My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

In Mark 15, as Jesus dies upon the cross, he cries out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It’s a quote from Psalm 22. What’s going on? John Dickson reckons:

“This is not a cry of self-doubt from Christ’s lips, as if he is here questioning his identity and mission. It is his deliberate and agonising identification with the suffering poet of Psalm 22 and therefore, with all those who have cried out to God ‘Why?’. There on the cross, so the Bible insists, God intentionally enters our pain and misery, getting his hands dirty and even bloody. This is God at his most vulnerable and yet at his most glorious.”

(If I were God, I’d end all the pain p.66)