<p>8:29 <i>And He that sent me is with me. He has not left me alone. For I always do the things that are pleasing to Him</i>- This idea of not leaving but present with is repeated by the Lord in His promise of the Comforter, the Holy Spirit. The Father's presence was by the Spirit, and the Lord wishes to share His relationship with the Father with us. His presence however was due to always pleasing the Father. The Lord's sense of being forsaken on the cross (Mt. 27:46) was therefore because He so identified with our sins that He was identified with those who were not pleasing to the Father, and so felt the lack of His presence. &quot;Pleasing&quot; is a reference to doing the Father's pleasure or will. That will is explained in chapter 5 as being for our salvation. All the Lord did was for the end of our salvation. And to that end He had the Father's presence through the Spirit always with Him; just as we will, if human salvation is our constant focus.</p><p>We are the witnesses in the same way as the Lord Jesus was the word made flesh- in His very person, He was the essential witness and message. When He said &ldquo;I do always those things that please God&rdquo;, it is recorded that &ldquo;As he spake these words, many believed on him&rdquo; (Jn. 8:29,30). There was something real and credible. He was His words made flesh.<br />When the Jews lifted up Christ in crucifixion, then they would know that the words He spoke were the words of God, that the Father had not left Him at all, and that Jesus had done &ldquo;always those things that please Him&quot; (Jn. 8:28,29). Surely this implies that His death, His dead body motionless there, was in fact some sort of word of testimony, a voice from God. Note too that when He looked as if He was forsaken by God, it was apparent that He was not. The Jews had jeered at Him as He still clung on to life, implying that God and the prophet Elijah had now abandoned Him- clearly, they mocked, He was not the Son of God. But when He was lifted up by them- i.e. in death- the lifeless body must have spoken to them of something. Somehow and the earthquake and darkness doubtless confirmed this, there was the very real presence of God evident in the scene once He had died. The Centurion realized that &ldquo;truly, this was the Son of God&quot;- and from these prophetic words of the Lord, it appears that the Jews generally had to face the same conviction. This is the sort of paradox God delights to use- the humanly hopeless and God forsaken, the lost cause, becomes the very convicting proof of just the opposite- that we are <i>not</i> forsaken. In all this there was the word of the cross.</p>