There are moments when the realization of what was required of God the Son to redeem mankind touches your very soul.

It can happen as you reread the depth of Jesus’ anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane.  It can happen as your pastor preaches an anointed message about His Crucifixion.  But it happened to me last Sunday in church, as we sang the worship song, “Forever”.

As stirring as the melody is, it was one line of the song that pushed away the familiarity of the Cross and replaced it with a fresh reality of the price Jesus paid to redeem me.

 “His body on the Cross,

 His blood poured out for us

The weight of every curse upon Him

One final breath He gave

As heaven looked away

The Son of God was laid in darkness” (Kari Jobe)

 As God the Father poured into Jesus the sin of humanity, as the weight of every curse was placed upon Him, heaven looked away.

These words , heaven looked away, speak to that moment on the Cross when Jesus cried out, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?”  Sin separates us from God.  And, when Jesus became our sin, for the first time in his life, he experienced the anguish, the horror of that separation, when heaven looked away.

The poignancy of that moment is heightened when you recognize the oneness that Jesus had with God the Father.  For he told His disciples:

 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me (John 14:11)

 As the man Jesus, he had only known a oneness with the Father, therefore it is no wonder in those hours leading up to the Cross, those hours when heaven would look away, that Jesus was filled with horror and deep distress.  No wonder he sweat drops of blood as he prayed to the Father asking if there could be another way to pay the price for man’s sin. 

So let let us forever keep fresh in our hearts and minds what it cost Jesus to redeem us.  Let us never take for granted the forsaking he endured, so that we can abide with Him for eternity. 

Photo credit: www.flickr.com/photos/kwerfeldein/5509999082  Martin Grommel  http://creativecommons.org