The answer to the title question is no. When Jesus says “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?,” it does not mean that God turned his back on Jesus. It also is not evidence Jesus was confused or somehow felt abandoned in that moment.
Instead (as Voddie Baucham has argued) Jesus is using the custom, common to readers of the Hebrew scriptures in the first century—when the Psalms were not yet numbered—of naming a Psalm by stating its first line. This custom is still common today, such as when your English teacher refers to a poem as “Let me not to the marriage of true minds,” rather than calling it Sonnet 116 as Shakespeare did. (Who can keep those numbers straight?)
When Jesus says “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?,” He is saying to everyone around him “hey look—what you see here is the fulfillment of the prophecies contained in Psalm 22.”
BOOKENDS.
Jesus began His ministry by reading Isaiah 61:1-2. After He read it, He looked at the crowd and said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” Luke 4:21. On the cross, Jesus ended His ministry by referencing Psalm 22 in a manner that announced to the crowd, today Psalm 22 has been fulfilled in your hearing.
Moreover, verse 24 of Psalm 22 directly refutes the notion that God turned his back on Jesus. “For he [God the Father] has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; HE HAS NOT HIDDEN HIS FACE FROM HIM but has listened to his cry for help.”
Therefore, Jesus’s question “Why has thou forsaken me?” is actually not the question of a confused Son of Man, heartbroken because of his inability to see His Father. In fact, it is not a question at all, but a deliberate reference to Psalm 22. And that Psalm contains textual evidence to prove it.
But what about those who argue, God had to turn His back on Jesus because God cannot look on sin?
Why not? Doesn’t He look on sin every single day? And if Jesus, God the Son, can “become sin for us,” then God the Father can certainly look at it. God is One. A Holy Trinity, yes, but God is One. When Jesus suffered on the cross, God suffered. “All” of God suffered (for lack of a better term). God is a big boy. He can see your sin, and He can see Jesus on the cross carrying the shame of all the sins of history. God is infinite, and His mind is the only mind that can comprehend the gravity of all of history’s sins.
He does not have to look away, like a blushing bride, made squeamish by the sight. God has always seen evil, understood evil, and judged evil. God has no fellowship with sin, because God is holy, and His holiness requires Him to judge sin. But if He can judge evil, He can certainly look at evil. In Christ, He bore that evil so that He might also bear our judgment and impute to us His righteousness.
Jesus knew he was “born to die” as the old Tim Sheppard song puts it. The cross was his mission, not the tragic result of events that snowballed out of control. This was not a man tossed about on the waves of chance, like a Styrofoam cup circling the drain after a storm. He knew his terrible destiny. He chose it. The book of Hebrews says He chose it because of the joy that waited on the other side: the joy of saving every soul willing to come to him. Because He saw the joy set before Him, He “endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” Hebrews 12:2.
Thank God for the power of the life of Jesus. Ask Him to give you a sense of His plan for your life. Ask Him to reveal your destiny, ask Him to show you what He has planned for you. Ask Him for the courage to follow Him no matter where it may lead. Ask Him to help you love Him more than anything else. Ask Him for the power and courage to stand alone, even when your friends turn against you. Ask Him to give you some of the boldness and courage that He had when He walked on this earth.
Read Psalm 22.
ΑΩ
Though for years, Voddie Baucham was the only person I had heard discuss this, I have found a note in my study Bible that confirms the notion: Jesus knew what was going on and did not necessarily feel abandoned as much as He was announcing to the crowd that His crucifixion was the fulfillment of Psalm 22. “Jesus did not ask this question in surprise of despair. He was quoting the first line of Psalm 22. The whole psalm is a prophecy expressing the deep agony of the Messiah’s death for the world’s sin” The Chronological Life Application Study Bible: King James Version, Tyndale House, Carol Stream, 2004, p1432, note on Mark 15:34.
Household Words: 