“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The cry of dereliction is one of the deepest and most controversial verses in the Scriptures. What does it mean? And what happened to the Trinity at the cry? Christ’s forsakenness was not just poetic language, and so it raises profound challenges for our understanding of salvation and of who God is. You’ve probably thought about these questions before. The strange thing is that this cry of dereliction only appears three times in the Bible. Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34 mention it as the only saying of Christ they record from the cross, and it is a quote from Psalm 22:1. Otherwise, the cry is not explicitly mentioned anywhere else in the Bible. At the cry of dereliction, the Son was truly forsaken by the Father—but only in his human nature, not in his divinity. This is the historic orthodox understanding of the cry, but to grasp what it means, we need to understand more about the Trinity, the incarnation, and the difference between person and nature. One of the Trinity Became One of Us We should always start with what is clear and foundational in Scripture to interpret what is unclear. So we start with the foundations of God and the incarnation. We will follow the teaching of Scripture distilled in the creeds, particularly Chalcedon (AD 451). There is one God (Deut. 6:4). He is simple (not made of parts, Ex. 3:14), immutable (unchangeable, James 1:17), impassible (cannot suffer, Mal. 3:6), and eternal (not bound by time, Deut. 33:27). The one God exists in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father is God (Eph. 1:3), the Son is God (2 Pet. 1:1), and the Holy Spirit is God (Acts 5:3–4). These three persons are the one God. The Son was truly forsaken by the Father—but only in his human nature, not in his divinity. Then we turn to the incarnation. God the Son took human nature into union with his divine nature. One person in two natures (Phil. 2:6–8). Lastly, we come to the cross and the cry of dereliction spoken by the incarnate Son to his Father. A beautiful continuity is evident in the progression from the Trinity (one God in three persons) to the incarnation (one person in two natures). The progression gives us clues about how to understand the cry. God the Son was truly forsaken by the Father at the cross, but the forsakenness was limited to the Son’s humanity in the incarnation. Let’s break down this statement and see how it works out in the Gospels. ‘What-ness’ and ‘Who-ness’ We’ve talked about persons and natures, but what is the difference? This question affects our understanding of the Trinity (one God in three persons), the incarnation (one person in two natures, human and divine), and the doctrine of humanity. We’ll give brief definitions, then apply them. To keep things simple, we can say that a nature is the “what-ness” of a thing. A person is much trickier to define, but again we’ll keep it simple by saying that a person is a unique and relational way of being a nature. We can say that nature is the answer to the question “what?” whereas person is the answer to the question “who?” In the Trinity, the divine nature is the “God-ness” of God; it’s what makes God God. The triune persons are unique and relational ways of being the divine nature. That is, God exists simultaneously and permanently as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the incarnation, the Son, who is a unique and relational way of being God, takes human nature into union with himself. For us, our nature is human, and you and I are unique and relational ways of being human. Can God Eat Bread? How does the difference between person and nature in the Trinity and the incarnation apply to what we read about the Lord Jesus in the Gospels? When Jesus ate bread with his disciples, what was really going on? Was the divine nature eating? No. Why not? Because the divine nature doesn’t have a body; he is Spirit (John 4:24). But we’ve already seen that God the Son took on human nature in the incarnation and became human. Now the question is much simpler. Was the divine nature eating? No, instead, God the Son was eating according to his human nature. But sometimes, like in some of the miracles and the transfiguration, we clearly see glimpses of Christ’s divinity. It is clearer when we think about our own experience. When I eat bread, what’s happening? We don’t say, “My body is eating bread.” We just say, “I am eating bread.” This makes sense because I as a person have a nature; I am human (one person in one nature). It is meaningless to speak of a person eating without a nature (“I am eating but my body isn’t involved”) or of a nature eating without a person (“My body is eating but I am not involved”). I eat in my human nature. The same straightforward logic applies when we think about the incarnation. It is just more challenging because Jesus is one person in two natures; he is fully God and fully man. There’s no contradiction here, nor is there paradox. But it is deeply mysterious. We can summarize by saying that whatever happens to either Christ’s human or divine natures happens to the person. It’s incredibly important here to emphasize the full unity of Christ. We can’t separate or divide his two natures, nor can we confuse or mix them together. If we do, we end up in dangerous heresy that compromises the gospel. The Lord Jesus Christ is the one God-man, the one and only begotten Son of God incarnate. Forsaken as One of Us Now we can come back to the cry of dereliction, and hopefully you can see where we’re going. When Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” he meant it. He was left undefended against all the torturous physical pain, the forces of darkness, and the wrath of God at our sin. Unlike at Christ’s baptism and transfiguration (Matt. 3:17; 17:5), there was now no comforting voice from heaven. Whatever happens to either Christ’s human or divine natures happens to the person. We can say more, though. God the Son was forsaken—left undefended against the wrath of God but only according to his human nature. The apostle Peter perfectly captures this: “‘He himself bore our sins’ in his body on the cross” (1 Pet. 2:24). It was truly the Son who was forsaken, but in his body. The divine nature was not forsaken, nor did it die. But the Son was forsaken and the Son died in his human nature. When we understand the cry of dereliction this way, we uphold the clear teaching of Scripture and the creeds that God cannot suffer, but we also do justice to the strength of Christ’s words from the cross. We maintain the perfect, unbreakable unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and we can see that the Son was truly forsaken by the Father—but only according to his humanity (Heb. 2:14–17). The distinction between persons and nature in the Trinity is crucial. Without it, we cannot avoid forsakenness and death creeping into the divine nature itself, even if we say Christ was forsaken according to his humanity. To reach this conclusion, we’ve followed an important and historic logical path. Classic historic orthodoxy always starts with the foundation in the doctrine of God, the Trinity, and builds up to the work of Christ on the cross. This is the order of the creeds. If we work the other way around, we distort the biblical doctrine of God by focusing it through the prism of human suffering. God can’t suffer or change as God, and this is where we find hope in the face of suffering. The impassible God in the person of the Son took on human nature and bled and was forsaken and died for us and for our salvation. In this great salvation, the perfect triune God dwells in us by the Holy Spirit. We’re not forsaken; we’re taken up into the love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.