The Cross and the Godhead

Start with a question When Jesus died on the cross, what exactly died? This is not a trivial question. The answer you give determines whether the gospel is a literal, historical rescue mission, or a theological metaphor.

The biblical data

Notice the precision of Scripture. Isaiah says His soul (His life, His person), not merely His physical body, was made an offering. And Hebrews 9:14 speaks of Christ "who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God." The death of Jesus was a divine, eternal sacrifice. It was the Son of God who died.

The Trinitarian dilemma

This is the standard Trinitarian answer. It attempts to protect the divine nature from the reality of death. But let us follow this logic to its end. If Jesus only died in His human nature, then the sacrifice on the cross was merely a human sacrifice. But a mere human sacrifice cannot save humanity. If a perfect human (like Adam before the fall) dies, he only pays the penalty for one human. He cannot impart eternal life to the entire human race. For the cross to have the power to save the world, the One dying must possess and offer divine life.

If the Trinity is true, and the divine nature could not die, then the cross becomes a theatrical performance. The divine Person stood by, watching His human body die, while His divine nature remained perfectly intact and immortal. The battle with sin, the agony of the cross, and the risk of death are reduced to a metaphor. But if the sacrifice is a metaphor, the gospel is a metaphor. And if the gospel is a metaphor, there is no salvation.

The biblical answer: The Son's received life According to what we have seen in Lessons 20 and 21, the Son has divine life, but it is received from the Father: "For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself." (John 5:26)

The Father alone "only hath immortality" in the original, underived sense (1 Timothy 6:16). The Son possesses that exact same immortal life, but He possesses it because the Father gave it to Him. Because the Son's life is a gift from the Father, the Son has the power to lay it down: "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. This commandment have I received of my Father." (John 10:17–18)

On this view, it was the literal Son of God who truly died. The Father did not die. The divine nature of the Son was not a shield that prevented Him from experiencing the full, agonizing reality of death. He truly ceased to exist in the grave. The sacrifice was real, the risk was real, and the death was absolute.

Who raised Jesus? The most common answer in Scripture is that the Father raised Him. "Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death." (Acts 2:24) "God hath raised him from the dead." (Acts 3:15; 4:10; 5:30; 10:40; 13:30; 17:31) "Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead)." (Galatians 1:1) The New Testament records this more than twenty times. The Father is the source of the resurrection power.

But the Bible also says other things: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." (John 2:19) "I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." (John 10:18) "If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you..." (Romans 8:11)

Look at how these verses work together. It is true that Jesus says He has power to take up His life. Both are in Scripture. A sound reading must hold them together:

1. The Father is named as the one who raised Him, more than twenty times.
2. The Son has the power to take His life again, but He explicitly says this is a command "I have received of my Father."
3. The Spirit is the agent of the resurrection (Romans 8:11).

So the Father is the source, and the Son is the agent. This is the exact same pattern we have seen all through the course: of whom and by whom. The Father gives the life, and the Son exercises it.

The Father's ultimate sacrifice We often think about what Jesus gave up on the cross. We weep for the Savior who was beaten and nailed to the tree. But we rarely pause to think about what it cost the Father.

Just ponder what sacrifice it was for the Father of love, to give up His only Begotten Son. We think of Jesus’ sacrifice for us, but do we think about the sacrifice of a Father and what He went through to save us? Just ponder this for a moment as a parent yourself.

"He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all..." (Romans 8:32)

If the Son is just a metaphor, or an eternally co-equal peer who never actually came from the Father, then the Father didn't really give anything. He just sent a colleague, or a mode of Himself. The cross is a staged event. But if the Son is the literal, begotten offspring of the Father—if He is the very life of the Father placed in the Father's own heart—then the cross was the ultimate, literal tearing apart of a divine family. The Father watched His own Son, the One in whom He had placed His very life, suffer the agonizing death of the cross. The Father gave His own Son. That is the love of God. That is not a metaphor. That is the literal, agonizing reality of the gospel.