Another passage in the Synoptics which has been made to do service in attempts to explain the nature of Jesus' vicarious sacrifice and its relation to the remission of sins, is His utterance upon the cross. The depth of agony there expressed in the cry, ' My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' is said to indicate that in this dark experience Christ as a substitute was suffering in its fulness the wrath of God against sin ; that He was exiled from the joys of God's presence (Dale), because He was vicari- ously bearing the consequences of the transgressions of the race. There has been a tendency since asceticism invaded the Church, and the body was
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made the seat of sin, — and to crucify it was con- sidered a way to please God,— to magnify the importance of the physical suiierings of Christ and make them the supreme sacrifice through Avhich remission of sins has come. This was not the thought of the Apostolic age, which was impressed with His grace rather than by His physical suffer- ings. Christ's death had long been before His contemplation, and from it He never shrank. He spoke of it with calmness and dignity, and some- times with ai)parent rapture : ' the Son of Man should be glorified' (Jn 12-^). But when He refers to its modes and agents. He assumes another tone. It is tlie form not the fact of death from which He appears to shrink. He is overcome by the thought that the agents of His suffering are the religious leaders of His time, and that from His own company has arisen a traitor. Evil is using the occasion of His voluntary, vicarious death as an opportunity for more violent manifestation, and the men He is trying to save are at work to put Him to death. The highest revelation of His grace is the occasion for the highest manifestation of wickedness. Being in the midst of it, not thinking about it, but experiencing it, this fact of evil comes upon Him with an overwhelming reality, and for a moment His sensitive soul is clouded, and He lays hold of a sentence found in Ps 22^ and utters it as the most suitable words at hand by which to express His agony. The psalm does not mean abandonment by God, but abandonment to suffering, for later it increa.singly expresses the confidence of the sufferer that he will be heard and delivered by God, so that he shall yet come to praise Him ; nor does Jesus mean that He is abandoned by God and, substitutionally, under the crushing load of His displeasure, for He stays Him- self on the fact that in His agony God is His God. As has been said : ' He who wrestles with death with such pious longing upon His lips has not fully lost His God, but rather presupposes a still abiding relationship with Him ' (Wendt). We cannot, therefore, believe that the words on the cross are in any sense a consciousness of God's displeasure.
(3) But not only do the Synoptics relate Christ's vicarious sacrifice to the remission of sins, they also connect it with the ratification of the New Covenant, especially by the words spoken at the Last Supper. The account is found in all the Synoptics and in 1 Co 11. There has been a good deal of criticism concerning the true text, some holding that els &<peaiv a/xapTiuv and Trept ttoWuiv, virip vfiu>v are later additions. Some also affirm tliat i] KaLvrj 8iad7}Kr} of Lk. are words due to the influence of St. Paul. Some of the reasons sug- gested for this criticism seem to have weight, but notliing that has been said is at all decisive, so that it is best to let the text stand. To interpret its meaning we must remember tlie occasion with which it is connected — the celebration of the Pass- over. This feast was regarded as a memorial of the delivery from bondage, and was at the time of Jesus a joyful festival. In the discour.se of the Last Supper the symbolism used is not drawn from the Paschal lamb, but rather from Ex 24, where the sacrifice establislied to celebrate the new covenant between Jahweh and Israel at Mount Sinai is de- scribed. The victim was slain, divided into two parts, and tiie contracting parties passing between these parts were sprinkled with blood. Thus the covenant was solemnized, and the partaking of the flesh in common indicated communion. As the offering at Sinai sealed the Old Covenant, so Jesus, when about to die, looked upon Himself as the victim whose blood would seal the New Covenant which He iiad established in inaugurating the Kingdom of God. Says Stevens {Chr. Doct. of Salv. 50) :
' The Supper is, then, the symbolic ratification of the New Covenant, analogous to the solemn rite by which the ancient covenant was confirmed by an offering denoting the establish- ment of communion with God and participation in the blessinga of His grace. If regard be had solely to the language of our Lord at the institution of the Supper, it must be admitted, I think, that it is adapted to carry our thoughts not in the direction of the current Jewish ideas of propitiation by sacrifice, but rather toward the conception of a new relation of fellowship with God and obedience to Him constituted by Jesus' death.'