In 1516, a young Roman Catholic monk, of the Augustinian order, sat in his monastery in Wittenberg Germany preparing for his lecture in the Psalms. Martin Luther sat there wrestling over the verses we just read from Psalm 22.
But Psalm 22, in particular, was incredibly confusing to a young Martin Luther because he didn’t understand how or why Jesus would quote it on the cross.
Luther, personally, understood the words of Psalm 22. It’s a well-documented fact that Martin Luther struggled with depression. But really it wasn’t the modern/clinical understanding of depression that we’re all familiar with. It was what the Puritan writers would call the dark night of the soul. Or what the late Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones called spiritual depression. Luther, for much of his early life wrestling with the feeling of God’s abandonment. The Germans called it anfechtungen (ahn-fehk-tung-uhn), which refers to an intense spiritual trials, existential dread, panic, doubt, and despair.
I was reminded of this recently as I was reading Roland Bainton’s classic biography of Luther, Here I Stand. One of the things that struck me was just how deeply Luther wrestled with the question of how a sinful man could ever stand before a holy and righteous God. Luther wasn’t simply a man who wanted to be religious or who was interested in theological debate. He was a man who desperately wanted peace with God, and he was terrified that he could never do enough to obtain it.
Even Luther’s superior in the monastery, Johann von Staupitz, reportedly grew frustrated with his repeated confessions and urged him to focus on Christ rather than continually turning inward upon himself.
But the problem was that Luther could never be certain he had done enough. No matter how diligently he pursued holiness, he remained conscious of his sin. And if God was perfectly holy and righteous, how could a sinner like Luther ever hope to be accepted by him?
That is what makes Luther’s struggle so significant. He wasn’t merely looking for a more comfortable religious experience. He was wrestling with the most fundamental question a human being can ask: How can I, a sinner, be made right with God?
To understand the depth of Luther’s struggle, we need to go back to the beginning. Much of Luther’s early life was marked by a profound lack of inner peace and a consuming fear of standing before a holy God. That fear came into sharp focus in July 1505, when Luther was returning to the University of Erfurt and was caught in a violent thunderstorm. Terrified that he might die, he reportedly cried out, “Help me, St. Anne! I will become a monk!”
St. Anne was traditionally regarded as the patron saint of miners, and Luther’s father, Hans, had worked in the copper-mining industry. Whether or not that family connection explains Luther’s appeal to her, the significance of the moment is clear: faced with the possibility of death, Luther made a vow that would change the course of his life.
The search for peace through religious performance
But becoming a monk, in many ways, made sense. To his knowledge, there was no better way to resolve all of his spiritual despair. Once Luther became a monk, he faithfully attended to all his duties. He studied the teachings of the church, attended Mass, devoted himself to prayer, and diligently confessed his sins.
He genuinely thought that if he just did everything the Roman Catholic Church prescribed, he would gain peace with God. But nothing worked. Not even his pilgrimage to Rome resolved any of his inner turmoil.
He kissed the steps that supposedly Jesus climbed in order to be condemned by Pontius Pilate. He had prayed over the relics. He bought indulgences. And every time he walked out of the confessional, he suddenly recalled unconfessed sins. Not even Rome could remove his sin and guilt.
Luther wasn't simply looking for a more comfortable religion. He was wrestling with the most important question a sinner can ask: How can I, a guilty sinner, stand righteous before a holy God? And until he discovered the biblical answer to that question, all his religious efforts would leave him searching for a peace he could never manufacture for himself.
The anguish of Psalm 22
Which brings us back to Psalm 22. To Luther, it made perfect sense that he would feel abandoned by God. He was a guilty sinner. As was David, the author of Psalm 22.
In our time of family worship, we’ve been reading through 2 Samuel. And right now, we’re reading through 2 Samuel 15, which is where David’s son, Abasalom had formed a coup and ran David and his supporters out of Jerusalem.
And of course, David articulates what he’s feeling during that event in Psalm 3. He writes: “O Lord, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me; 2 many are saying of my soul, “There is no salvation for him in God.”
Another similar Psalm is Psalm 51, which is the Psalm that David penned after Nathan confronted him over his sin with Bathsheba. In verse 11 of Psalm 51 he says, “Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me.”
It was David’s practice to write Psalms that reflected what he was feeling and experiencing in his life. It’s why John Calvin famously said that the Psalms are "an anatomy of all the parts of the soul.” To my baptist friends here tonight, don’t worry I’ll squeeze in a Charles Spurgeon quote here in a minute.
We’re not exactly sure what David was going through when he wrote Psalm 22, but obviously, he felt abandoned by God. It seems as though his enemies had gained an upper hand, much in the same way it appeared that the enemies of Christ had gained the upper hand at the cross.
But it still doesn’t fully explain how Jesus could possibly say, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?”
He was the spotless lamb of God. He was the second person of the Trinity — coequal with the Father. Luther could not figure out how the sinless Christ could experience an anfechtungen (ahn-fehk-tung-uhn) like him.
From anguish to assurance
When you start down this rabbit hole, you quickly realize just how deep it is. Even as I prepared for this sermon earlier in week, at one point I thought to myself, did I bite off more than I can chew? Possibly. We’ll see. But I had that realization on Friday night and by that point I was in too deep… I know the other preachers here understand.
As odd or unexpected as it might sound, for Luther, it was here, in Psalm 22 that a ray of gospel light began to shine through. Keep in mind, Luther’s theology had not been fully developed at this point. It would be an entire year before he would nail his 95 theses.
He was simply studying God’s word and then attempting to teach it to his students. Luther’s breakthrough on justification is often associated with Romans 1:17 - “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” And of course, that’s accurate.
But Psalm 22 presented a different side to Jesus Christ that had remained hidden from him.
Reading Psalm 22 made Luther realize something that we talk about in church today and frankly, take for granted: the fact that Jesus took upon himself the sin and iniquity of us all. The Lord poured out his wrath and judgment on Christ for our sin. And so, in that moment on the cross, as the Father poured out his wrath upon Christ for us, he felt, in his humanity, abandoned by the One he had perfectly served. I’m often reminded of Stuart Townend’s line from his popular hymn How Deep the Father’s Love for Us says, “The Father turns His face away, As wounds which mar the Chosen One Bring many sons to glory.”
Christ willingly endured what you and I rightly deserved. He suffered in the place of sinners like you and me.
It’s what Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” In Psalm 22, the Judge himself steps down from the bench to bear the very sentence he has pronounced against us.
This is the doctrine of double imputation: our sin was reckoned to Christ, and his righteousness is reckoned to those who belong to him.
This may not be his Romans 1:17 justification breakthrough, but hopefully you can see how this would open the door to it! Because so much of Luther's life was marked by spiritual depression because he didn’t feel like there was any answer for his sin. It was a bookbag of guilt, shame, and sorrow, much like Christian’s from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress that could never be cast off.
But if Christ truly suffered for Luther’s sins—that changes everything! If his sins, along with yours and mine, were laid upon Christ, then we can have the assurance that our sins are truly and finally forgiven. Not partially forgiven. Not forgiven on the condition that we somehow make ourselves worthy. But forgiven because Christ has borne the penalty in our place.
And yet, I wonder how many of you take the forgiveness of your sins for granted. You hear that your sins are forgiven, and you simply shrug your shoulders. You move on as though it were a small thing. But that is a striking contrast with the medieval religious world in which Luther lived, where the spiritual life was often presented in stark terms: God and Satan, heaven and hell, good and evil, righteousness and sin, salvation and damnation.
You see this vividly in the art of the period. Painting after painting depicts Jesus Christ enthroned as the righteous Judge, separating the saved from the condemned and casting the wicked into hell. And to be clear, there is biblical truth in that imagery. Jesus Christ is the righteous Judge. God’s judgment is real. Sin is serious. And no one can stand before a holy God on the basis of his own righteousness.
But perhaps that is precisely where we have gone wrong. Perhaps forgiveness seems insignificant to us because we have made too little of our sin. We have minimized our guilt, softened the seriousness of our rebellion, and forgotten what it means to stand before a holy and righteous God.
If we think our sins are small, then forgiveness will always seem like a small thing. But when we begin to understand the holiness of God and the seriousness of our sin, we begin to see the staggering magnitude of his grace.
If Jesus took our sin upon himself on the cross and felt forsaken by the Father, then that means, as Luther’s biographer, Roland Bainton puts it, God, “the All-Terrible is [God] the All-Mericful” too. Wrath and love are perfectly fused on the cross of Jesus Christ and when you see that — when you fully grasp that truth the words “My God, my God why have you forsaken me” suddenly take on a much sweeter ring don’t they?
This is the seed form of the Sola Christus—Christ alone that was one of the dominant rallying cries of the Reformation.
It’s so easy to get lost in the weeds of all the church fights, all the problems in our country, and all the struggles in our own lives, and we lose sight of the simple truths that God has given to us. That “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”
Admittedly, this is basic for many of you, but sometimes we need to be reminded of the basics.
We are not saved because we belong to the perfect church, have mastered the right theology, or have managed to live sufficiently righteous lives. We are saved because God, in his immeasurable grace, sent his Son to do for us what we could never do for ourselves. Take our sin upon himself.
Christ lived the life we failed to live, bore the judgment our sins deserved, and rose again in victory over sin and death. And through faith, we receive him and all the benefits of his saving work. That is our hope. That is our confidence. And that is how we have peace with a holy God.
One of the things I love about the Reformation Service is reminding myself that despite different histories, traditions, we see that the Presbyterians have been right all along. I’m kidding! In all seriousness, despite our different histories and traditions, we confess, preach, and teach the same gospel. The church of Jesus Christ is bigger than any one individual, congregation, or denomination.
The bride of Christ is bloodied, bruised, and fragmented. We see it in the divisions among Christians, the countless scandals that bring shame upon Christ's name, the bitter disputes that consume our attention, and the weaknesses and sins that remain in every one of our churches. And if we look only at the church's failures, we can easily become discouraged.
But our hope has never rested in the church's ability to hold itself together. Our hope rests in Jesus Christ, who loved the church and gave himself up for her. He is the one who purchased her with his blood. He is the one who sustains her by his grace. And he is the one who has promised that the gates of hell will not prevail against her.
The church may be bruised, but Christ has not abandoned his bride. The church may be divided in many ways, but the gospel remains the power of God for salvation. And the church may face opposition from every side, but the Word of God will stand forever.
And so we come back to the words of David in Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Centuries later, as Jesus hung upon the cross, he took those very words upon his own lips. And centuries after that, a young Augustinian monk named Martin Luther sat in Wittenberg, wrestling with the meaning of those words. How could the Son of God, who had enjoyed perfect fellowship with the Father from all eternity, cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” What did it mean for Christ to be forsaken? And what did it mean for a sinner like Luther to stand before a holy and righteous God?
And this is the great truth Luther came to understand a few short years later: we are justified not by our own righteousness, but by the righteousness of Jesus Christ, received through faith alone. Our standing before God does not depend upon the strength of our faith, the consistency of our feelings, or the perfection of our obedience. It rests upon the finished work of Jesus Christ.
If you’ve studied Psalm 22 then you probably already know that it doesn’t end where it began. It starts with a cry in verse 1.
But verse 24 says, “For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him.”
What a promise! The God who seems distant has not turned away. The God who seems silent has heard the cry of the afflicted.
That doesn't mean the Christian life will always be easy. There will be seasons when God seems distant. There will be moments when our prayers seem to go unanswered, when our hearts feel cold, when our circumstances overwhelm us, and when we struggle to understand what God is doing. We may find ourselves asking the same question David asked: “My God, my God, why?”
It’s in those moments you must remember that your feelings of abandonment cannot undo the finished work of Christ. Your doubts cannot overturn his promises. Your spiritual dryness cannot erase Christ’s faithfulness. And your suffering cannot separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The question is not whether you will always feel God's presence. You won't. The question is whether, when you cannot feel his presence, you will trust the God who has demonstrated his love for you at the cross.
And at the cross, when it appeared that darkness had won, God was accomplishing the salvation of his people. When Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” he was bearing the judgment that would secure our everlasting hope. And when he rose from the grave, he demonstrated that death had been defeated and that his people would never be abandoned.
Luther's peace was never going to be found in becoming a better monk. It was found in the righteousness of another—in Jesus Christ, who was forsaken under the judgment we deserved so that we might be received as God's beloved children.
And that is the good news of the gospel. We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to Scripture alone, to the glory of God alone.
In Christ, suffering does not have the final word. God does. And his final word to those who belong to his Son is not condemnation, but salvation; not abandonment, but steadfast love; not death, but everlasting life.
Amen. Let’s pray together.
