Which Jesus died or in what sense did Jesus ("God") die for our sins

Question

Jesus is "fully God" & "fully man". Jesus (the man) is made up of body+spirit(+soul). Jesus (God) is a spirit.

Which of these "natures" died for us, considering that:

1. Jesus (divine/God) does not die. So (divine) Jesus did not die.

2. The Soul+spirit of Jesus ("fully man") did not die. Our spirits do not "die" with our bodies & Jesus (man) was sinless (his soul was fine)

3. The body of Jesus ("fully man") is just a vessel/container without life of its own (when the "immortal" spirit is taken out).

NOTES/EDITS: My question goes beyond just the issue of whether Jesus as a human can die and still be God. I "consider" the "two persons/natures" ("fully God" and "fully man") to understand not whether God can die, but even in what sense Jesus (fully man") died; given that his spirit and soul never died, and his physical (human) body never had a life of its own separate from the human spirit.

Answer 1

In the Bible, there is only one Jesus. To help us identify this one, the New Testament says a lot about the man who died on the cross and was resurrected. The relevant information that will answer the question can be briefly summed up as follows.

Before the virgin Mary miraculously conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, there was the eternal Word of God, who was with God in the beginning, and who was God, and who made everything. The Word was made flesh, and those he called to follow him as the man, Jesus, beheld his glory, that of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. They declared him to be the Son of God (as did the Father in heaven). This is essential to grasp before the question can be answered. This is all in the opening section of John's gospel.

The Word becoming flesh as the man, Jesus, did not result in two Jesus's. There was no New Testament Jesus known as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the word prior to the Word leaving heaven. The biblical Jesus did not exist until the incarnation of the Word of God - the eternal Son of God. The Son added human nature to his eternally existing divine nature. He was not, however, 50/50. He was fully God and fully man. That is what orthodoxly Christian teaching maintains. To quote from a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, USA in a recent article:

"Only the Son became incarnate, but he was sent by the Father, conceived by the Spirit. On the cross the Son offered himself through the eternal Spirit to the Father...

The incarnate Son, however, also has a human nature and human will while still being one Person and one agent. He is both fully divine and fully human, not 50/50... It follows from the discussions on the Trinity. If Christ were two persons, there would have been no incarnation, only an association or at best a conjunction. We could not have been saved since the human actions of the Son would be those of a man only... some of his actions are human ones (eating, drinking, suffering, dying...) but since he is one undivided person they are not to be seen as detached from who he is, the eternal Son.

Thus, as Cyril wrote (adopted and approved by the councils of Ephesus, Chalcedon, Constantinople II and III from 431 to 681), one of the Trinity suffered according to the flesh. God cannot die or be buried, but the Son of God died and was buried according to his human nature." Robert Letham in Evangelical Times Newspaper, August 2024, page 11, responding to a letter.

This is not about spirit, soul and body with regard to the man, Jesus. The answer to the question lies in discovering the significance of the opening section of John's gospel account - the pre-human, eternal existence in heavenly glory before creation started. Once that is grasped, it will be seen that this one - the Word - agreed to be sent to Earth as the man named from birth as Jesus. He added human nature to his divine nature so that actual blood could be shed in the only sinless sacrifice for sin there has ever been, for "Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins" God's word declares. That is the Jesus who died - the one and only Jesus of the New Testament, raised to life with a glorious body, to return to where he had come from.

EDIT to respond to OPs comments below and above: There is a need to further clarify the claim that Christ is one person (not two), so as to understand in what sense Jesus (as God) died, if his spirit/soul never died; only his physical body did, yet how could his body never have a life of its own separate from the human spirit? This is why fully understanding the nephesh of man is vital. I will quote a few points from the book below, but as it takes 123 pages to explain Jesus as the Son of Man, I can only give a tit-bit.

"Nephesh, itself, is translated: soul, life, heart, creature, mind, pleasure, will or desire; and many more. Clearly it conveys a very broad concept of that which is within. Not of different nature from that which encloses it, as nepheth shows; but that which is, potentially, a different possession. Thinking of Ezekiel 18:4, I would say that men, such as progenitors, may have some claim to that of us which is created and material but there is that within us which is also created but that is the possession of God himself and to him it shall, most definitely return...

Finally, nacham is the releasing of oneself. One's real self is released in a context were one had been, heretofore, unable to express one's true self and one's real purpose and one's true disposition ["his glory veiled"]. Due to some change of circumstance, one is no longer restricted and one's real self is released. Coming forth...

In fact, the Lord had been able to nacham consequent upon the transgression of Saul. Released to do that which was in his own heart (for David was a man after God's heart) the Lord would remain constant to that which he, ever, was, within himself. Saul's outward transgression revealed his unseen state of heart and released God to do what was in his own heart - by means of the man, David, whose heart was as the heart of God.

For the constancy of the Lord is a consistency with his own self. He does nothing that is in conflict with what he is, by nature. Here is his righteousness; a matter of his nature. I am that I am. His living is consistent with that he is. Righteousness may require that he restrain that which is his ultimate purpose, until circumstance permit it. Then he shall do what is truly consistent to himself. He shall nacham. But he shall not release himself from just obligation, as men do...

In like manner waits the Son of man now, until he is given authority. Immediately he receives it, he shall dash the nations in pieces as with a rod of iron shattering earthenware into shivers. As God bore long in this age with men in the antediluvian age, until, in Noah, he could nacham; so also the Father bears long in this age until all things be accomplished and then shall the Son of man do all that is in the heart of God, to the fulfilment of all things...

After death, the blood of Christ was poured out on earth; it redeemed many when it was shed; it justified many, out of the faith of the one who shed it; it was sprinkled in heaven, by him whose it was; it is drunk in faith, in spirit; the blood of Christ washes and the blood of Christ cleanses all who partake of it, by faith.

F) His Soul - Jesus speaks of his psuche on a number of occasions, but sometimes the AV gives 'life' and sometimes 'soul'... Of the last Adam [Christ] ...He is uncreated, a quickening spirit, zoe pneuma, 1 Corinthians 15:45, but without the italics of the AV which have no place on earth. This as to what he is, of everlasting. Come of woman, his living spirit is expressed through a psuche and of that psuche he speaks. There is no need, logically or etymologically, to say any more of that soul. It is a soul. To add another descriptive term to it (and I absolutely refuse to do so) implies that other kinds of souls exist, which they do not. A soul is a soul. That is what it is...

G] His Spirit - ...Luke 23:46. After saying, Father, into thy hands I will commit my spirit, voluntarily he expneuma." The Son - of man, Nigel Johnstone, pages 27, 30-31, 83 & 87, Belmont, 2014

Alas, it needs many more points from this book to properly answer the question. Having read all of it myself, I can only urge reading of it on-line at the link below, or order a free copy. But this subject is so complex, it just is not possible to do justice to this complex question without in-depth study. Studying all 123 pages here would greatly assist. https://belmontpublications.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/10A-The-Son-of-man.pdf

Answer 2

First, it's important to conceptualize Jesus's death properly. Who died? Jesus Christ the Son of God. How did he die? Through his human nature. The rest of this answer tries to flesh this out in more detail.

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You have a good question to try to understand Jesus's death in light of the dual natures of Christ, which according to orthodox Chalcedonian Trinitarians is 100% man and 100% God, or more precisely 100% Word, the Word being one of the 3 "persons" of the Trinity, the Word who is Spirit as much as the other 2 (the Father, and the Holy Spirit) are Spirit. As @Anne's answer points pout, only the Word took on flesh (this is the 100% man aspect of the Chalcedonian definition), flesh that can die and be resurrected, precisely the same as our own nature as a human being who will die and could be resurrected by God.

Let's process this dual natures further. To my understanding (which can be inaccurate, until I can back it up with a good orthodox theology book):

• Jesus's human nature consists of an immaterial soul just like our own human nature consists of an immaterial soul, in addition to our obvious flesh and blood. It is critically important to understand that this soul IS NOT the same as the Spirit of God, Jesus's divine nature.

• As God incarnate, Jesus can operate in his human nature, his divine nature, or both, but without confusion (per Chalcedonian definition). See this 12 minute video excellent explanation by Eleonore Stump.

You asked which of these natures died for us, but this is a misleading question since the Who is singular (Jesus is a divine person who is also human) but it's in the How that we can understand Jesus's death "through" / "in" his human nature. To my understanding (which again, subject to correction) Jesus died in his human nature for us. Jesus cannot die in his divine nature because if He did, then God the Father died, and consequently: 1) there would not be Being who would sustain the universe, 2) no Being who resurrected Jesus in his human nature, and 3) no Being who would give Jesus a glorified body. The good thing about this conception is that:

• this allows the Trinitarian God (in all 3 persons) to fully experience human death through what Jesus experienced in his human nature, thus we humans can feel understood in our fragility and also feel that God is fully with us in solidarity through Jesus.

• this gives us hope to also be resurrected into glory like Jesus in his human nature, for those united with Him through baptism, sharing in His divine sonship.

In a lecture Christ and the Sharing of Divine Communion in Cyril of Alexandria, Dr. Fairbairn said (minute 26:05) that Cyril worked out 4 different aspects of Divine Sonship:

1. Generative Sonship
2. Identity of Substance
3. Status: legal right to inherit
4. Relationship: intimate personal communion

The first two (which we do NOT share) belong to Christ in virtue of his divine nature, of the same substance as the Father (#2) and also eternally generated by the Father (#1) understood in the Trinitarian way as an immanent procession within the Godhead (see Bishop Barron's excellent explanation here). The last two (which baptized Christians DO share because we are united with Christ) belong to Christ in virtue of his human nature, and the Bible talks a lot of how we can share these 2 aspects of divine sonship.

Finally, to answer your 3 questions:

1. Correct

2. Incorrect. Jesus's human soul did die. Jesus was truly dead, body and soul. Our human soul will ALSO die along with our body. But God maintains our soul's configuration in His mind (so in this sense, our soul does not perish). So for those who are destined to heaven, God will provide a glorified soul+body when we are resurrected with our identity maintained solely because God has our identity-configuration in His mind out of His love for us (we understand this by analogy: the way our beloved are in our minds because we choose to). Jesus was the first who was glorified, so his glorified soul and body is already in heaven "waiting" to come back again to judge us at the Second Coming. In this sense, Jesus can also be present in his human nature in the Eucharist.

   The language of the Bible supports this. We need to be careful not to inject Plato's dualism or modern Descartes's dualism into our thinking. The Biblical concept of man is that we are dust with the immaterial (but not eternal) soul breathed to us by God, but hylomorphically united as a SINGLE entity enduring the same fate. It's this God-breathed soul/spirit which animates the body making us "rational animal" with conscience and capacity to commune with God. When Jesus died on the cross, the Bible described the event in Matt 27:50 as "Jesus shouted again with a loud voice and gave up His spirit", the word "spirit" here is NOT the divine spirit, but the human spirit we moderns normally call "soul".

3. The one who is immortal is the Spirit of God. Jesus's human soul, like our souls, remain alive only because God sustains it as part of Creation, but not part of God's Essence. In using the word "part" I have to be careful in my language here, so I would not commit the Nestorian heresy.

   The way I can be careful in my thinking is to think Jesus's incarnation as a temporal effect of God's eternal existence from a separate realm, thus maintaining the unity of ONE person possessing two natures. As temporal effect, it is consistent to maintain that when Jesus died, the temporal effect died, just as we temporal beings cease to exist when we die. Like Jesus existing in our human nature, we are fully dependent on God for our existence and resurrection.

Answer 3

God can’t suffer in essence yet in a mysterious way through love he does suffer in that he sent his son as a loss to himself in love. It may be that he can’t suffer yet as children that can’t understand God, he stoops to our language and necessarily needs to make some contradictions to our limited perceptions, in order that we can understand him to our greatest ability which surpasses reason by faith. So we can say in what sense something the scripture is true? It is true to the sense that it agrees with other scriptures and not true where in some sense it does not. How else can we interpret scripture with scripture?

Principally it was needed that Christ’s human nature take the penalty of human sin, and this meant not only suffering under the punishment of sin in his soul and in the greater sense dying in being in a mysterious way separated from God, but suffering in his death literally that is the separation of his soul from body. In the greater sense of death, death does not mean destruction otherwise devils would be non existent.

As God-man a unique person or subsistence exists with various phenomena made known to us proving the underlying reality. Yet this union does not destroy any of God’s eternal unchanging attributes or his human attributes. This union means we can say Jesus existed when Abraham lived but that only makes sense in reference to his divinity, as he was not existing with respect to his human nature until born of Mary. Whenever we refer to one of his natures we refer to both of them yet the activity may only really be true principally with respect to his divinity or his humanity. When we notice Jesus not knowing something in the gospels until he is told or as a human or needing his diapers changed, we can say God needed his diapers changed but we are really just referring principally to his humanity. We can say Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead but Christ’s human nature did not really raise him, it was his divine nature that did so, unless we simply mean it was coordinated through his human voice and so principally through his divine nature but actually through his humanity. In either case, we know human nature has no ability to raise the dead, so practically speaking although we can’t refer to Christ exclusively as one nature or the other, only the mystery of both united into one person, some things are principally intended to be related to one nature or the other, in his mysterious and unfathomable person.

Christ died in his humanity to pay for human sin. He suffered in soul under inexpressible death and in agonizing physical death. In a mysterious way even the eternal Son and Father may have suffered while yet undergoing no change in their eternal happiness and impossible for our tiny minds to comprehend what this means. Christ’s divinity was necessary to bear the death without dying and make the human death capable as being a substitute for all mankind.

So in answer to the main question, which Jesus died?

1. His flesh died for the sins of humans literally, as a substitutionary sacrifice, bloody, prolonged and resulting in literal death, the separation of his soul from his body

2. His soul suffered death, not in the sense of death as a literal destruction of body but in a mysterious way bearing up under the punishment for sin that mere physical death could never make satisfaction for.

3. The divine Son suffered punishment, or bore up under our death and in some mystical sense may be said to suffer, though his divine essence can’t really suffer or die. This is a great mystery that in some sense the Son was separated from the Father, or that the Father forsook his Son as he cried out ‘Why has thou forsaken me’. Matt 27:46. This was also some mystical suffering of the Father who loved us so much that he gave his Son to die for us. John 3:16

In other words it was the whole Christ that died for us. His humanity to pay for human sin, as a substitute, his divinity to survive it and resurrect his humanity saving all who have faith in him.

Answer 4

Genesis 2:7 (KJV): “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (ruakh, רוח); and man became a living soul (nephesh, נפש).”

I’d recommend a word study on the Hebrew words nephesh and ruakh, the words used in Genesis to describe the creation of man.

They’re often translated as soul but this is the influence of platonic and socratic thought.

To see this for yourself you can scroll to the bottom of strongs concordance and start reading the 754 occurrences (Englishman’s Concordance section) of the word I believe you’ll come to see that the word more correctly means body NOT soul.

Even if you only read a dozen of the use of nephesh in context you’ll see that animals are also called nephesh (implication if this means soul is they have souls), nephesh can die from physical harm, you nephesh can be saved if you escape physical harm, and more. These are clearly incompatible with our modern concepts of a soul.

With that understanding is less complicated to see that Jesus lost his nephesh (physical body). He didn’t have a human soul, he was a human soul, but in the truest sense of the word: We are entirely human (physical beings). He is both a spiritual and physical being.

Answer 5

Incarnation and Hypostatic Union

You are confusing the incarnation of Christ to have two persons (God and man) merged. This was one major controversy in the 5th century, to describe the incarnation with respect to his human nature. There was only one person with dual nature, the divine person united in the human nature having the rational human soul which is essential for humanity. He did not use the human nature as a vessel which would be a truncated human nature, but he was truly human.

Key Differences:

• Nature of Christ: Monophysitism asserts one nature after the incarnation, while Dyophysitism asserts two distinct natures.
• Council of Chalcedon: Monophysitism was rejected at Chalcedon, while Dyophysitism was affirmed as orthodox doctrine.
• Theological Implications: Monophysitism tends to emphasize the unity of Christ's person at the expense of his human nature, whereas Dyophysitism seeks to preserve the full integrity of both his divine and human natures.

In summary, Monophysite Christology posits that Christ has one nature, primarily divine, while Dyophysite Christology, affirmed by the Council of Chalcedon, teaches that Christ has two distinct natures, divine and human, in one person. This Christology link would be helpful for details.

It was Nestorius, however, who became most associated with the Dyophysite Christology and the heresy that was named after Nestorius, called Nestorianism. Nestorius was the patriarch of the city of Constantinople, and he came to be associated (whether this is fair or not is a matter of debate) with the view that there are two persons in Christ – a divine person and a human person. Nestorius, like Theodore, affirmed that there are two complete natures in Christ. Therefore, he objected strenuously to Mary’s being called theotokos, which means “the bearer” or “mother” of God. Mary, in Catholic piety of that time, was being called “the mother of God” or “the God-bearer,” and Nestorius protested against this. He said that Mary only bore the man Jesus, the human nature of Christ, in her womb. But she did not bear the divine Logos – she didn’t give birth to God – and therefore it is grossly misleading to call Mary “the mother of God” because she did not bear the Logos. She bore the human nature of Christ. What was formed in her womb, was crucified, died on the cross and buried, was not God; rather, it was the human nature of Christ. He is called God because of the divinity of the Logos who assumed him. So, in Nestorianism, you have this split of the person of Christ into two persons. As I say, it is debatable whether Nestorius actually believed that or not; but that is what the heresy of Nestorianism is – there are two persons in Christ.

Nestorianism was condemned in the year 431 at the Council of Ephesus. The fundamental flaw that its critics saw in Nestorianism is that it doesn’t posit any real union between God and man in Christ. Rather, you just have a sort of juxtaposition, like two boards that are glued together but don’t really become one thing. So there really isn’t an intimate union of God and man in Christ. You just have them next to each other, so to speak, and therefore this is at best an indwelling of God in the human man, Jesus.2 It is not an incarnation; it is a mere indwelling. And that isn’t sufficient for a genuine doctrine of the incarnation.

Nestorianism did not die out with its condemnation. It actually spread into the East and became concentrated in what is called The Church of the East. Any of you who know something about the history of China will know that Christianity in China actually has very, very deep roots back into the Middle Ages. It was this Nestorian church that was prevalent in China during this time. The so-called Church of the East became an indigenous Chinese religion. Many Chinese Christians today are looking to that heritage as a sort of way of affirming that Christianity isn’t a foreign religion – some foreign devil’s religion – this is something that is genuinely indigenous Chinese.

The Chalcedonian Christology (wiki):

The Chalcedonian doctrine of the Hypostatic Union states that Jesus Christ has two natures, divine and human, possessing a complete human nature while remaining one divine hypostasis. It asserts that the natures are unmixed and unconfused, with the human nature of Christ being assumed at the incarnation without any change to the divine nature. It also states that while Jesus Christ has assumed a true human nature, body and soul, which shall remain hypostatically united to his divine nature for all of eternity, he is nevertheless not a human person, as human personhood would imply a second created hypostasis existing within Jesus Christ and violating the unity of the God-man.

After deciding that there is only one person of Christ with two distinct natures, both God and man; we should clarify the meaning of death. Spirit or soul does not die at death, but the flesh dies, in the sense you are describing. Thus, when Christ died, his soul did not, as the soul can only be destroyed by God in the final judgment. Matt 10:28 (ESV) "And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell".

We can conclude that Christ died the same way any other man dies. The confusion is solved because we cleared the problem of Nestorian two persons in the incarnation. We can say the divine Logos died in the death of Jesus, without implying that the divine being ceasing to exist. He died in the human form or incarnation, just like all of us die. There was no separate human spirit or mind besides the divine person. The only way the divine Logos could die was in the form of a mortal. We can also maintain that God is immortal, not a mortal who can die, and he also proved through the resurrection of Christ that he has authority over death.