John Mark Hicks

Psalm 22 is the lament and confession of a righteous sufferer in the expectation of God’s righteous deliverance. The Psalmist identifies with the story of Israel, and Jesus himself appropriates this Psalm for his own lament and confession in the hope of his own vindication. This is not a Psalm about divine wrath or punishment […]

Early Christians in the second century understood the cry dereliction as Jesus’s feelings of despair in the face of death in view of the fact that the Father had abandoned (forsaken) him to death. The Father did not rescue him from death, even though ultimately God rescues him through death when the Father raises Jesus […]

During the first three hours of his execution, Jesus was beaten and then despoiled by Roman soldiers as they cast lots for his clothes, mocked by Jewish bystanders and the Temple authorities for his apparent inability to destroy the Temple or save himself, and scorned by those crucified with him as a naive pretender to […]