Jesus’ God and Father has become our God and our Father.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from the words of my groaning? (Psalm 22:1) Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” (John 20:17)”

‘Oh my God’, OMG for short, is a secular person’s way of expressing an exclamation. People who use this phrase often haven’t thought through what it means and even if they did, they don’t usually mean it like that. For religious people, ‘my god’ doesn’t really mean ‘God belongs to me’ it just means, ‘the god that I believe in’ – as different to other god-options.

What does Jesus mean when He says, ‘My God’? Is He just expressing surprise? If Jesus is God, who is He talking to? How does this effect me?

‘My God, My God’ were the words Jesus shouted out as He was dying, hung up on a cross. Isn’t it strange that Jesus says, ‘My God’, when God has forsaken Him? Shouldn’t He rather say, ‘the God I used to know’? God also isn’t listening since He is ‘so far from my words of groaning’. What’s going on?

Jesus teaches us something utterly unique and extraordinary. After Jesus had been forsaken by God and left to die, God raised Him up from death on the third day. Jesus tells the eyewitnesses that He is now ascending to ‘my God’, the same ‘my God’ He called to when on the cross. Now Jesus makes it explicitly clear that ‘my God’ is also ‘my Father.’ This explains how ‘God was forsaken by God.’

On the cross, the Son was forsaken by the Father. There is only One God who is One Being. That One being can never forsake itself – that makes no sense. But within that One Being are Three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Not three beings, Three Persons. These Eternal Persons are One God, and He lives forever in a perfect relationship of love because God is love. Astonishingly, love itself was torn apart!

Jesus asks ‘Why’ because the question is crucially important. And He gives us the answer: so that Jesus’ Father can become our Father too! Jesus died in our place, bearing the judgement we deserve for our lovelessness, reconciling us to God. Jesus’ God is now our God! Its not just that we now know God is ours, we are now in an intimate relationship with Him as His children. Jesus’ Father is now our Father!

Jesus, the Son of God was forsaken by God as our substitute. No human being ever has to be God-forsaken. And no human being ever has to go through the Hell of God giving you the ‘silent’ treatment – being cut off from love – because Jesus experienced Hell for us.

Christians no longer say ‘My God’. Now that Jesus has died and risen again, we don’t say ‘My God’, we say ‘Our Father’. ‘Our’ primarily refers to our adoption by God because of our unity with His Son, Jesus Christ.