In 1815, the Duke of Wellington led his British army against Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo. As Wellington defeated his enemy, the British attempted to send a message back to England using a system of light signals. Because of a great fog surrounding the light signals, the message received in Dover was “Wellington defeated.” Wellington’s supporters were dismayed. Yet when the fog cleared and they could see all the lights, the full message appeared as “Wellington defeated the enemy.”¹

This half-received message sheds insight on the significance of Psalm 22. It captures the tension in the delay from what we call Good Friday, when Christ was crucified, until what we call Easter Sunday, when he rose from the grave. On Good Friday, Christ’s disciples thought the message read “Christ defeated.” Easter Sunday clarified that the full message was “Christ defeated death by his own death.” As this psalm teaches us about Christ’s suffering, it gives us tools to reflect on our own suffering. Our main takeaway is that God is near to his people even when he feels furthest away.

Tension

In Psalm 22 praise stands in tension alongside a desperate need for help.² David threads together moments of real trust in and praise for God while acknowledging deep lament over trouble. David wrote from his own perspective; his situation was at the very edge of death with need for divine rescue. As David wrote under the Spirit’s inspiration, he also revealed how the ultimate king would truly die in shame. Saint Augustine explained how this is the case in Psalm 22:

The Lord Jesus Christ speaks here, praying for his own resurrection, for Christ was raised in the morning, on the first day of the week. On that day Jesus Christ was taken up into eternal life, and death will never hold sway over him again; but the words of this psalm are spoken in the person of the crucified one, for here at its beginning is the cry he uttered while he hung upon the cross.³

Psalm 22 provides us with a perspective on Christ’s experience during his crucifixion.

Psalm 22 is David’s reflection before God about his own suffering, which leads us to consider a higher suffering that produces a salvation bringing about God’s kingship on earth.⁴ As James Hamilton says, “David might not have known that Jesus would take the sins of the world upon himself and be separated from God as he died on the cross, but he surely intended his words to communicate the problem that his descendant would solve. This makes Jesus’ quotation of the line as he suffered on the cross most fitting and appropriate, entirely in keeping with David’s intention as he wrote the words.”⁵ The true referent in Psalm 22 is Christ on the cross, but David’s personal reflection leads us to that ultimate referent.

Psalm 22 makes this pivotal contribution to the developing focus of Psalms 15–24. The central question in this story, framed in Psalms 15 and 24, is who can ascend God’s holy mountain to dwell before him in blessing. These psalms tell the story of Christ’s incarnate ministry twice, first in reverse order, then in normal order. After Psalms 19–21 each reflect in some way on Christ’s perfect life as God the Son come forth to be God’s king on earth, Psalm 22 returns—parallelling Psalm 18—to remind us of his death on the cross.

Psalm 22 instructs us how to respond in a godly way to suffering. It is ultimately about Christ’s suffering even to death in our place. It is still, in a derivative way, about how we as those who belong to Christ can learn to respond to the hardships of this life.⁶ It is about Christ’s unrepeatable suffering, but it is also about our suffering and what to do with it.⁷

Trust

David clearly wrote this psalm from a perspective of great despair. It opens on the note, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”⁸ These words reveal the depth of his hopelessness; he felt God was no longer even with him. They show that the lament in this psalm is so intense because God seems not to hear the cry of the one suffering.⁹ In this respect, when we feel like we may be forsaken and that God seems not to answer us, Psalm 22 provides encouragement as well as instruction about how to respond.¹⁰

The encouragement is that this initial distress is completely undone by the end of the psalm.¹¹ Thus, Psalm 22 falls into three major sections. First, verses 1–11 recount trust despite the distress of the situation. Second, verses 12–21 dive into the sense of torment caused by the situation. Third, verses 22–31 tell about how God will triumph and be worshiped throughout the world.¹² When we take Psalm 22 as a whole, we see that it teaches us about how to bring our suffering before the Lord to reckon with it in a serious way in lament while also hanging on to trust in God.

Even the first section laces together recognition of deep agony alongside the reality that God is good and stands by his people. In verses 1–2, David says he is forsaken and that God does not answer him. In verses 3–5, he asserts that God is holy and dwells in his people’s praises, trusted by believers of old whose trust did not put them to shame.

Interestingly, verse 3, “You are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel,” was historically the main verse that Pentecostals, charismatics, and even the modern praise movement used as the biblical basis for their approach to worship.¹³ For these groups, God’s being enthroned on his people’s praise justifies the kind of emotionally driven singing they prefer as a vehicle for the Spirit to move.

God truly is present in a special way as his people assemble in corporate worship. But we ought to consider the context of Psalm 22. The whole point is that God is enthroned among his people even when it does not feel like it. Our efforts to create an emotional response that makes us feel as if God is present are contrary to the point of Psalm 22. The whole point is that even when it feels like God is absent, we have his promise that he is present. It instructs us to trust even when it feels as though God is far from us.

Torment

The statement of trust built into the first section is threaded together with torment. In this torment, we see how this psalm is directly about the Lord Jesus in his crucifixion. Matthew 27 and Mark 15 describe the events of Psalm 22, while Psalm 22 is about how Christ’s experience in those gospel passages felt to him.¹⁴ Notably, the Gospels cite Psalm 22 more than any other Old Testament passage.¹⁵

“Forsaken” is a term from the covenant relationship. To be forsaken is a curse for breaking the covenant.¹⁶ This psalm is about the sense of being cursed by God. This cursing actually happens at the cross when, as Matthew 27 recounts, Christ was despised and mocked and his enemies literally wagged their heads at him. He was forsaken by God as he died bearing the curse for our sin.¹⁷

Psalm 22:12–21 performs double duty for how we use this psalm. On one hand, these verses tell about the pain and torment that Christ endured on the cross. Like in Psalm 22:15, Matthew 27:48 reveals that Christ needed a drink because his mouth was dry. Like Psalm 22:18, Matthew 27:35 tells how soldiers divided and cast lots for his clothes. So David describes the very events occurring when Christ died in our place.

On the other hand, David also provides an example of how to take our laments to God. He shows us what we need to do when we feel as though God is far from us or that he is not answering us in our despair. We need to bring our real sense of defeat before God without pretending that things are better than they are. We should present our true feelings to the Lord so that we can wrestle with him about what we are experiencing.

At the same time, Psalm 22 shows that we should not let ourselves wallow in our despair. Rather, we should plant ourselves in what we know to be true about God concerning his faithfulness and commitment to deliver his people. Verses 19–21 show that we do not end prayer with a statement of our problem. We need to make sure that we seek God for deliverance and help. The torment in Psalm 22 is first about Christ dying on the cross to bear the curse for our sin. This torment then teaches us about the best way to deal with our own laments as we go through situations that can feel hopeless.

Triumph

The final section of Psalm 22 in verses 22–31 ends this song on a note of triumph because God’s King won victory at the cost of his life.¹⁸ This section clarifies that the message people thought announced Christ’s defeat actually announced that he has defeated death itself. This section teaches us in two ways. It teaches us about Christ and how we should pray in times of lament.

For our own application, we learn that our seasons of hardship should prompt us to reflect on God’s sovereign ability to grant victory. We should remember all the ways that he has been faithful. We should decide to plant ourselves in the truth of God’s ability. As David prays, his forsaken condition does not put him so far away from the God who helps those who call on him that he cannot rescue him.¹⁹ He knows that victory will come because he knows who God is.

This blessing for us in Psalm 22 is true because of how Psalm 22 teaches about Christ. We can easily feel like God is not hearing us in our lament. But because Christ truly bore the curse for our sin, our experience of feeling forsaken by God can never be his objective curse on us.²⁰ Jesus has endured that curse for us. The New Testament events of Matthew 27 harmonize how the faithful covenant servant can write this psalm about being cursed by God.²¹Christ, the faithful one, was forsaken for your sake.

The great theme here is Christ’s victorious kingdom coming because of his suffering on the cross. In verses 22–31, Christ anticipates not only his deliverance from death but also that his suffering will bring conversion and deliverance across the globe.²² Christ himself will proclaim God’s saving mercy throughout the world. Hebrews 2:11–12 quotes verse 22: “For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, ‘I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.’”²³

Ephesians 2:17 teaches us that Christ preached peace to the Ephesians. Since Jesus never went in person to Ephesus, we know that he preaches through preachers opening Holy Scripture. God is especially present in worship to be enthroned in our praises. Christ is then present to preach and tell God’s saving name to his church through preaching that happens in the same worship.

As verse 27 says, Christ will preach himself to the ends of the earth. Thus, Christ is fulfilling his own promises of old to Abraham that God’s covenant community would blessedly include all nations.²⁴ But in verse 28, God’s kingship is extending through the same King who reported his suffering throughout Psalm 22. The reason is that this kingship comes to bear on us through the cross.²⁵

The kingdom of verses 27–31 is clearly global. The kingdom that triumphs over the whole world is the kingdom of the suffering King who died to bear the curse of sin for his people. We do not have to fear death and lament because Christ’s triumph has defeated death for us as he died in our place. Death no longer has any sting for all who trust in Christ because his death covered the penalty of our sin. Death no longer has any sting for Christ’s people because he has risen from death. As those joined to him, death can no longer hold us, as he channels life to us.

His triumph becomes ours as we hold onto him. Our lament is because this world is not our home, and it does not treat us as though we are home. Yet Christ prepares a place for us. And we know that his lament of Psalm 22 drained every lament from where we will spend eternity.

Notes

1. Bruce K. Waltke and Fred G. Zaspel, How to Read and Understand the Psalms (Crossway, 2023), 297.
2. John Goldingay, Psalms, 3 vols. Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms (Baker Academic, 2006–2008), 1:323.
3. Saint Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms,  trans. Maria Boulding OSB (New City Press, 2000), 1:221.
4. Christopher Ash, The Psalms: A Christ-Centered Commentary, 4 vols. (Crossway, 2024), 2:249.
5. James M. Hamilton Jr., Psalms, 2 vols., Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary (Lexham Academic, 2021), 1:284.
6. Allen P. Ross, A Commentary on the Psalms, 3 vols. (Kregel Academic Press, 2011–16), 1:526. Ross in some ways inverts my emphasis by saying that it is first about our—or at least David’s—experience of suffering and then secondarily about Christ’s. My contention is that Christ is the foundational meaning of this psalm.
7. Ash, Psalms, 2:251–52.
8. This post’s remaining three headings amalgamate terms from Bruce K. Waltke and James M. Houston with Erika Moore, The Psalms as Christian Worship: A Historical Introduction (Eerdmans, 2010), 397; and Hamilton, Psalms, 1:286.
9. Ross, Psalms, 1:526.
10. Ross, Psalms, 1:548.
11. Carissa Quinn, The Arrival of the King: The Shape and Story of Psalms 15–24, Studies in Scripture and Biblical Theology (Lexham Academic, 2023), 96; and Hamilton, Psalms, 1:278.
12. Waltke, Houston, and Moore, Psalms as Christian Worship, 396–97; and Waltke and Zaspel, How to Read and Understand the Psalms, 292.
13. Lester Ruth and Lim Swee Hong, A History of Contemporary Praise and Worship: Understanding the Ideas that Reshaped the Protestant Church (Baker Academic, 2021).
14. Ash, Psalms, 2:2249–50.
15. Waltke, Houston, and Moore, Psalms as Christian Worship, 377.
16. Ash, Psalms, 2:253–54.
17. Ash, Psalms, 2:252.
18. Ash, Psalms, 2:249.
19. Hamilton, Psalms, 1:292.
20. Ash, Psalms, 2:254–55.
21. Ash, Psalms, 2:254; and Waltke and Zaspel, How to Read and Understand the Psalms, 296.
22. Ash, Psalms, 2:251; and Quinn, Arrival of the King, 115–16.
23. Waltke, Houston, and Moore, Psalms as Christian Worship, 415.
24. Ash, Psalms, 2:261; and Hamilton, Psalms, 1:278.
25. Ash, Psalms, 2:261–62.

© Harrison Perkins. All Rights Reserved.

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Post authored by:

• Harrison Perkins

  

  Harrison Perkins (PhD, Queen’s University Belfast; MDiv, Westminster Seminary California) is pastor of Oakland Hills Community Church (OPC), a member of the of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, a Senior Research Fellow at the Craig Center for the Study of the Westminster Standards,  online instructor in church history at Westminster Theological Seminary, a visiting lecturer in systematic theology at Edinburgh Theological Seminary, and author of Reformed Covenant Theology: A Systematic Introduction. You can read more from him at Pastor Perks.

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