Mt. 27:46, And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

I. The Old Testament context: Ps. 22:1-5, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? O my God, I cry in the day time, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent. But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded.

II. The New Testament doctrinal content: imputation of the sins of the elect to Christ; imputation of the righteousness of Christ to the elect.

A. Gal. 3:13-14, Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

B. II Cor. 5:21, For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

C. Christ's active obedience: the positive godliness and lawfulness of every act of the entire life of Jesus Christ, placed or imputed to the account of His people.

D. Christ's passive obedience: the voluntary reception, according to the provisions of the covenant of grace, of all the sins of all the elect, placed or imputed to Christ's account, and the subsequent satisfaction of the justice and wrath of God due to Christ's substitutionary death.

"He who hung there on the accursed tree had been from all eternity the object of the Father's love. His own joy had been to behold the Father's countenance. The Father's presence had been His home, the Father’s bosom His dwelling-place, the Father's glory He had shared before ever the world was. During the thirty and three years the Son had been on earth He enjoyed unbroken communion with the Father. Never a thought that was out of harmony with the Father's mind, never a volition but what originated in the Father's will, never a moment spent out of His conscious presence. What then must it have meant to be 'forsaken' now by God! Ah, the hiding of God's face from Him was the most bitter ingredient of that cup which the Father had given the Redeemer to drink." A.W. Pink

"These are words of unequalled pathos. They mark the climax of His sufferings. The soldiers had cruelly mocked Him: they had arrayed Him with the crown of thorns, they had scourged and buffeted Him, they even went so far as to spit upon Him and pluck off His hair. They despoiled Him of His garments and put Him to an open shame. Yet He suffered it all in silence. They pierced His hands and His feet, yet did He endure the cross, despising the shame. The vulgar crowd taunted Him, and the thieves which were crucified with Him flung the same taunts into His face; yet He opened not His mouth. In response to all that He suffered at the hands of men, not a cry escaped His lips. But now, as the concentrated wrath of heaven descends upon Him, He cries, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' Surely this is a cry that ought to melt the hardest heart!" A.W. Pink

"Now on the cross the Lord Jesus was receiving the wages which were due His people. He had no sin of His own, for He was the Holy One of God. But He was bearing our sins in His own body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24). He had taken our place and was suffering the Just for the unjust. He was bearing the chastisement of our peace; and the wages of our sins, the suffering and chastisement which were due us, was 'death'. Not merely physical but penal; and, as we have said, this meant separation from God, and hence it was that the Saviour cried, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?'" A.W. Pink

"The tragedy of Calvary must be viewed from at least four different viewpoints. At the cross man did a work: he displayed his depravity by taking the Perfect One and with wicked hands nailing Him to the tree. At the cross Satan did a work: he manifested his insatiable enmity against the woman's seed by bruising His heel. At the cross the Lord Jesus did a work: He died the Just for the unjust that He might bring us to God. At the cross God did a work: He exhibited His holiness and satisfied His justice by pouring out His wrath on the
one who was made sin for us." A.W. Pink

"O what an example has the Saviour left His people! It is comparatively easy to trust God while the sun is shining; the test comes when all is dark. But a faith that does not rest on God in adversity as well as in prosperity is not the faith of God's elect. We must have faith to live by - true faith - if we would have faith to die by. The Saviour had been cast upon God from His mother's womb, had been cast upon God moment by moment all through those thirty-three years, what wonder then that the hour of death finds Him still cast upon God. Fellow Christian, all may be dark with thee, you may no longer behold the light of God's countenance. Providence seems to frown upon you, notwithstanding, say still, 'My God, My God.'" A.W. Pink

"He was now without a sense of the gracious presence of God, and was filled, as the surety of His people, with a sense of divine wrath, which their iniquities He now bore, deserved, and which was necessary for Him to endure, in order to make full satisfaction for them--for one part of the punishment of sin is the loss of the divine
presence. He bore all the griefs of His people, and this among the rest--divine desertion. . . The condescending grace of Christ is here to be seen, that He, who was the Word, that was with God from everlasting, and His Only-begotten Son that lay in His bosom, that He should descend from heaven by the assumption of human nature, and be for a while forsaken by God, to bring us near unto Him." John Gill

"Now on the cross He who would live wholly for the Father experienced the full alienation from God which the judgment He had assumed entailed. His cry expresses the profound horror of separation from God. The darkness declared the same truth. The cry expressed the unfathomable pain of real abandonment by the Father. The sinless Son of God died the sinner's death and experienced the bitterness of desolation." William Lane

"Now, as our Lord Jesus Christ had enjoyed the love of God to the very full, think what it must have been for Him to lose the conscious enjoyment of it. Reflect upon His intense love to God. Jesus Christ loved God the Father with all His heart, and mind, and soul, and strength. The love of Christ towards His Father was boundless. Well, then, for a frown to be upon His Father's face, or for the light of that Father's face to be taken away from Him, must have made it correspondingly dark and terrible to Him." Charles Spurgeon

"After all, beloved, the only solution of the mystery is this: Jesus Christ was forsaken of God because we deserved to be forsaken of God. He was there, on the cross, in our room, and place, and stead; and as the sinner, by reason of his sin deserves not to enjoy the favor of God, so Jesus Christ, standing in the place of the sinner, and enduring what would vindicate the justice of God, had come under the cloud of judgment. Let us recollect that He was thus left of God, that you and I, who believe in Him, might never be left of God. Since
He, for a little while, was separated from His Father, we may boldly cry, 'Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?' and, with the Apostle Paul, we may confidently affirm that nothing in the whole universe shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Charles Spurgeon