When the Father Turned His Face Away
Understanding the Covenant Curse Behind “The Father Turns His Face Away”
In the hymn How Deep the Father’s Love for Us, there is a controversial line that reads, “The Father turns His face away.”
Many Christians have sung these words, yet some pause and wonder:
What does it really mean that the Father “turned His face away” from His Son on the cross?
Did it imply a breach in the Trinity or a momentary lapse of the Father’s love for Jesus?
How could the eternal Father forsake the eternal Son?
Understood correctly, I believe that the phrase “The Father turns His face away” is biblical language that is drawn especially from the Old Testament and is describing Jesus stepping into the place of covenant-breakers under God’s judgment, not a statement of some internal rift in the Trinity or of the Father’s personal rejection of the Son.
In other words, the lyric points us to the costly covenant curse Christ bore for our sake, rather than any lack of love between the Father and Son.
The Biblical Meaning of God’s Face
In Scripture, God’s “face” is often used as a metaphor for His relational presence and favor. When God’s face is toward someone, it signifies blessing, love, and life; when His face is hidden or turned away, it signifies judgment, displeasure, and even death.
For example, in the classic Aaronic blessing we read, “The LORD make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you” (Num. 6:25). Thus, to have God’s face shining on you means to enjoy His gracious favor.
By contrast, when people fall under God’s curse due to sin, Scripture says God hides His face from them. When Israel broke God’s covenant, He warned that, “My anger will be kindled… I will forsake them and hide My face from them” (Deut. 31:17–18). One translation actually renders this as, “I will turn My face away from them.”
Along this line, the Pulpit Commentary explains that “the ‘face’ of God is his personality as turned towards man, or else turned away from him. When God’s face is hidden or turned away, it brings despair and death, but when His face is turned toward us in love and mercy, it means life and salvation.1 Simply put, God’s “face” is an idiom for His favor or displeasure.
With this biblical background, we can begin to understand the lyric. Saying “The Father turns His face away” is another way of saying that on the cross, Jesus bore the curse, the judgment, and “God-forsakenness” that our sins deserved. It’s covenantal language, drawing from the Old Testament’s framework of blessings and curses, not an assertion that the Father stopped loving the Son or that the Trinity was fractured.
Covenant Blessings, Covenant Curses, and Christ
From the very beginning, God’s relationship with humanity has been described in covenant terms. Thomas Schriener notes that in Eden, there was covenant blessing and covenant cursing as obedience would mean life and blessing under God’s favorable face, but disobedience would incur the curse, alienation from God’s favor.2
Ever since the fall, humanity as covenant-breakers has been under the curse of sin and death. Throughout Israel’s history, when God’s people broke the covenant, they faced the covenant curses: defeat, exile, and the dreadful prospect of God “hiding His face” from them (Deut. 28–32). To have God turn His face away was the ultimate covenant curse – essentially, to fall under God’s wrath and be cut off from His favor.
Here is the astonishing good news of the gospel: Jesus Christ stepped into our place as covenant-breakers and willingly took that curse upon Himself. The Apostle Paul put it this way: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13).
In the words of Charles Spurgeon, “hell consists in the hiding of God’s face from sinners,” and thus on the cross, “God hid his face from Christ” so that we would never have to face that doom.3
When we sing “How great the pain of searing loss, the Father turns His face away,” we are recounting this tremendous truth, that Jesus suffered the “searing loss” of the Father’s shining face. Instead of the warmth of His Father’s countenance, Jesus faced the curse, the reality that God’s righteous face of judgment was turned against the sin He bore on our behalf.
As Herman Bavinck explains, on the cross, Jesus’ cry of forsakenness corresponded with the reality that had in fact been forsaken by God in that judicial sense.4 God treated Him as the covenant-breaker, so that we, the true covenant-breakers, could be treated as covenant-keepers, welcomed and blessed in God’s family.
“My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?”
It is at this point that we must consider Jesus’ own words from the cross. Near the ninth hour, Jesus cried out in the darkness, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46). This anguished cry is a direct quotation of Psalm 22:1, where the psalmist laments feeling the forsakenness of God.
Jesus intentionally spoke these words as He hung in our place. In that moment, He was fulfilling the Scripture and experiencing what Psalm 22 foretold: the righteous sufferer surrounded by enemies, crying out to God. Jesus is connecting the dots that the Psalmist leaves, stating that He is the truly Righteous One who is enduring the fate of the unrighteous.
Yet if we read Psalm 22 to the end, we find something remarkable. The psalm that begins in despair ends in hope and vindication. Later in the psalm, the sufferer testifies, “He has not despised the affliction of the afflicted, He has not hidden His face from him, but has heard when he cried to Him” (Ps. 22:24). even in the psalm of “forsakenness,” God ultimately did not truly abandon His faithful one. And indeed, in Jesus’ case, though He experienced the turning away of the Father’s face on the cross, the Father did not finally refuse to hear Him. Jesus’ prayer was heard and answered in the resurrection (Heb. 5:7).
Judicially and experientially, the Son was forsaken. In His humanity, Jesus experienced the horror of divine wrath against sin. One might say He experienced the “hell” of God’s absence, not that God literally abandoned Him (for God was never absent in being), but that Jesus was deprived of any comfort or light of His Father’s face. As Calvin explains, Christ suffered the terrible torments of a condemned and forsaken man in His soul.5 In that sense, Jesus truly was forsaken by God not relationally, but judicially, so that He could fully pay our debt.
Another way to put it is that on the cross, the Father’s face was both turned away and not turned away, in different senses. From the standpoint of covenant blessings, God’s face was turned away as Jesus hung under the curse, under God’s frown, so that we could be under God’s smile. But from the standpoint of God’s love and purpose, the Father never turned His heart away from the Son.
The Father’s heart was not estranged from Jesus, even as His face of blessing was withdrawn. The Trinity was not “broken” by the cross; rather, Father, Son, and Spirit were all actively involved in our redemption.
Glorying in the Mystery
How amazing is His love that bore that curse! How deep the Father’s love for us!
Because Jesus did this, no one who trusts in Christ will ever have to know the horror of God turning His face away from them. Jesus was forsaken so that we might be accepted; He was cursed so that we might be blessed. The Father turned His face away from Jesus at Calvary so that He would never have to turn His face away from us.
In sum, “The Father turns His face away” is not about a breakdown in the Trinity; it’s covenantal language, the language of blessing and curse.
It tells us that on the cross, Jesus stood in the place of covenant-breakers and faced the holy judgment of God. The Father’s face of favor was shielded from Him for a time, so that we might behold that same face shining on us in grace forever.
So the next time you sing “How great the pain of searing loss, the Father turns His face away,” you can sing with both sorrow and gratitude. Sorrow, at what our sin cost the Savior; gratitude, that God was willing to pay that cost.
The Father who did not turn His face away from us even when we were lost, turned it away from Jesus on the cross so that we could be saved. The covenantal separation that we deserved was borne by Christ. In this light, Calvin writes,
“This is our wisdom: duly to feel how much our salvation cost the Son of God. He was forsaken for a time — not because the Father truly cut himself off from him — but so that he might truly bear the severity of divine judgment in our stead.”6
Take heart: The Father who turned His face away from His Son for a moment has now turned His face toward you in everlasting welcome, if you are in Christ. He smiles upon you with unmerited grace, because on the cross, Jesus stood in your place and took the curse.
May this lead us to deeper worship of the Lamb who was slain for our sins.
Pulpit Commentary (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1880–1919), commentary on Numbers 6:25.
Thomas Schreiner, “Why We Must Understand the Covenants to Understand the Bible,” Crossway
C. H. Spurgeon, The Agonies of the Cross, in Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit (London: Passmore & Alabaster).
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 3, Sin and Salvation in Christ, trans. John Vriend, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 389.
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, II.xvi.11.
John Calvin, Commentary on Matthew, on Matthew 27:46.