Chapter Three: The One Who Prayed Them All

Here is the sentence that changes how you read every psalm: Jesus prayed these words in His own human life.

Not as a theological exercise. He prayed the Psalms because He was a Jewish man formed by Jewish worship, and the Psalms were the curriculum of His community. He had been praying them since boyhood, the way a person who has been in church for forty years knows certain hymns in their body — not because they looked them up, but because the words were given to them when they were young.

In Luke 24:44, the risen Jesus said to His disciples: "Everything written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled." This is Jesus identifying the Psalms as part of the body of Scripture that described what His life was going to be and that He understood Himself to be living out.

What He Said From the Cross

When Jesus had been on the cross for three hours, in the middle of the afternoon, He cried out in a loud voice. Every person there knew the words immediately. They are the opening line of Psalm 22:

My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? I groan in prayer, but help seems far away. My God, I cry out during the day, but you do not answer, and during the night my prayers do not let up. — Psalm 22:1–2, NET

He was not spontaneously composing. He was praying a psalm He had prayed His whole life, from inside the condition it describes. He prayed it from inside the condition.

And then, two verses later, without anything in the circumstances changing:

You are holy; you sit as king receiving the praises of Israel. — Psalm 22:3, NET

Nothing has changed. The silence has not ended. The abandonment is still the experience. And yet: you are holy. Present tense. The theology moves ahead of the feeling.

By the end of Psalm 22, through the long dark middle, the psalmist has arrived at this declaration:

For he did not despise or detest the suffering of the oppressed; he did not ignore him; when he cried out to him, he responded. — Psalm 22:24, NET

He declares that God heard the very cry that seemed to go unanswered. He declares it before the answer has visibly arrived. Jesus prayed that psalm from the cross — all of it, beginning to end, in His body. He prayed it from inside the condition. He knew where the psalm ended. He prayed toward it. And Sunday morning was the answer.

What This Means for You

When you pray Psalm 22, you are not simply reading an ancient poet's description of suffering. You are joining a prayer that the Son of God already prayed in His own body, from the worst condition a human being has ever been in. The psalm that feels like the most desolate text in the Bible is the psalm the Resurrection answered.

This does not resolve every dark night you will have. The darkness will still be dark. What it tells you is that the God who received that particular cry is the same God who receives yours. He has already heard the worst version of this prayer. He is not unprepared for yours.

When the Spirit brings you into relationship with Him, you are brought into a relationship with the one who has prayed everything in this book. Not as observer. As the one who went through it first and is now walking through it with you.