The Crucified God

I have often pondered this phrase from Jurgen Moltmann. We must think that God has experienced / experiences grief or pain in some sort, even though he exists in undiminished blessedness. Surely it cannot be that this is so only in the human nature of Christ.

Donald McLeod writes on this topic and concludes...

Calvary was not an isolated moment of pain or pity in the experience of God. Its roots lay in the primaeval and permanent concern of God for his creation. The cross does not inaugurate that concern. But it does show how deep and passionate it is, and how far God was prepared to go.

In the last analysis that concern is triune, shared equally by the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, as the history of the cross (involving the Father, the Son and the eternal Spirit) clearly testifies. The agony of each is different, yet equally real. And the resulting understanding of human grief is as much a reality for God the Father and God the Holy Spirit as it is for God the Son. The trinity is touched with the feeling of our infirmities.

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