If there are two central mysteries of Christianity, they are the Trinity and the incarnation. Although the councils of Nicaea and Constantinople ensured once and for all the church’s teaching on the Trinity, it left open the question of how to understand the personhood of Jesus. Put simply: If Jesus is God, then how can we “reconcile” Jesus’ divinity with his humanity?
Many modern-day Christians try to come up with their own answers. One popular explanation that has appeared in the past few decades is the idea that Jesus had to “give up” his divinity in order to become human (more on that later). What these Christians don’t realize is that the church has historically done all the hard work and heavy lifting for them. The result was the Chalcedonian Definition.
The Chalcedonian Definition, also known as the Chalcedonian Creed, was finalized at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D. It is the result of decades of debate and discussion on how to talk about Christ. Although its technical language might seem overwhelming at first, the gist of the Creed can be summed up like this: Jesus Christ is simultaneously fully God and fully man. He’s not 50% God and 50% man. He’s not 60/40 or 75/25. He is 100% God and 100% man at the same time. (Some Sunday school teachers put it in a cute manner by saying “He’s a 200% person!”).
Jesus is understood in Christian theology as one Person with two distinct natures fully divine and fully human united without mixture or division (hypostatic union). The divine nature is eternal, omniscient, and impassible, while the human nature is finite, experiencing weakness, growth, and death, yet both coexist in the single Person of Christ.
The distinction between the divine and human natures of Christ known as the Hypostatic Union is that Jesus is one Person (the Son of God) subsisting in two distinct, unconfused natures: He is fully God (eternal, omnipotent, omniscient) and fully man (finite, born of a woman, capable of suffering). His humanity includes a body, soul, and intellect, while His divinity maintains all divine attributes. The distinction is essential for salvation: as God, He had the power to save, and as man, He could represent humanity and die in their place. The human nature was not consumed by the divine.
“THEREFORE, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God bearer; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the fathers has handed down to us.”
In what specific sense can we say God died on the cross, is like asking did God really die?
Now, according to the distinction between the divine and human natures (as defined by the Council of Chalcedon), we can say God died on the cross in the specific sense that the divine Person (the Son of God) experienced death through his assumed human nature, without the divine nature itself dying or ceasing to exist.
To die does not mean to go out of existence. Death is separation. Physical death is when the soul-spirit separates from the physical body. So, in that sense, yes, God died, because Jesus was God in human form, and Jesus’ soul-spirit separated from His body (John 19:30). However, if by “death” we mean “a cessation of existence,” then, No, God did not die. For God to “die” in that sense would mean that He ceased to exist and neither the Father nor the Son nor the Holy Spirit will ever cease to exist. The Son, the second Person of the Trinity, left the body He temporarily inhabited on Earth, but His divine nature did not die, nor could it.
Jesus is truly God and truly man. His physical body did die; His heart stopped beating, and “he gave up his spirit” (Matthew 27:50). Just as our physical bodies will someday die, so did His. But as Jesus died physically, He remained alive spiritually. Jesus made good on His promise to the believing thief on the cross, He and the thief both went to paradise, not physically, but in spirit (Luke 23:43).
So, Jesus died physically on the cross, as was plain for all to see (John 19:34). But there is also the matter of spiritual death. When Jesus was hanging on the cross, He experienced death on our behalf. Even though He is God, He still had to suffer the agony of a temporary separation from the Father due to the sin He bore. After three hours of supernatural darkness, Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). So, could it be said that Jesus also “died” spiritually? Again, it was only His human nature that was separated from God, not His divine nature. God did not “die.”
The question for all people to ask is “what will happen to my soul/spirit when it leaves my physical body?” This is the most crucial question in life. As we saw with Jesus, our spirits will leave our bodies and travel on to somewhere else. We will either follow Him to heaven to spend eternity with Him, or we will go to hell to spend eternity in “outer darkness” where there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 8:12). There is no other option. Jesus’ death on the cross paid the way for all who would ever believe in Him so that we can know for sure where our spirits will reside for eternity. His death provided us spiritual life, both here and in heaven. “And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you” (Romans 8:11).
In saying that, we must acknowledge that the issue is complicated and must be dealt with without falling into the heresies that lie on all sides. So to do this, we must explain that God died on the cross with several biblical and theological caveats:
1. Remember the hypostatic union. Jesus Christ is two natures in one person; fully God and fully man. Forget this and you’ll run toward multiple age-old heresies, chief among them are those mentioned above. The hypostatic union is the term used to describe how God the Son, Jesus Christ, took on a human nature, yet remained fully God at the same time. Jesus always had been God (John 8:58, 10:30), but at the incarnation Jesus became a human being (John 1:14). The addition of the human nature to the divine nature is Jesus, the God-man. This is the hypostatic union, Jesus Christ, one Person, fully God and fully man.
Jesus’ two natures, human and divine, are inseparable. Jesus will forever be the God-man, fully God and fully human, two distinct natures in one Person. Jesus’ humanity and divinity are not mixed, but are united without loss of separate identity. Jesus sometimes operated with the limitations of humanity (John 4:6, 19:28) and other times in the power of His deity (John 11:43; Matthew 14:18-21). In both, Jesus’ actions were from His one Person. Jesus had two natures, but only one personality. It is impossible for us to fully understand how God works. We, as human beings with finite minds, should not expect to totally comprehend an infinite God. Jesus is God’s Son in that He was conceived by the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35). But that does not mean Jesus did not exist before He was conceived. Jesus has always existed (John 8:58, 10:30). When Jesus was conceived, He became a human being in addition to being God (John 1:1, 14).
2. His divine nature did not die or cease to exist. God the Son in his divine nature continued to exist and to sustain the universe. One person of the Trinity could not cease to exist for any time without indicating mutability (changeability) in God’s nature. Of course, we know that God is immutable and incapable of change, so it would certainly jeopardize fundamental affirmations about the doctrine of God to assert that the cross initiated a complete three-day loss of Trinitarian relations or the death of divine nature. There was no broken Trinity.
3. Relatedly, neither God the Father nor Holy Spirit died on the cross. The Trinity was not all of a sudden in disarray, confused, conflated, separated, or out of order. The Father sent the Son; he did not send himself. The Holy Spirit was active in the incarnation at conception, but did not himself put on flesh. So we need to dispel any notions of other Trinitarian persons dying on the cross.
4. The Son died according to his human nature but did not cease to exist. As with any human death, his body was separated from his soul/spirit, but his soul/spirit did not cease to exist. In his resurrection, the body and soul/spirit were rejoined, as will ours one day if we die before he returns, our bodies will be in the ground as we await the resurrection, but we will not cease to exist because our soul/spirit will be in/not in the presence of the Lord.
Further, the immortality of the soul is well attested both in biblical language the “perishable” body dies, but the soul/spirit is “with him in paradise today;” “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord;” “my soul will live with him;” etc. It is also well attested in the Christian tradition: Irenaeus, Tertullian, Athanasius, Cyril, Gregory of Nyssa, Chrysostom, Augustine, etc. all teach clearly that the soul is immortal. Why would the fully God/fully man Jesus Christ be any different? He is a unique human, but he is nonetheless fully and truly human. We need to account for this when discussing the death and burial of Christ.
5. Therefore, Jesus Christ the God-man truly died, but the hypostatic union of two natures was never separated, broken, or compromised. We affirm that Jesus Christ is the God-man, never ceased to be the God-man in his birth, never ceased to be the God-man in his death and resurrection, now stands ascended in Heaven as our mediator as the God-man, and will return one day as the God-man to join our souls/spirits to our resurrected bodies; therefore, we must affirm that God the Son died that day on Golgotha, but he in no way, shape, or form ceased to exist or experienced ontological separation from the Father (or Holy Spirit).
As mentioned above, human nature doesn’t cease to exist in death; rather, the body perishes but the soul/spirit lives to God. Jesus’s human nature like ours still existed in his death, because the soul/spirit is immortal and thus the human nature still lives in/not in the presence of God. If Jesus’s human nature died/ceased to exist for three days, this would indicate not only a death of his soul, but also a split in his person only half of Jesus would exist for three days while his body was in the tomb. We need to affirm, then, that the human soul/spirit of Jesus remained alive (thus, his nature did not die), but that he experienced a real human death like all of us: body in the ground, soul/spirit with the Lord. And his resurrected body, like ours one day, was raised imperishable and he now lives as the God-man who will never die again. Yes, indeed, God came and rescued us. God the Son substituted himself for us. He didn’t send a mere messenger. He didn’t sacrifice his nature or his character or his power. Instead, he himself put his nature, character, and power on full display on the cross, a victory chariot disguised a torture device.