Question:
Are there any statements in the Bible suggesting that Christ doubted the completion, effectiveness, or success of the plan of salvation?
Answer:
The Scriptures do not present Christ as distrusting His Father or doubting the truth of God’s plan. They do, however, reveal that in His humanity He experienced genuine anguish, uncertainty, and temptation. He felt the terrible weight of the work He had undertaken and the awful consequences should He fail.
Psalm 22 prophetically describes the sufferings of Christ. It opens with the words He later spoke upon the cross: “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” The psalm allows us to see something of the conflict through which Christ passed as He bore the sinner’s guilt and experienced the sense of separation that sin brings.
We see this struggle again in John 12:27–28:
“Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour? But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy name.”
Christ’s human nature recoiled from the suffering before Him. Yet He did not turn away from His mission. Rather than seeking His own deliverance, He surrendered Himself completely to the Father’s will: “Father, glorify Thy name.”
The same conflict intensified in Gethsemane. Jesus prayed that, if possible, the cup might pass from Him. Nevertheless, He concluded, “Not My will, but Thine, be done.” His anguish was real, but so was His submission.
Upon the cross, when Christ cried, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” He was entering into the experience of the lost. The Father’s presence was hidden from Him, and He could not see beyond the darkness surrounding Him. Yet even then He addressed God as “My God.” His feelings told Him that He was forsaken, but His faith still held firmly to His Father.
Hebrews 5:7–8 describes the intensity of His experience:
“Who in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death, and was heard in that He feared; though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered.”
Christ did not merely appear to suffer or pretend to be tempted. He entered fully into the weakness and sorrow of humanity. This is why Hebrews 2:17–18 tells us that He was made like His brethren and that, because He suffered while being tempted, He is able to help those who are tempted.
We should therefore distinguish between being tempted with doubt and yielding to unbelief. Christ experienced the pressure of temptation, the trembling of human emotion, and the agony of not being able to see the outcome. Nevertheless, He never distrusted His Father, abandoned His mission, or yielded to sin.
His victory was not achieved because the trial was unreal. He overcame because, amid terrible darkness and suffering, He continued to trust and obey God.
