It’s Holy Week, which means most Christians have their hearts turned toward Golgotha. There is so much confusion about one biblical passage that describes the crucifixion – the cry of dereliction, Jesus’ quotation of Psalm 22:1 from the cross. When we ask what it means for Jesus to say, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” we need to bear in mind a few parameters. In my view, any statement about it needs to be thoroughly Trinitarian, non-Nestorian, and Messianic. Here’s a brief explanation of what I mean. Surely someone else has done some of the heavy lifting here.

1. Trinitarian: Anything we say about the cry of dereliction needs to retain the oneness of the Godhead, both with respect to rejecting any ontological or relational division between Father and Son and with respect to affirming inseparable operations. The cross does not produce division between Father and Son, and it is not only the Father who acts in the crucifixion. It is appropriate to talk about the Father pouring out is wrath, but, according to the doctrine of appropriations, ascribing an action to one person of the Trinity does not deny that the other persons are acting inseparably. It is not only the Father that pours out wrath; the Son and the Spirit, as the other two persons of the one God, also pour out the one wrath of the one God.
2. Non-Nestorian: Anything we say about the cry of dereliction needs to retain the oneness of the person of Jesus Christ. He is one person with two natures, divine and human, and he goes to the cross as one person. In other words, the Son cannot die in virtue of his divinity, but by virtue of the hypostatic union we can also say that God dies on the cross in virtue of his humanity.
3. Messianic: Anything we say about the cry of dereliction needs to retain the covenantal and therefore relational unity between God and his Messiah. Psalm 22 is a lament psalm that ends with a confession of covenantal hope. Jesus in quoting Psalm 22 is doing so (most likely) metaleptically, i.e. quoting one line of the psalm but assuming its entire context. Jesus’ lament comes in a covenantal context, a context in which he is the Messianic Son chosen by YHWH to deliver his people Israel by suffering on their behalf. God pours out his wrath on Jesus, yes, but as his anointed Son who suffers in his people’s place.

None of these parameters deny penal substitution. I want to state clearly that I affirm penal substitution. Jesus bore the wrath of God that sinners deserve on the cross. But our description of how that happened – the crucifixion’s metaphysical mechanics , so to speak – need to fall within the parameters listed above.