Good Grief (6)

For my soul is full of troubles,
And my life draws near to the grave. Psalm 88.3

A psalm of suffering
Psalm 88 is best understood as a prophecy concerning the suffering of Christ. In the context, the sons of Korah, who composed this psalm, seem to be grieving the loss of a prominent friend. They put themselves into his experience, so that they express through his thoughts the deep sorrow of separation from life and God. The larger purpose of the psalm will be clear to all who have benefited from the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Here we encounter the grief of the Savior as He sank into His passion, alone, and feeling very far from God.

His is a good grief, because it expresses the depths of His love for the Father, and the power of His longing to be reunited with Him.

Psalm 88 contains many allusions to what Jesus experienced during His suffering on the cross. Jesus was abandoned by His friends (v. 8), the only loved ones He’d ever known. He was forced to endure all the pain and wrath of God against all the sins of the world; and He suffered what the unrepentant will suffer for eternity in hell. His hopes were not dashed, as the writer of Hebrews assures us (Heb. 12.1-3); but His suffering was great. But here the hope and joy set before Jesus as He was dying are not in view.

The physical and spiritual suffering He endured qualified Him above all men to receive the epithet, “Man of Sorrows.”

But the greatest grief and sorrow that Jesus experienced as He was dying on the cross was the sorrow of separation from His Father. The grief of that separation resounds throughout Psalm 88. The suffering Savior cries day and night, but God does not respond (vv. 1, 2). God appears to remember Him no more (v. 5). He pours out wrath on His Son rather than eternal love (v. 7). He sends His Son to darkness and the grave, far from the light of eternal glory which is His true and familiar home (vv. 10-12). The Lord hides His face from the suffering One (v. 14).

Psalm 88 is one of the only psalms which does not recover from the deep, negative affections with which it begins, but, instead, descends persistently to greater depths of sorrow, woe, and grief.

The grief of separation
Jesus shows us that there is no grief so great as the experience of being separated from God. Since, in the Presence of the Lord we expect to know true glory, fullness of joy, and pleasures forever more (Ps. 16.11), it only makes sense that, separated from Him, we should know only sorrow, grief, and deepest dread.

Why, then, does this so seldom seem to be the case? Billions of people all over the world live in a condition of separation from God, and they seem not much troubled by it. Millions of believers routinely neglect to meet with God in His Word and prayer, and go off into their lives marching more in step with the world than with the Savior Who died for them. Why, then, do such people not experience what Jesus experienced when He knew Himself to be separated from God?

The answer is simple: Jesus had come from eternal glory. He had dwelled for all eternity past in the fullness and radiance of the love of the Father and Spirit. He had lived eternally in joy and rejoicing in the holiness and fellowship of the triune Godhead. His brief earthly sojourn did not separate Him from that experience. Jesus maintained the joy and glory of that fellowship even as He trod the earth among sinful people such as we.

But the cross changed that. As Jesus hung on the cross, the Father, after a fashion, forsook Him, because the Father is of purer eyes than to behold evil, and Jesus had become all evil in our place, for our redemption. At that moment of separation, Jesus cried out with a great cry of anguish to the Father Who had forsaken Him (Ps. 22.1), so deep was His grief and sorrow.

Jesus grieved and cried out and sorrowed because He had become separated from God. He knew better than anyone who ever lived what it means to be united with God and to participate in His glory. Jesus grieved because He knew what He was missing.

We don’t grieve to be separated from God because, for most of us, it’s no big deal. Throughout most of our days, we hardly think about the Lord, even though His thoughts toward us are constant and comprehensive (Ps. 40.5, 17). It doesn’t trouble us much that our times of prayer are few and far between, and that the prayers we do manage seem rather perfunctory. The Scriptures describe being separated from God in terms of trouble, anxiousness, sorrow, loneliness, and grief. Think of Peter, weeping at having denied Jesus three times. Think of David, pleading for forgiveness and the return of God’s Spirit. Or Jeremiah, weeping and lamenting for an entire nation which had turned its back on the Lord.

Separation from God should provoke pangs of grief in our souls; but that will only be true for us to the extent that we have actually known the joy, wonder, peace, pleasure, majesty, beauty, and mystery of being in His Presence in glory.

The Presence of the Lord
Being separated from God should strike us in the depths of our being as something terrible, fearful, and leading to grief. Such good grief can reinvigorate our soul and strengthen us to seek the Lord earnestly, that our fellowship with Him might be renewed and deepened.

If we knew the Presence of God more truly, we would be more sensitive to the grief of being separated from Him. If every day we experienced and lived out the hope of glory, and if we knew the love and peace and powerful indwelling Presence of Christ more continuously, then, when we neglect to enjoy the Presence and pleasure of our God, we would know the good grief such separation from our Father brings.

And that good grief will create in our hearts a longing for our Father, and begin the process of our being restored to His Presence once again.

For reflection
1.  Read Psalm 88. Point out the references which seem to indicate sorrow and grief.

2.  Do you think Jesus really sorrowed on the cross? Why? Should we share in His sorrow at all?

3.  Meditate on 2 Corinthians 3.12-18. What does it mean to encounter God in His glory? When do you experience this? Does it grieve you to be separated from God?

Next steps – Preparation: Do you experience grief at being separated from God? Does it bother you that you don’t pray more than you do? That your times in God’s Word are not as many or as meaningful as you think they should be? That you so often give in to temptation and fall through it into sin? Spend an extended time in prayer, seeking the Presence of the Lord for revnewal in His love.

T. M. Moore

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.