Did God die? If Jesus was God, and Jesus died on the cross, does that mean God died?
This question strikes at the heart of the most profound mystery in all of Scripture — the Person of Christ. The answer requires careful, reverent thought, because two truths must be held together without weakening either one: Christ is truly God, and Christ truly died.
God Cannot Die — Yet the Person Who Died Is God
James McBroom takes this question head-on, addressing the common assertion that "it was as Man only that our Lord died":
James McBroomOne has heard this asserted and strenuously maintained by true-hearted saints who were jealous of the Lord's glory. The statement falls short of the truth. If the Cross is nothing more than the death of a Man we can have no atonement. That His death is limited to our Lord's Manhood in many minds may be gathered from the retort (as soon as it is questioned) that He could not die as God. No one affirms that death could touch Godhead in Him, but while avoiding such a thought it does not follow that His death was only that of a Man.
The blessed Person Who died is God as well as Man, the Word become flesh: and unless we keep this clear we cannot have an apprehension of the glory of the Cross.
This is the crucial distinction. Death could not touch the Godhead itself — God in His divine nature is immortal and eternal. But the Person who hung on that cross was not merely a man. He was the eternal Son of God who had become man. McBroom continues:
PersonThese passages and many more show the glory of the Cross, for although God cannot die, He has in wondrous grace taken His own way to come right down into death in its deepest and most solemn sense, even that of His own offended majesty and judgment against sin. It is here that the Incarnation fits in with divine precision. The Son, who is God, becomes Man to bear, on the one side the judgment due to man, and on the other, to give effect, on the part of God, to all the purposes of eternity.
One Person — Not Two
Jesus Christ is not two persons — a divine one and a human one — acting in tandem. He is one Person in whom deity and manhood are united. McBroom insists on both sides:
one PersonNo, it must be the great and glorious Theanthropos, which is God and Man in one glorious Person for ever. But while insisting on the divine side nothing must be allowed to weaken the other. It was a Man who died, not merely a Divine Person in a human condition. A condition could not die for sinners, nor be nailed to a tree. No, we adoringly behold in Him who hung there God, in the full revelation of all that God is, while we see Him; a Man, the first to enter into all that that revelation unfolds.
L. M. Grant makes the same point — Scripture never neatly separates Christ's actions into "divine" ones and "human" ones:
L. M. GrantIt is remarkable that while presenting Him in all the riches of glory, the Holy Spirit seldom or never uses the word "as" to distinguish between Godhead and Manhood. Instead of saying He speaks here as God, and there as Man, the Spirit shows Him acting in His own unique Personality, always the same One glorious Person, the Son become a Man, the Word become flesh.
Scripture Calls the Crucified One "Lord of Glory"
Scripture itself uses divine titles for the One who was crucified. McBroom marshals the evidence:
Our_Incarnate_LordScripture says, "We were reconciled to God by the death of His Son" (Rom. 5:10). "God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh" (Rom. 8:3). The Lord of glory was crucified (1 Cor. 2:8). The Son has made purgation for sins (Heb. 1:3). And Paul has said, "The Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me" (Gal. 2:20).
F. B. Hole draws out the force of 1 Corinthians 2:8:
F. B. HoleWith all their earthly wisdom they crucified the Lord of glory. They put His title in three languages over His head: in Latin, the language of the military and governmental princes; in Greek, the language of the intellectual princes, and in Hebrew, the language of the religious princes. All were united, Jew and Gentile. Why did they crucify the Lord of glory? Because they did not know Him.
His Highest Glory Declared in the Hour of Death
F. B. Hole draws attention to a remarkable feature of Psalm 102, quoted in Hebrews 1:10-12. This psalm records the cry of the afflicted Messiah contemplating the cross — and precisely at that moment of deepest distress, God the Father salutes Him with the highest declaration of His deity:
F. B. HoleIn that great crisis, the most supreme of all in Messiah's history, He is saluted by Jehovah as "the Father of eternity." Higher and higher yet we soar. The Jesus who has endeared Himself to our hearts by dying is declared to be the Creator, the Sustainer, and the ultimate Finisher of all things. He is THE SAME. Here we reach a point beyond which it is impossible to go. The mind fails, and spiritual affections alone come to the rescue. When we can no further investigate we can worship.
Is it not most fitting that these exquisite words should be the utterance of God the Father to the Son in the hour of death? When Jesus had in self-denying love abased Himself to the lowest point, that just then He should be saluted by that which gives expression to the highest point of His glory.
He Laid Down His Life Voluntarily — As Only God Could
R. Evans, commenting on John 10:17-18, writes:
R. Evans"Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." Power, obedience, and love, all blended together. ... The Originator of life, He gave up life! Could heaven, with all its glories, present an occasion for anything like this?
No mere man has power to lay down his life and take it again. This is the act of one who is God — exercising divine sovereignty over death itself — and yet truly man, for only a man could die.
The Incarnation Makes This Possible
E. C. Hadley explains how the Son could enter into death without ceasing to be God:
E. C. HadleyThe emptying of Himself has to do only with the form He had. Emptying Himself of the outward majesty and glory of the Creator, having authority and never under command, He takes a servant's form and takes His place in the likeness of men to serve God and man in His obedience unto death. In doing this He in nowise gave up His essential deity or any quality or attribute of it nor did He divest Himself of His eternal and unchanging relationship in the Godhead. This He could not do.
F. B. Hole sums up the mystery with fitting reverence:
F. B. HoleWe hold no theory at all. Rather we hold that all theories on this sacred matter should be rigidly eschewed. The Lord's own words were, "No man knows the Son but the Father" (Matt. 11:27), and that being so it shows that there are depths of mystery about Him which the creature, however favoured and exalted, can never fathom.
So did God die? The answer requires both a "no" and a "yes," held together carefully.
No — death could not touch the Godhead. God in His divine nature is eternal, immortal, unchangeable. The divine nature did not die and could not die.
Yes — the Person who died on the cross is God. He is the eternal Son, the Lord of glory, the Creator of heaven and earth. He became man precisely so that He could die — but the One who died was not a mere man; He was God and Man in one indivisible Person. As McBroom puts it, "although God cannot die, He has in wondrous grace taken His own way to come right down into death."
This is not a contradiction but a mystery rooted in the Incarnation. The Son of God became what He was not — man — without ceasing to be what He always was — God. And it is precisely because the Person who died is God that the cross has infinite value. A merely human death could never have accomplished atonement. It required the Theanthropos — God and Man in one Person — to bear, on the side of man, the judgment due to man, and on the side of God, to give effect to all the eternal purposes of divine love.