When Jesus cries, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" have God and Lamb come apart, opposite each other? Yes, for the Lamb is where we are, opposite God, in our place as sinners. He bears our punishment of sin, the forsakenness of God. Anyone bearing his or her own sin is finally lost, but not Jesus. He is bearing not His own sin, but ours; He is not opposite God, but doing the saving will of the Father. He won't let us go, and He won't let me let go of God. Out of the ultimate darkness of ultimate death comes the cry, "It is finished." Jesus is through. He has done it. Then He goes through the little death also. The one who was crucified, the Lamb who was slain, is the risen one who sits on "the throne of God and of the Lamb (Revelation 22:3). From that throne God is for us as the Lamb is for us, no other God for us but as He is for us as the Lamb.
"Selected Sermons of Norman Nagel," page 315
