Did God Die On the Cross?
The famous hymn of the church “And Can it Be?” contains a chorus that asks a very emotional question: “Amazing love! How can it be that thou, my God, shouldst die for me?” Did God die? If Jesus was God, and Jesus died on the cross, does that mean God died?
The answer depends on how we understand the meaning of the word die. To die does not mean to go out of existence. Death is separation. Physical death is when the immaterial part of a person (soul/spirit) separates from the physical body.
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).
On the cross, the Son of God experienced death in and through his human nature, so that the person of the Son experienced a separation of his human body and soul. As a result, Christ’s human body was temporarily separated from him and put in the grave, while he, as the spirit of the Son, continued to exist in his human soul and in His divine nature as the Son of God.
It’s the God-man who died, but death is something that is experienced only by his human nature, because his divine nature isn’t capable of experiencing death. While his human spirit was separated from his body, his divine nature was separated from neither and never will be.
So, did God die on the cross? The short answer is yes and no, God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, experienced death in his human nature as the Son of Man. However, in His divine nature as the incarnated Christ, the Son of God, He did not die.
If the divine being of Christ ceased for one second, the universe would disappear because He is the creator and sustainer of it. (Colossians 1:16-17) It would pass out of existence, because nothing can exist apart from the sustaining power of God. If the divine nature of God dies, everything dies with him, and the Trinity is broken. But God is unchanging (immutable) and will never die, so what happened at the cross was that the human nature of God, His body was temporarily separated from His human soul while His divine nature continued to exist in both.
