Did the Father turn His face away from Jesus?
Short answer: No—Scripture does not teach that the Father literally “turned His face away” from Jesus.
That idea comes more from hymn-language and later preaching tradition than from the biblical text itself.
Long answer (biblically grounded):
1. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22)
Jesus’ cry from the cross (Matt 27:46; Mark 15:34) is a direct quotation of Psalm 22:1. That matters because in Jewish practice, quoting the opening line invoked the whole psalm.
And Psalm 22 does not end in divine abandonment.
In fact, it moves rapidly to this:
“For He has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted,
and He has not hidden His face from him,
but when he cried to Him, He heard.” (Psalm 22:24)
So the psalm Jesus invokes explicitly says the opposite of “God turned away.”
Jesus is not announcing metaphysical separation.
He is identifying Himself as the righteous sufferer of Scripture—the one whose vindication is certain.
It is a declaration of fulfillment, not a revelation of abandonment.
2. “The Father leaving the Son” creates a theological problem
If God literally turned away from Christ:
- The Trinity would be divided
- God’s own nature would fracture
- Jesus would cease to be the “beloved Son” in whom the Father is well-pleased
- The divine nature would become internally conflicted
Yet Scripture never portrays the cross as a rupture inside God.
Instead:
“God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.” (2 Cor 5:19)
Not:
God abandoned Christ
but:
God was present in Christ
The cross is not divine abandonment.
The cross is divine self-giving.
3. “He became sin” does not mean the Father rejected Him
Paul writes:
“He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us.” (2 Cor 5:21)
That does not mean Jesus became morally filthy or spiritually unacceptable.
It means Jesus became the sin-bearer—the covenant representative who absorbed judgment in Himself, just as sacrificial animals symbolically carried guilt without becoming “evil creatures.”
Christ bore sin.
He did not become repulsive to God.
And nowhere does Scripture say the Father recoiled from Him.
4. Jesus dies in trust, not abandonment
The final words of Jesus destroy the idea of divine rejection:
“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” (Luke 23:46)
Those are not the words of a man who believes God has left Him.
They are the final act of confidence.
The Father does not feel distant in Jesus’ last breath.
The Father is addressed directly.
5. Where did the “God turned away” idea come from?
Mostly from:
- Hymnody (e.g., “The Father turned His face away”)
- Emotional preaching language
- Penal substitution phrasing interpreted too literally
- Attempting to explain darkness and suffering as divine absence
But darkness in Scripture does not equal God’s absence—it often signifies judgment, holy mystery, or cosmic sign, not relational rupture.
Mount Sinai was dark.
So was the cross.
Both were places where God was present in terrifying power.
6. What actually happened on the cross?
Not:
The Father rejected the Son.
But:
The Son entered human abandonment
God absorbed human evil
Justice and mercy met
Death was judged
The old world ended
The new creation began
And the Father was not absent.
He was most actively at work.
Final Answer
No.
God did not turn His face away from Jesus.
The cross is not God abandoning man.
The cross is God entering human suffering to destroy it from the inside.
Jesus did not die forsaken by the Father.
He died trusted, heard, embraced, and vindicated.
If you want, I can also show how this is tied to the covenant ending in AD 70 and why Psalm 22 belongs to that transition, not to a metaphysical split within the Trinity.
First, please explain, “The Son entered human abandonment.”
When I said “The Son entered human abandonment,” I did not mean that the Father abandoned Jesus.
I meant something more precise and biblical:
Jesus fully entered the human experience of abandonment — without being abandoned by God.
Let’s unpack that carefully.
1. “Abandonment” as human condition, not divine action
From Genesis 3 onward, humanity lived in a world marked by:
- Exile
- Separation
- Estrangement
- Rejection
- Loss
- Death
- God seeming “far away”
- Prayers that feel unanswered
- Darkness that feels like silence
This is not simply emotional.
It is the condition of life east of Eden.
When I say Jesus “entered human abandonment,” I mean:
He stepped fully into what life feels like in a fallen world.
Not what God does to the Son —
but what the world does to us.
Isaiah described the Messiah this way:
“He was despised and rejected by men… a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.” (Isa 53:3)
He was:
- Abandoned by friends
- Betrayed by one of his own
- Denied by Peter
- Mocked by the crowd
- Condemned by religious leaders
- Executed by Rome
- Left alone to die
This is human abandonment.
2. Jesus entered the felt reality of loss — not actual divine loss
There is a difference between:
feeling forsaken
and
being forsaken by God
Scripture shows many faithful people who felt deserted by God — and yet weren’t:
David: “Why do You hide Your face?”
Job: “I cry to you but you do not answer.”
Jeremiah: “You have wrapped yourself in a cloud so that no prayer can pass through.”
None of these statements mean God truly left them.
They express human experience under suffering.
Jesus fully entered that experience — not as an illusion, not halfway, but completely.
He did not escape the darkness of human suffering through divine immunity.
He tasted what it is like to be:
- unheard
- unseen
- left
- crushed
- weak
- mortal
- afraid
- misunderstood
3. Hebrews: Jesus learned obedience through suffering
“Although He was a Son, He learned obedience through what He suffered.” (Heb 5:8)
That doesn’t mean He was previously disobedient.
It means He experienced obedience:
- not as theory
- but inside pain
- loss
- silence
- death
He entered the existential depth of human anguish.
God is not watching suffering from a distance.
In Christ, God stepped inside it.
4. God did not crush Jesus — the world did
Scripture says:
“He came unto His own, and His own did not receive Him.” (John 1:11)
“This is your hour, and the power of darkness.” (Luke 22:53)
Darkness had an hour.
Men did what men do when left to themselves.
Jesus entered humanity at its worst — and absorbed it without returning evil for evil.
That is redemptive suffering.
5. Why did Jesus quote Psalm 22 then?
Not because the Father left Him —
but because He stood inside humanity’s cry.
Psalm 22 begins in anguish but ends with victory.
And in the middle says:
“He has not hidden His face from him.” (Ps 22:24)
Jesus took humanity’s language of abandonment onto His own lips — not as ontology, but as solidarity.
He prays not as a distant God.
He prays as man.
6. Summed up in simple language
When I said:
“The Son entered human abandonment”
I meant:
Jesus stepped fully into
what it feels like to live in a world where God seems absent.
He did not separate from the Father.
He entered the wound of the human condition.
He did not lose heaven’s presence.
He carried earth’s pain.
He did not become rejected by God.
He allowed Himself to be rejected by men.
And He did not escape death.
He walked straight into it.
Final clarity
The Son was never abandoned by the Father.
But He entered:
the loneliness
the betrayal
the fear
the silence
the weight
the darkness
the anguish
the death
that humanity had lived in for millennia.
He did not watch abandonment.
He bore it.
And He redeemed it from inside.
If you’d like, I can also show how this fits covenantally:
why the experience of abandonment comes from the Old Covenant’s fading world — and how Christ entered that darkness to bring it to its end.
Yes, show me that and how this is tied to the covenant ending in AD 70 and why Psalm 22 belongs to that transition.
This is an important question, because Psalm 22 is not just about how Jesus felt—it is about where Israel was standing covenant-wise when Jesus spoke it.
When Jesus quoted Psalm 22 from the cross, He was not merely expressing anguish.
He was announcing a prophetic transition was underway.
Let’s walk through that carefully.
1. “Abandonment” in Scripture is covenantal, not emotional
In the Old Testament, “God hiding His face” does not describe feelings.
It describes broken covenant relationship.
“Then My anger will be kindled… and I will hide My face from them, and they will be devoured.” (Deut 31:17)
“You shall grope at noon as the blind man gropes in darkness.” (Deut 28:29)
When God “hides His face,” it means:
- Temple fellowship is failing
- Sacrifices no longer protect
- Judgment is active
- The covenant is expiring
- The nation is being cut off
This is not psychology.
This is covenant collapse language.
Israel’s “abandonment” was institutional and national, not merely inward.
2. Jesus entered Israel’s covenantal abandonment
By the time Jesus arrives:
- Jerusalem is corrupt
- The priesthood is compromised
- The Temple is under judgment
- The nation is about to be destroyed
- The curse-language of Deuteronomy 28 is accelerating
Jesus does not merely feel abandoned.
He stands inside Israel’s actual covenant curse.
“We have a law, and by our law He ought to die.” (John 19:7)
Israel is zealously enforcing a covenant that God is about to end.
Jesus is crucified inside a dissolving world.
3. Psalm 22 is not isolated — it is a covenant-judgment psalm
Psalm 22 is full of:
- Mocking rulers (22:7)
- Religious hostility (22:8)
- Public shame (22:6)
- Execution language (22:16)
- Garment division (22:18)
- A final proclamation to future generations (22:30–31)
But this isn’t just about a man suffering.
It is the sound of a covenant body dying.
Psalm 22 is Israel herself crying through Messiah.
And it happens precisely when:
“This generation will not pass away until all these things take place.” (Matt 24:34)
4. Why Psalm 22 belongs to AD 70
Psalm 22 climaxes with:
“A people yet to be born will be told about the Lord.
They will proclaim His righteousness to a people yet unborn—
for He has done it.” (Ps 22:30–31)
That is not about personal salvation twenty centuries later.
That is about:
A generational transition
from old covenant to new
from temple to Christ
from Israel to the Kingdom
Jesus’ suffering generation was the final covenant generation.
Psalm 22 ends not in recovery, but replacement.
5. Darkness at the cross = covenant-sun setting
When darkness fell for three hours:
That was not atmospheric coincidence.
Darkness =
- covenant judgment
- prophetic sign
- sun imagery
- divine verdict
“I will make the sun go down at noon…” (Amos 8:9)
Jesus is not just dying.
Israel’s world is going dark.
And it ends in AD 70.
The Temple burns.
The priesthood ends.
The covenant is gone.
6. Psalm 22 is not “Psalm 23”
Psalm 23 is comfort psalm.
Psalm 22 is death psalm.
Psalm 23 belongs to New Covenant life.
Psalm 22 belongs to Old Covenant death.
You cannot read Psalm 22 as timeless emotion.
It is historical prophecy.
And it hits its terminus in AD 70.
7. Final clarity
Jesus did not merely fulfil Psalm 22.
He carried Israel into it.
He embodied her judgment.
He stood as her final high priest.
He entered her abandonment.
Not by being forsaken by God—
but by standing inside the death of the covenant.
8. One sentence answer
Jesus quoting Psalm 22 is not about relational rupture in God…
…it is about covenant dissolution in Israel.