THE CROSS BEFORE THE CROSS

Psalm 22 stands like a lonely hill in the Psalter—windswept, haunting, strangely familiar—because it is Calvary sung a thousand years before Calvary dawned. David’s cry, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (verse 1), rises from the depths of his own night, yet it reaches beyond him, stretching toward the Son who would one day breathe those same words with a thorn-crowned brow.

Here, the Spirit lets us overhear the anguish of Christ before Christ walks the Via Dolorosa; here, the Man of Sorrows is framed in Davidic poetry so vivid it almost trembles on the page.

The psalm moves from agony to trust, from terror to triumph, like a soul staggering through darkness until dawn smolders on the horizon.

“They pierced My hands and My feet” (verse 16).

“They divide My garments among them” (verse 18).

These are not mere metaphors—they read like eyewitness lines, as though David stood at Golgotha long before Roman nails and gambling soldiers cast their grim shadows. And yet, woven through the suffering is an unbroken strand of faith: “You have answered Me” (verse 21). The Messiah does not merely endure; He commits Himself into the Father’s hands long before He speaks those words in Luke’s Gospel.

Then, the music changes. What began as a solitary lament becomes a great assembly of praise. The One mocked, despised, and surrounded becomes the One who declares the Father’s name to His brethren (verse 22). Out of death—life; out of sorrow—gladness; out of forsakenness—the worldwide proclamation of grace. “All the ends of the world shall remember and turn to the Lord” (verse 27).

Calvary is not defeat; Calvary is the hinge on which the ages turn. The pierced King becomes the reigning Lord to whom “all families of the nations shall worship” (verse 27).

The final note is quiet, steady, and astonishing: “They will come and declare His righteousness to a people who will be born, that He has done this” (verse 31). That phrase, in the soft cadence of Hebrew, whispers something like It is finished. What Psalm 22 begins with desolation, it ends with completion. Our Redeemer did not merely suffer; He accomplished. He did not simply die; He fulfilled. The Cross is not an interruption in the story—it is the story finally told in full.

So Psalm 22 becomes, for the believer, a place to kneel. It invites us to look upon the Lord who entered our forsakenness so we would never walk alone in ours; the Christ who bore our wounds so that every wound of ours may one day be healed; the Savior whose cry of abandonment opened the floodgates of everlasting belonging. In the psalmist’s ancient grief, we hear our salvation sung—tender, solemn, triumphant—and we bow before the Lamb who loved us unto death.

Lord Jesus, draw my heart again to the foot of the Cross; let the sorrow of Psalm 22 deepen my gratitude, and let its triumph strengthen my faith. Teach me to rest in the finished work of Your love, to trust You in every dark hour, and to praise You in the great assembly of the redeemed. Amen.

BDD