Now from
the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And
about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema
sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And some of
the bystanders, hearing it, said, “This man is calling Elijah.” And one of them
at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed
and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether
Elijah will come to save him.” And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and
yielded up his spirit.
(Matthew 27:45-50 ESV)
A few years ago, while still a public high school teacher, I
used to do predawn parking lot duty with a colleague and friend of mine (he's
Baptist—we're on the same court, just on opposite sides of the net sometimes).
One morning he mentioned to me that he would be teaching a Sunday school class
on Easter, on a not-unrelated topic: Matthew 27:46 (Jesus cries out to God the
Father from the Cross). We got to talking about how God could have forsaken
Himself...
Hopefully, all Christians would agree that Jesus of
Nazareth, after suffering beatings, taunting, and other despicable forms of
humiliation at the hands of his accusers, was nailed to a cross by Roman soldiers
where he languished for 6 hours before finally crying out with a loud
voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (“My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me?”). He cried out once more and died.
So. Who died? Jesus the man? Jesus the
Messiah? God the Son? God Himself? God Himselves? None of the above? (One of
those answers was mine; no, not the last one...)
Lutherans are credal and confessional Christians; that is,
we confess what we believe to be the truth, whether from Scripture, our
Confessions (Book of Concord), or one of three Creeds agreed upon by the
majority of mainline Christian churches as statements of the basic tenets of
our faith. With regard to the question at hand, our Confessions,
specifically The Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord, Article
VIII. The Person of Christ, speak directly to the answer:
(42-43) And it’s so in reality; for you must certainly
answer this, that the person (meaning Christ) suffers and dies. Now the person
is true God; therefore it’s rightly said: The Son of God suffers. For although
the one part (to speak thus), namely, the divinity, does not suffer, yet the
person, which is God, suffers in the other part, namely, in His humanity; for
in truth God's Son has been crucified for us, that is, the person which is God.
For the person, the person, I say, was crucified according to the
humanity...Therefore we regard our Lord Christ as God and man in one person, so
that we neither confound the natures nor divide the person.
Understanding the two natures of Christ is daunting. We
(Lutherans) teach, and I believe, that on Good Friday God did suffer
in His humanity (as evidenced in Jesus' anguish in Gethsemane and his crying
out on the Cross) and that since God and man are united in one person, it’s
correctly called God's death, when the man dies who is one thing or one
person with God. Specifically HOW this could happen is beyond the scope of
human intellect.
My answer to the question was "God the Son died on the
Cross." At face value a good enough answer, but not
good enough at the time. God can’t die, but Jesus did. (Lutheran
professor Dr. Gene Veith puts it this way: “No, God the Father didn’t suffer,
but God the Son did. He did so by assuming a human nature, which made it
possible for Him to suffer and to die.”
Jesus had to die a human death in order to be resurrected from the dead.
This is why we celebrate Easter.
I believe in a loving God so powerful and so amazing that He
became one of us to save all of us from ourselves, and in the process He
demonstrated to us that He is not a God who inflicts suffering UPON the
creations He so loves, but actually suffered and died FOR them (in their place).
We have a God in Christ who knows what suffering and humiliation feels like on
a grand scale! Why, then, should we not believe that this same Jesus who died
on the Cross rose again, according to Scripture? This is why we celebrate
Easter. (See 1 Corinthians 15.)
What God did for us on Good Friday is truly unbelievable! It’s
horrible, but it’s awesome. It’s tough love on steroids. God died on
the Cross so that you and I might live. We don't have to understand it.
We just have to believe it.
This is why we celebrate Easter! Christ is risen, indeed!! Hallelujah!
With much love,
Pastor E.B.
