{"id":27881,"date":"2013-09-05T08:00:47","date_gmt":"2013-09-05T16:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redeeminggod.com\/?p=27881"},"modified":"2017-06-09T18:44:06","modified_gmt":"2017-06-10T01:44:06","slug":"god-knows-death-of-a-child","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redeeminggod.com\/god-knows-death-of-a-child\/","title":{"rendered":"God Knows What it is Like to Experience the Death of a Child"},"content":{"rendered":"
A reader recently sent in the following questions about the death of Jesus as the Son of God and how it affected God the Father. Specifically, they wanted to know if God knew what it was like to experience the death of a child. Here is the question:<\/p>\n
I am a believer, but I am troubled by an atheist’s questions. I was talking to an atheist the other day, and he said that God doesn’t know what it’s like to experience the death of a child because he knew all along that Jesus would rise in three days, so he only lost him for the weekend! He also questioned that if God is Jesus, why did he beg to be saved from the cross when he was in the garden? Also, shouldn’t Jesus already have known he would rise again in three days? Why did he ask God, “Why have you forsaken me?” Wouldn’t he know that he’s only going to be dead three days?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I am answering these questions over the course of four blog posts in the following order:<\/p>\n
\n
- How to Answer Questions of Atheists<\/a><\/li>\n
- 2 Traditional Explanations for How God knows what it is Like to Lose a Son<\/a> (both of which I reject)<\/li>\n
- 2 Ways God Knows What it is like to Experience the Death of a Child<\/li>\n
- Why did Jesus say, “My God, My God, Why have You forsaken Me?”<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
So in this post, I will look at two ways that God does indeed know what it is like to experience the death of a child, and in fact, knows better than we do what it is like.<\/p>\n
God Knows What it is Like to Experience the Death of a Child<\/h2>\n
I believe that God\u00a0does\u00a0<\/em>know what it is like to experience the death of a child. In fact, I believe that\u00a0God knows better than anyone else what it is like to lose a child. <\/p>\n
We can see this in at least two ways.<\/p>\n
1. When Jesus Became Sin, God’s Eternal Relationship with Jesus was Shattered<\/h3>\n
God did not experience the death of a child the same way that humans do. When Jesus died on the cross, it is true that God did not experience His death the same way that human parents experience the death of their son or daughter. But this does not mean that there was no loss on the part of God, that there was no pain, that there was no suffering.<\/p>\n
Quite to the contrary, it could be argued that in the death of Jesus, God experienced greater loss, greater pain, and greater suffering than do human parents. <\/p>\n
2 Corinthians 5:21 says that on the cross,\u00a0Jesus became sin for us<\/a>. He took our sin upon Himself. While it is nearly impossible to understand exactly how this happened or what occurred, we can know that whatever it means, it would have caused excruciating anguish and torment for both God the Father and God the Son. We have lived with sin our entire lives. We have become accustomed to it. We cannot imagine an existence without sin.<\/p>\n
But God is holy, righteous, and good. He is love and light. What then must it mean for Him to knew no sin to become sin for us? What must it have been like for God to see the holiness of His one and only son get exchanged (or covered, or extinguished, or whatever verb best fits with your theology of the atonement) with the totality of all sin ever committed by every human in the history of the world? We humans cannot\u00a0imagine the suffering<\/a>\u00a0and the torment that this must have caused.<\/p>\n