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By Bill Lawrence, President of  Leader Formation International

My God, My God, Why have You forsaken Me?

                                                            Mark 15:14

Jesus, the Most Unwanted Son, forsaken by the Father. He was also. The most Unwanted Man in history. No one could ever be more unwanted than when the Man on the cross, as well as through His life.

But why? Why was He on that cross between two evil thieves? The answer is very simple: He did nothing.

He was not forsaken for what He did. He was forsaken for what I have done and for what you have done. For what we have done. For what all humanity has done. He died for our sin.

He took our place on that cross. That is where we belong, and that is what He prayed about on the night of the Upper Discourse when He taught His men--and us--how He wants us to live now that we are in His place on earth through the enablement of the Holy Spirit. But we could not do that if He had not become the most unwanted man in all of history.

Many have been unwanted throughout history, especially unjustly put on trial, condemned, and their lives taken from them as was the reality of Jesus. But only Jesus could do this for all humanity, in the place of all of humanity, and for the redemption of all of humanity. He is the only one who could give His life in our place and pay the price for all of us and make us pure before the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

But you must see Him as the utterly Unwanted One who willingly identified with us and became one with us. Consider what He did to be unwanted the same way we are unwanted and became wanted the same way we are wanted. He identifies with us as the Unwanted One and strives to make us the wanted ones if only we will trust Him as the One who died for us and now lives in us.

One of the realities that was unique about Jesus is the fact that He loved to, in a sense, "hang out" with the unwanted. For example consider the event John, His earthly best friend, described in chapter 4 of his Word in which he tells us about the event know as The Woman at the Well. It was a very unique moment in our Lord's life in which He deliberately met with an unwanted woman. He and His disciples were going up the west side of the Jordan River on their way from Jerusalem back to Galilee after a Passover, and they stopped in the city of Sychar. The disciples had gone into the marketplace to get some food for all of them, but Jesus hung out at a well, a public place where people came to get water and discuss what was going on in their lives, because Jesus wanted to establish a relationship with an unwanted person.  It was a natural place to connect with an unwanted one since that was all who would come to the well at that time of day. So it was that one of the most unwanted women came in mid-day, the only time she could come because of her lifestyle, since she had five husbands and a doubtful way of life and was well known by the leaders of the city. Thus it was that by establishing a relationship with the unwanted woman He could build a relationship with many in the city, even those who would naturally think they were righteous, when in fact they may well have not been.

It's amazing that this unwanted woman influenced many to trust in Jesus, as Johe wrote: many believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified (4:39). An utterly disqualified woman caused many to believe in Jesus under her impact. Little wonder that Jesus loved to hang out with the undesirable woman--she affected many, many, to put their faith in Him.

The Unwanted reached the unwanted. This should encourage you if you are one of the unwanted. It does encourage me.

There is one other place for the Unwanted I wish to go, this time in Galilee called Capernaum, where there were people who were not valued by the religious leaders but that valued so greatly that He called one of the men to be His disciple.

The man was Levi, regularly known as Matthew, the author of a book about Jesus written specifically for Jews. Once again Jesus was kind of "hanging out" with them, this time reclining at Levi's table during a meal with tax collectors and, sinners, hardly the kind of people that the synagogue leaders or the primary thinkers from Jerusalem would approve. His disciples were with Him even as they were influenced by His actions in Sychar. The point is that a large number of them were following Jesus. Levi presented it in his declaration of the life of Jesus as He wrote to make Him known.

Jesus called for Levi to follow Him, and he immediately left his tax booth and became a follower of Jesus. Amazing! A man well known--and hated--in Capernaum as a tax collector was now a follower of Jesus. This did not make sense. Further Levi had a gathering of all his friends--fully known of  as sinners--dining with Jesus and His disciples. The Pharisees simply could not stand this. No righteous man would ever do this. This was not acceptable. They asked Jesus's disciples how this possible. Why was He doing this they asked. Jesus heard what they asked and answered them directly.

This is why I came He said. Love cannot be a theory but only be a relationship. I came to hang out with sinners because the only way to reach sinners is to make your love for them clear and show them how this love can transform their lives and meet their needs. The life they have seen is really empty and ineffective and results in barren death and I want to show them what true fruit is and how what I offer them will meet their deepest needs and go to the deepest emptiness in their hearts. I want to show them that I will meet their most painful struggles and deliver them from futility and free them from the bondage that has chained them to eternal death by giving them eternal life. I want to give them the joy and fruit I created for them to possess. This is why He says I did not call the righteous, but sinners. So it is that He did not call those who think they are righteous but those who know they are sinners.

Jesus knew He was headed to the cross, and He knew this every day of His leadership. That's why He knew He was unwanted in every way: by the self-righteous who did not need His sacrifice, by the unaware who did not understand the true nature of sin, by the Father whose heart was broken by His sacrifice on the cross. But He is wanted by all who know of their need for His sacrifice.

It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those two are sick.