There can’t be many people in the country who haven’t heard of the Netflix series ‘Adolescence’! Many will have watched it already; our children and grandchildren will be watching it in school as part of the discussion about the dangers of modern living.
For me, the saddest part was when the father realised what his son had done, the son reached out for him and he turned away. Watching others viewing this on Gogglebox, I noticed they had the same shocked reaction. After all the boy had done and lied about, our instinct was that the father should still have been there emotionally for him.
How much harder was it then for Jesus on the cross when he felt deserted and abandoned by His Heavenly Father (Matthew 27:46), when He had done nothing wrong.
I’ve read many explanations for this and I appreciate that at that moment Jesus became Sin for humanity and so was alienated from God. It is said that this is what Jesus dreaded as He prayed in the garden for God to take this cup away from him (Matthew 26:39). The physical agony was horrible but even worse was the period of spiritual separation from God. Jesus suffered this ‘double death’ so that we would never experience God turning away from us.
What amazing love!