08/04/2026
Did God die on Good Friday?
There are many different opinions circulating the internet on whether God truly died. Some are saying that it is impossible for God to die literally because of the immortality of His divine nature. So did God truly die?
The Catechism of the Council of Trent states that, "... these words present for our belief that Jesus Christ, after He was crucified, really died and was buried. It is not without just reason that this is proposed to the faithful as a separate object of belief, since there were some who denied His death upon the cross."
Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Triune God, as we have come to believe and confess, is both fully man and fully God - having two natures, that of human and of divine. These two natures are present in the one divine person of Jesus Christ, in a way that does not compete with one another; one nature does not overcome the other, nor does one diminish while the other magnifies. His two natures are distinct, yet united in a state we call hypostatic union. In this union, both natures exist wholly and perfectly in one substance and in the one person of Jesus Christ. And these two natures cannot be separated or divided at any point in time (remember this).
This is why when the person of Jesus felt hungry, God felt hungry. When the person of Jesus cried, God cried. When the person of Jesus laughed, God laughed. And when the person of Jesus suffered and died, God also suffered and died. God experienced what it felt like to be us - he became like us and became one with us. God knows our pains and sufferings, because He experienced it all through the person of Jesus Christ.
Moreover, it cannot be that Jesus, while on the cross, only died in his humanity, while his divinity remained (remember that the two natures cannot be separated or divided at any point in time - including Jesus' death on the cross). God died, in every sense of the word, so that salvation can have infinite value - so infinite that it can redeem those who have died in the past, those who die in the present, and those who will die in the future. Our sins have separated us from God in an unimaginably harrowing way that the only means for us to return home to the Father is through God amending our broken relationship Himself.
So God truly died for you, for me, for all of us - so we can find our way back home into the arms of the Father, once again.