# Jesus' communion with the Father - John 16:32 and Mt 27:46



## manito2000 (Oct 6, 2012)

I am trying to explain how Jesus can say "Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me" (Jn 16:32) and then on the cross cry out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46).

I need some help. In what way was Jesus forsaken? I am pretty sure it would be wrong to say that communion between two persons of the Trinity was broken. But on the other hand I'm having difficulty formulating a statement to reconcile why Jesus would say he was forsaken by the Father.


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## rbcbob (Oct 6, 2012)

There are many mysteries with regard to the God-Man, Christ Jesus. His theanthropic Person is exceedingly difficult to understand. One help in reading the passages referring to our Savior is to remember that whatever is predicated to Him in a given passage is always true of His Person, but may in a certain passage be speaking of either His deity or His humanity. But in any case it is true of His person because anything true of either nature is true of His person. It is true that He thirsted and was weary. It is true that He knew all things. It is true that he knew not the hour ... etc.


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## MarieP (Oct 6, 2012)

I'm reminded of a quote from Tozer: "Love and faith are at home in the mystery of the Godhead. Let reason kneel in reverence outside."


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## Gforce9 (Oct 6, 2012)

Pastor Armenta,
Take a look at the councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon, in particular. As well, J.N.D. Kelly's book on church history has helped me understand this a whole lot better. Chalcedon was very specific. Here is something I put together awhile back on Chalcedon:

The creed of Chalcedon defined clearly the two natures of Christ, with three very important points:
1. Truly man, truly God (vere homo, vere deus)
2. The four ‘negatives’ of the creed “…without confusion, without change (Monophysite), without division, without seperation (Nestorianism)…”
3. “…the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved…..”

All emphases added by me.





Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D)



Therefore, following the holy fathers, 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.


I believe the human nature perished on the cross and the divine nature was united to a corpse. Dr. Sinclair Ferguson has laid this out in a Ligonier conference in 2004 A Portrait of God.


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## Jerusalem Blade (Oct 6, 2012)

As the sin-bearer – upon whom the foulness, depravity, and God-murdering lust of satan-infested humankind was laid – it was incumbent upon God the Father to withdraw from this mass of iniquity and pour forth the wrath deserved. The humanity of Christ, the *man* Christ Jesus experienced this wrath and forsakenness. All His human life He had known intimate communion with His heavenly Father, but now . . . all sense of His loving presence was gone. He was forsaken with the eternal forsakenness due us.

His divine nature sustained the human during this sin-bearing and the punishment thereof. His divine nature – His Godhood – was not separated from the Father at any time. I think that during this time from Gethsemane to the cross Jesus Christ’s awareness increasingly was centered in His human nature, and not the divine, for it was in the human He was to suffer (but I must say that little creatures such as we cannot fathom what went on in His Person). Yet it was the divine nature that enabled Him to endure in the human nature the equivalent of the eternal suffering of all the elect. The infinite dignity of His Person gave infinite worth to His substitutionary suffering and death.

The turning away of the Father – the withdrawing – from the human, the *man* Christ Jesus during His atoning death, the abandoning of Him to suffer in our stead, this was what the humanity of Jesus experienced for the first time in His human life. It was the Hell of Hell to Him. He knew this so that we wouldn’t have to know it.

When He cried, “It is finished!” the atonement was accomplished, and He commended His spirit into the hands of His Father (Lk 23:46). He never lost faith during this ordeal; He ever stayed upon His God; even this cry of dereliction was the word of God in the Psalm – 22:1.

What a Saviour!

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Welcome to PB, Abraham.


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