And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Matthew 27:46

God the Father was the one who ultimately sent Christ to the cross and was the cause for all of the anguish he felt at Gethsemane and all of His suffering at Calvary.  And we do not just learn this in the Gospels, do we?  This was God’s plan from the beginning. 

In Isaiah 53:10, we learn that it pleased God—it was His will to crush His Son.  Why?  So that we could be accepted.  A glorious truth we learn here from Isaiah (Isa. 53) and Matthew (Mt. 27:46) and John (Jn. 18:11) and elsewhere is that God rejected His son for a time so that he would not have to reject us for all eternity.  Though all we like sheep have gone astray, though every one of us without exception have rejected God, He has responded by rejecting His son for a time so that he in turn could accept us forever.  THAT’S THE GOSPEL!