Thought of the Day 04.08.09

When I think about Christ’s crucifixion, I tend to think of Jesus as the obedient child suffering the unimaginable pain of being completely rejected by a Father Whose perfect love is all He’s known for all of eternity.

And sometimes as I focus on this part of the event, I find myself picturing God the Father almost as a sort of overbearing tyrant throwing thunderbolts at Jesus and exacting every last bit of punishment necessary from Him.

But as any parent who reads the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac knows, the anguish Abraham must have felt for what he was being asked to do must have been just crushing. If so, then it stands to reason that Jesus wasn’t the only One suffering on the Cross.

We might do well during this Holy Week to consider the awesome suffering of the Father both during the crucifixion and also during the separation from His cherished Son which followed it.
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If Jesus was rejected by God in this moment of crucifixion, he was thus separated from God's love. That's why this was so unbearable to Jesus right? Well, isn't Jesus also God? If he was separated from God (and thus God's love) during the crucifixion, couldn't he just appeal to his own repository of love (as he himself is God)? If not, was Jesus, for some period of time, not actually God, but fully man?

April 10, 2009 at 8:42 PM
Andrew Tallman said...

That's a wonderful question. I hesitate to answer only because I'm sure there's been significant discussion of this over the course of time, a tradition of which I'm just unaware. My inclination is to say that he was indeed fully man at that moment, hence deprived both of the love of the Father but also of even His own Godliness. But I say that with hesitation given some of the fairly obvious follow-up questions: what exactly happened to the Son portion of God if so? In what sense is it possible for such a separation to even occur?

Even as I give my hesitant answer, I also am inclined to say that such things are so mysterious that I don't comprehend them, like so much of the metaphysics of the resurrection and of salvation, quite frankly.

But I love the question, nonetheless. Perhaps we'll discuss it on the show. Thanks.

April 14, 2009 at 1:26 PM

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