The Impossibility Paradox

If Jesus’s sacrifice was not for or to the Father, what then was the Father’s response to Jesus hanging on the tree? What was He doing?

We’ve been taught that Jesus became an embodiment of evil, and we have also been told that God cannot behold iniquity. Yet we forget the Father’s response to Adam and Eve’s rebellion: He sought them out and clothed them with a sacrifice.

There are debates about the degree of Jesus’ death: Was it complete (spirit and body) or partial (a simple disembodiment of His spirit)? These ideas, especially the details of his dying hours, seemed irrelevant, so irrelevant that many Christians never bother to examine their implications. But the moment we began to understand that the death and resurrection are the foundation upon which the Church is built—the very materials of its construction—theologians started paying closer attention to the accuracy of their interpretations.

We’ve argued through Scripture that Jesus was not sacrificed to the Father, and we’ve investigated to whom and for whom His sacrifice was made. But we must also ask: Who killed Jesus? And what role did the Godhead play in these events?

Our perspective on the Godhead’s reaction—or position—toward the Son on the cross will shape:

1. Our view of Jesus’s divinity,

2. Our expectations of the Godhead, if ever we get in the wrong,

3. His posture toward humanity in its fallen state,

4. And ultimately, the trustworthiness of the Godhead.

“Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” Matthew 27:46. in the texts of your English Bible breathes on you a warm, fuzzy air of confusion — hoping that contextually it gets better, only then are you dazed with a follow-up translation that does an even worse job. God himself screaming, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”.

For this material’s sake, we would (coin) call this situation The Impossibility Paradox (not to be confused with The Impossible Paradox). It describes a state in which a subject appears—or claims—to undergo an experience that, from an absolute perspective, is fundamentally impossible for them to endure, creating a dissonance between perception and inviolable truth.

So here’s the conundrum:

We have a situation where a God who is Three yet One cries out in agony, claiming part of Himself has forsaken him because he undertook an assignment he initially agreed with himself to undertake.

But if scriptures like “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” 2 Corinthians 5:19 exist, then it is evident that there is an explanation for or against this paradox.

But if we accept the Impossibility Paradox at face value—that the Father truly separated himself from the Son—then only two bleak options remain:

1. The Son knew the Father would abandon Him when He bore mankind’s sins, making His cry mere whining amid unbearable pain.

2. The Father betrayed the Son after their mutual agreement, prompting the Son’s cry of shattered trust.

Neither option is tenable for thinking beings. Because if any part of God can:

• Complain against His own plan,

• Or revoke His covenant mid-execution—

then humanity is toast. Burnt beyond recognition.

But perhaps the paradox isn’t an unsolvable contradiction but rather a misunderstood declaration. To understand the true nature of Christ’s cry, we must consider His words within the cultural and religious framework of His audience. Jesus—God the Christ in His earthly days—was born into the Jewish tribe. As the stewards of the Scripture, the Jews were entrusted with its truths. Jesus, being the Christ, was not only the subject of those Scriptures but was also obliged as a Jewish man to know them intimately—both the written Word and the oral traditions that accompanied them.

An important Jewish custom is the use of a title statement or title phrase to evoke an entire idea. A well-known example is the Shema from Deuteronomy 6. In fact, it’s called the Shema precisely because the declaration begins with the Hebrew word “Shema”, meaning “Hear.”

So that when a Jewish person stands before a Jewish crowd or instructs their children with the word “Shema,” the listener’s minds immediately recall the full passage—Deuteronomy 6:4 onward—and the truth it conveys.

And like all Mosaic Scripture, the Shema is, at its core, an instruction in the walk of love:
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one…”

This Jewish tradition serves as a powerful mnemonic device for Scripture memorization. Key phrases or sentences function like title statements, acting as mental triggers that instantly call to mind entire passages. When a speaker invokes one of these phrases—whether it’s the first verse, a pivotal line, or even a single word—the listener’s mind reflexively expands to encompass the full context of the referenced Scripture.

For example:

• A teacher says “Shema” (Deuteronomy 6:4), and the congregation mentally recites the entire covenantal declaration.

• A rabbi quotes “The Lord is my shepherd” (Psalm 23:1), and the hearer meditates on the whole psalm.

When Jesus cried "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?"—like nearly all His recorded statements—He was quoting Scripture, but in the Shema tradition, only that this time from Psalm 22.

Just as "Shema" invoked the entirety of Deuteronomy 6, Jesus’ words on the cross were meant to cast the minds of His hearers onto the full scope of Psalm 22, it was a direct message to any biblically literate Jewish observer present—who paid attention to the details of the events, though further down the chapter might require some deciphering. But the purpose of this material is not really to decode (the encoded parts of) Psalm 22 but to get us thinking and thinking scripturally.

There have been all sorts of arguments concerning who Jesus was addressing when he said “My God, My God”; Some say since the Father cannot forsake Him, it must have been someone else he was calling God. Others even seem to investigate further to say it must have been his trusted men who departed in his trying hours, using Psalm 8 “Ye are gods…” and John 10:34 to justify this interpretation.
But we need to be very aware that Jesus was not the original speaker in Psalm 22—it was David. Jesus quoted David. Though using David’s words and emotions, the Holy Spirit would paint some pictures He needed us to see. And Jesus, as a way of preaching a final pre-death message, turned our eyes to David’s sermon by screaming its title statement: *“Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?!”

*Let me break it down: David, in his inspiration, screamed and penned down his despair and emotional turmoil, and the Holy Spirit, at the same time, used David to give concrete physical details about what would eventually happen to Christ. And Jesus, as a means to direct us to examine more clearly, would point us toward David's account.

So, was David forsaken by God when he wrote Psalm 22? It can be proven from the Scriptures that he was not, but a plausible interpretation we can adopt - which, if we pay attention to the flow of the entire book of Psalms, we would see is true - is that he got emotional and prayed a desperate prayer to express his pains, so that David used language that suggests that God forsook him.

Was Jesus forsaken by the Father when he said the same words?

"Into your hands I commit my spirit" (Luke 23:46) provides our answer. I bet he wouldn't be committing his spirit into the hands of a Father that forsook him at his most vulnerable hour.

Again, the scream was not a personal lament; despite Jesus's pain being severely great, he used the words of another person who was once in severely great pain to introduce us to a deeper truth he wants us to investigate, which would have been an immediate signpost for any learned Jewish person present. The purpose behind Jesus's cry is the details of Psalm 22. We can say Jesus was not complaining; he was preaching.

I am tempted to go into the details of Psalm 22, but Luke 22:53 already opens our eyes to who killed Jesus. Men were approaching Jesus to arrest Him for crucifixion. Still, He addressed two entities: “But this is your hour, and the power of darkness.”

We could choose to do theological gymnastics to debate whether He was talking about:

1. The men themselves as “the power of darkness,” or

2. Men collaborating with “the power of darkness.”

Still, the Scriptures are replete with how both men and the power of darkness killed Jesus.

My favorite proof is Isaiah 53:3:
“He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and we hid, as it were, our faces from Him. He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.”

The scene mirrors what Cain did to Abel—despising him and his sacrifice. Like Cain, humanity did to Christ what we do to the righteous. Yet the same men, in verse 4, “...esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted”, saying that it is the way of natural men to accuse God of the death of his Christ. So, a mindset that thinks God killed Christ is a natural man’s mindset.

Another favorite says: “If the rulers of this world had known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8). So, just like the words of Jesus, man connived with the powers of this world in killing God.

It looks to me like man reliving his part again—conniving with God’s enemy to “hurt” God’s love for him. But we see God weave man’s salvation into the fabric of his hatred and betrayal so that at the end of the day, instead of man wearing damnation and shame as a cloak for his rebellion against God, God clothed him again with mercy—just as He did in the first garden.

"But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you..." (Romans 8:11). Paul, in his attempt to explain other facts to the Romans, casually throws into our hands the key that unlocks the door to the Trinity's participation in the Son's death and resurrection: "...just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father..." (Romans 6:4-5).

David, as usual, also had words to say: "For You will not leave my soul in Sheol, nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption" (Psalm 16:10). Acts 2 and Acts 13 give detailed explanations of this Scripture—how God raised Jesus from the dead.

You see, the Scriptures paint a picture here—one that quick assumptions have tainted black and blurry. But looking through the lenses Scripture provides, we see that whatever happened during Christ's death (as David foretold in Psalm 22), the Son was never alone. He and His Father were always one; He and His Father are still one.

Psalm 22:24 helps us see the Father's unshakable integrity toward His Son. Yes, that same Psalm 22! Hell, sin, and death were not powerful enough to separate the Godhead. And "you are now complete in the Son, who is above all principalities and powers" (Colossians 2:10).

Again: "For in Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And you have your completion in Him, who is the head of all principality and power. In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ" (Colossians 2:9-11).

If, according to the prophets' promises, the Holy One would not be abandoned—and the Father ensured this (as we've seen in the fulfillments)—then we can trust a Father who, together with the Son, gave humanity the perfect sacrifice of peace.