring many sons to glory. (Stuart Townend)

Critics wrongly argue that the Father didn’t turn His face away. Let me use Jesus’ words: You are wrong, and you don’t know the Scriptures. Have you not read Psalm 31, Psalms 88 and 89, and all the Psalms?

If the Father didn’t turn His face away from Jesus on the cross, then we are dead in our sins and without hope in the world, and the Father will turn His face away from us in hell for all eternity. Our only hope is that the Father did turn His face away from Jesus on that cross so that He will never turn His face away from us forever in His presence where there’s fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore!

The Psalms are About Jesus

Bruce Waltke and Fred Zaspel write about how the Psalms are about Jesus Christ:

The Psalms are about Jesus. The significance of this royal orientation goes further as we seek to understand the psalms in canonical perspective. We have it on Jesus’s authority (Luke 24:44) that the psalms are about him. Some of the psalms are more directly predictive, such as Psalm 2 and Psalm 110. In others David stands as a “type” or picture of Christ and is prospective of him in more subtle ways.

Commenting on how Psalm 89 is about Jesus Christ, Ligon Duncan writes:

The New Testament, on nearly every page, teaches that Jesus is the true and better David, the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant and the restorer of David’s throne. Consider, for instance, Peter’s sermon at Pentecost:

Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know – this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. For David says concerning him,

“I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken; therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; my flesh also will dwell in hope. For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption. You have made known to me the paths of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence.”

Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. Acts 2:22-32

As Peter explains, the psalms chronicling the suffering of David and his children are fully realized in the sufferings of Christ. David’s flesh did, in fact, see corruption – he is, after all, still dead in his tomb. So, Peter reasons, this psalm must refer to David’s greater son! Where did he get this idea? From the Lord Jesus himself. When Christ encountered the disciples on the road to Emmaus after his resurrection, he bemoaned that they did not see in the Old Testament the many evidences that Christ would undergo death and exile to restore what Adam and Israel had lost:

And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. Luke 24:25-27

The suffering of David and the people of Israel – rejection, curse, and judgment – were ultimately and consummately experienced by David’s greater son, the servant of Israel, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus experienced Psalm 89:38-45. And by that suffering Jesus restored the throne of David and saved the people of God . . . Psalm 89 gives us hope ultimately because it points us to the one who endured a suffering far beyond anything we will ever know. He was mocked and shamed and forsaken of God, so that we might be God’s precious inheritance into eternity. (Pages 48-52)

Jesus is not only the Suffering Servant, He’s the Suffering Psalmist: “. . . everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Luke 24:44

Psalm 31

Like Jesus quoted from Psalm 22 on the cross: “My God! My God! Why have You forsaken Me?!”, when He died, He also quoted Psalm 31:5: “Into your hands I commit my spirit”

Later in Psalm 31:22, we read: “In my alarm I said, ‘I am cut off from your sight!'” This also describes what Jesus faced on the cross. The Father did turn His face away from His Son on the cross, so that He will never turn His face away from all who repent and believe in Him! And just like in Psalm 22 (Psalm 22:24: he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him.), Psalm 31 ends in triumph, pointing us to the resurrection (Psalm 31:22: But you heard the voice of my pleas for mercy when I cried to you for help.). God finally did hear Jesus’ cry – and answered! His face was no longer hidden from His Son! He raised Him up!

As Herman Bavinck wrote, the resurrection is the Father’s “Amen!” to Jesus’ “It is finished!”

Hallelujah! What a Savior!

Psalm 88

I am set apart with the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more, who are cut off from your care. You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths. Your anger lies heavily upon me; you have overwhelmed me with all your waves . . . Why, O LORD, do you reject me and hide your face from me? . . . I have suffered your terrors and am in despair. Your anger has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me. Psalm 88:5-7, 14-16

And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself . . . Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead . . . . Luke 24:25-27, 44-46

In his commentary on the Psalms, Bruce K. Waltke writes on Psalm 88:

Heman foreshadows the “Man of Sorrows” (Isa 53:3; see references to Mark 14–15 below). The psalm rightly belongs in the Good Friday liturgy and shows us God’s unconventional love.

In his commentary on the Psalms, James Hamilton gives a helpful summary of Psalm 88:

Heman the Ezrahite prays to the Lord in Ps 88 as he endures God’s wrath, as he suffers alienation and abandonment, as he endures the rising waters and the breaking waves of God’s punishment. Through all of this, he maintains that Yahweh is his God, the God of his salvation. He further recognizes that God is everything he declared himself to be in Exod 34:6-7. The Lord’s lovingkindness has not ceased, nor has the Lord’s faithfulness come to an end. He still does wonders, and he is still righteous. Heman cries out for deliverance, that he might continue to enjoy God and praise him in this life.

The pattern of Heman’s experience was fulfilled in the one who was forsaken that his people might be comforted, who was made a curse that his people might be blessed, who bore the sins of his people in his body on the tree, who was baptized in the waters of wrath that his people might rise with him to newness of life, who suffered outside the camp to open the way to the holy places. (Page 130).

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