The Cry: Exploring the Mystery
On the cross, Jesus was suffering intensely. But so was the Father. God was in Christ, consequently, “the omnipotent God suffered with His Son.”—Ellen G. White, The Upward Look, p. 223. One could even say that “God Himself was crucified with Christ; for Christ was one with the Father.”—Ellen G. White in Signs of the Times, March 26, 1894. What was the nature of the suffering experienced by the Godhead that caused Christ to ask, “ ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ ” (Matt. 27:46, NIV)
How do you understand Jesus’ cry in that verse?
On the cross God experienced something He had never before experienced: The penalty for sin. “It was necessary for the awful darkness to gather about His soul because of the withdrawal of the Father’s love and favor; for He was standing in the sinner’s place. . . . The righteous One must suffer the condemnation and wrath of God, not in vindictiveness; for the heart of God yearned with greatest sorrow when His Son, the guiltless, was suffering the penalty of sin. This sundering of the divine powers will never again occur throughout the eternal ages.”—Ellen G. White Comments, The SDA Bible Commentary, vol. 7, p. 924.
This statement indicates, first, that the Father withdrew His love from the Son not because He did not love Him but because Jesus was dying in our place. There was no one available to mediate God’s love to His Son! Second, there was no vindictiveness in the heart of the Father as His Son was dying for the sins of the world. He did not rejoice in the death of the Son, but was suffering with Him. Third, the real penalty God paid for our sins was “the sundering of the divine powers.” Ellen White is taking us inside the mystery of the relationships between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, describing for us what the Godhead underwent as Jesus was on the cross. The verb to sunder means “to break or force apart.” That which should have remained united was torn apart.
In short, through Christ’s sacrifice the Godhead was accepting responsibility for the world’s sins and, more so, the Godhead was suffering the consequences of these sins. Could it be that the Godhead, who cannot die, felt in a unique way—through the temporary sundering of the divine powers—the full intensity of the eternal death of the fallen race, through the temporal exclusion of the Son from the unity of the Godhead? The plan of salvation, the atonement, pulled the Trinity apart but momentarily. This experience of extreme “pain” within the Godhead took place only once and will never occur again.
That’s what our salvation cost.
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