FORGIVENESS AND THE PENALTY OF SIN

Our morning devotionals have left Mom and I with an incredible sense of awe at the timing and divine appointments of God. Yesterday pastor Irwin Lutzer of Moody Bible Institute spoke on the payment that Jesus Christ suffered as a result of our sin. Every Christian knows that Jesus Christ took the sin of the world upon himself so that God could be justified in forgiving us, but I know in my own life that I have not personally processed this information on an intellectual basis. I had not considered the fact that for the first time in His existence, that is timeless existence prior and timeless existence afterword, Jesus Christ, The Word of God, experienced what eternal separation from God was like. Hence Jesus words on the cross:

And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN me?  (Matthew 27:46)

On a mental level I realized that God the Father had to turn His back on His Son when the sin was applied to Him as a propitiation for our sins, but I never considered the fact that Jesus experienced what the HOPELESS ETERNAL separation from the presence of God was like (I imagine because I couldn't possibly comprehend what that could be like, or what that process was like). It wasn't like Jesus was thinking, "OK, in 5 minutes I'll be back in His presence and everything will be hunky dory." Not so. When Jesus experienced that separation, He experienced the WHOLE experience, and for the first time in His immortal eternal existence, He was HOPELESSLY separated from His Father. 

Now while all of this is taking place, God the Father and God the Holy Spirit were also participants in this experience. While They were aware of the big picture, They as well had never experienced what being a TRIUNE God, without Jesus, was like. God the Father and the Holy Spirit were separated from the Word of God.