Some have
tried to empty the cry of Jesus on the cross in Matt
27:46/Mark 15:34 (a quote from Psa 22:1) as not being a cry of dereliction and
his being abandoned by God. Some argue that, as the Psa 22 ends up with the
deliverance of the supplicant, Jesus’ quoting the opening line is really him,
not being abandoned, but invoking the entirety of the psalm, and in reality,
this is a cry of triumph. However, this is, frankly, silly. As Charles
Cranfield in his commentary on Mark noted:
Various attempts have been made to get rid of
its offence: e.g., it has been suggested that Jesus had the whole psalm in mind
and that therefore the saying was really an expression of faith cut short by physical
weakness which prevented him from quoting more; or that Jesus felt forsaken but
was not really forsaken. But such softening explanations are unsatisfactory.
Rather is the cry to be understood in the light of Mark 14:36, 2 Cor. 5:21,
Gal. 3:13. The burden of the world’s sin, his complete self-identification with
sinners, involved not merely a felt, but a real, abandonment by his Father. It is in the cry of dereliction that the full horror of man’s sin stands revealed.
But the cry also marks the lowest depth of the hiddenness of the Son of God—and
so the triumphant τετελεσται of John 19:30 is, paradoxically, its true interpretation. When
this depth has been reached, the victory had been won. (Cranfield, Mark, pp. 458-9)
