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Jesus said on the cross, “Why has thou forsaken me?” What did that really mean, though?

The first time I saw the movie The Passion of the Christ was in a movie theater. During that time in my life, I was riding on the fence. On the left was the belief that God didn’t exist, on the right was Born Again Christian. When the actor who played Jesus said “Why has thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46), it made me believe even further that God didn’t exist because Jesus wouldn’t say that if he knew he was going to be on the cross.

I was wrong.

A long while back I prayed for an answer about this scripture, and God gave me one. But first, there are three possible reasons why Jesus would say that:

1. Jesus didn’t know he was going to be on the cross, contrary to what’s written in the Bible. So the Bible is contradictory and false. This is the humanistic answer; what our minds can come up with. Without praying and asking what Jesus meant, we’ll just take it at face-value and claim the Bible is false.

2. Jesus was at his weakest point. Meaning, he finally lost it because the pain from the cross was so horrific (I saw this reason on a Catholic website). This is yet another humanistic answer. Our minds telling us “If I was crucified, I’d be in a lot of pain and will get weak. So that’s what happened to Jesus.”

3. The third possible reason Jesus said that was because he was also saying this: “When I die, they’ll be no more separation between my creation and I, but I am still alive. God, why have you forsaken me?”

Remembering why he came down here in the first place, can you guess which reason above is accurate?