Question: When Jesus said, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" did He sin because He didn't have complete confidence in God?

Answer: No, Jesus did not sin. Not once, never, and not in the least. The Bible says that Jesus “was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). The apostle Peter tells us that Jesus “committed no sin, nor was guile found in His mouth” (1 Peter 2:22).

On the cross, Jesus fulfills the words of a Messianic Psalm, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me, and from the words of My groaning?” (Psalm 22:1). His cry on the cross was not an expression of lack of confidence in God the Father. It was an expression of real suffering because God the Father had truly and really forsaken Him on the cross. 

Why should God the Father abandon His beloved Son? The Bible gives us the answer to Jesus’ haunting question. Jesus, the sinless one, suffered and died as if He was a sinner! That is why God forsook Him, letting Him die slowly on a cruel cross. “He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth. Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief when You make His soul an offering for sin” (Isaiah 53:9,10).

Do you ask about whose sins He was carrying? Certainly, they were  not His own for He was spotless, perfectly holy. Christians know the answer well: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6). Christ “Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24).

Your sins could be in one of two places: either on your own head or nailed to the cross. If you carry your sins to the grave, they will carry you to hell forever. If you believe in Christ, He bore your sins on the cross, and when you die He will carry you in His arms to heaven.