Mark 15:29-34: in context

On the cross Jesus is mocked from every side. Passersby wag their heads: you who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself, come down. The chief priests and scribes jeer: he saved others, he cannot save himself; let the Christ come down now, that we may see and believe. Even those crucified beside him revile him. Then at midday darkness covers the whole land for three hours, and at the ninth hour Jesus cries out with a loud voice: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Two things in this dark scene are worth holding. The first is the mockers' unwitting truth: he saved others; he cannot save himself. They meant it as scorn, proof that his power was a sham. But in a deeper sense it was exactly right: he could not save himself and save others both, and he chose to save others. He had the power to come down from the cross; that was never the question. He stayed because coming down would have meant abandoning us. He could not save himself, not because he lacked the power, but because saving us required that he not. The mockery stated the very heart of the gospel: to save others, he would not save himself. The second thing is the cry: my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Here is the depth of what Christ bore. He did not merely suffer physical agony; he entered the darkness of God-forsakenness itself, crying out the cry of the abandoned, taking into himself the separation from God that our sin deserved. The Son who had never been out of the Father's presence entered, for us, the horror of feeling forsaken by God. It is a mystery too deep to fully sound, but its purpose reaches to us: he was forsaken so that we need never be, entered the God-forsaken darkness so that we might never be finally abandoned. The cry of dereliction is the cost of our never being truly forsaken. He could not save himself, because he was busy saving us, even into the darkness where he cried out for God.

Can I grasp what Christ bore for me, that he would not save himself in order to save others, and cried the cry of the forsaken so that I might never be finally forsaken, entering the darkness so that I need never face it alone?