On the cross Christ prayed three times. The first time, He prayed for those who were crucifying Him (Luke 23:33-34). While the persecutors were crucifying Him, He asked the Father to forgive them because they did not know what they were doing. This was prophesied by Isaiah (53:12). This indicates that the first God-man as a genuine man did have a spirit to forgive His opposers according to what He taught us to pray in Matthew 6:12, 14-15. The Lord taught that if we do not forgive our debtors, this will annul our prayer. To have our prayer answered, we must forgive those who are indebted to us.
Christ prayed, asking the Father to forgive those people who were crucifying Him, in His humanity with the divine power of the eternal Spirit. Hebrews 9:14 says that He offered Himself to God by the eternal Spirit. For Him, as also a human being, to be offered to God as a burnt offering and as a sin offering on the cross was not an easy thing, so He needed the eternal Spirit to sustain Him. To pray for the forgiveness of those who were crucifying Him was not an easy thing, but He did it in His humanity with the divine power. This is a divine fact performed in a human life—yet not the physical human life, but the mystical human life—by the divine power of the eternal Spirit.
The second time, He prayed to God, saying, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46).
Christ’s crucifixion lasted for six hours from 9:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M. (Mark 15:25; Matt. 27:45). In the first three hours He was persecuted by men for doing God’s will; in the last three hours He was judged by God for our sins (1 Cor. 15:3).
In the last three hours of His crucifixion God had caused our iniquity to fall on Him (Isa. 53:6). Very few Bible students have seen these two sections of time. Man’s persecuting, crucifying, mocking, and despising were in the first three hours from 9:00 A.M. to noon. Then at noon the whole universe became dark because at that time God was judging Christ because of our sins. The Bible tells us He bore our sins, because God cast that burden upon Him. God caused our iniquity to fall on Him and even made Him sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21), so God left Him at that juncture. At that time He became the unique sinner in the universe. He was even the totality of sin. God made Him sin for us, yet He Himself did not sin. Even He did not know what sin was.
Christ’s prayer here seems to contradict His word that God the Father was with Him while He was on the earth (John 8:16, 29; 16:32).
This is due to the different views of the synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John. The view of the synoptic Gospels is physical concerning Christ in His flesh, that is, in His humanity. The first three Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—were written with the physical view concerning Christ in His humanity as a King in Matthew, a Slave in Mark, and a human Savior in Luke. But the view of the Gospel of John is mystical concerning Christ in His divinity. Only the Gospel of John is written with the view of Christ being God.
According to John’s record in the mystical view concerning Christ in His divinity, God the Father with Him and the Spirit as the Triune God are always one essentially, coexisting and even coinhering. To coinhere is to mutually indwell one another. The three of the Godhead are coinhering, mingled, and blended as one. This is what is called the essential Trinity. But according to the record of the synoptic Gospels in the physical view concerning Christ in His humanity, God the Father left Him economically when He was made sin for us on the cross; this is what is called the economical Trinity.
The essential Trinity is according to God’s essence. The economical Trinity is according to God’s move. John 14 says that the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father. They two are one. Eventually, They work to bring us into Them, that is, into the union, mingling, and incorporation with the Triune God. John reveals that we have been united with, mingled with, and even incorporated into the Triune God. But in Matthew and Luke, the synoptic Gospels, when Christ was being baptized, He stood in the water on earth praying. At that juncture, God the Father spoke from heaven, and God the Spirit was soaring in the air (Matt. 3:16-17; Luke 3:21-22). The three of the Divine Trinity were in three different locations. The Father was in heaven; the Son was on the earth; and the Spirit was soaring in the air. Even though They were separated economically, They were still one essentially.
First Peter 3:18 unveils to us that when Christ suffered for our sins, on the one hand, He was crucified in His flesh (in His humanity), but on the other hand, He was made alive in the Spirit (in His divinity). This proves that concerning Christ there are two different views: the first one according to His humanity and the second one according to His divinity. Christ is both God and man, possessing the divine nature, divinity, and the human nature, humanity. When He was crucified to death, He did not die in His divinity, but He was killed in His humanity for our sins. In the meantime He was working in His divinity. In the physical view of Christ in His humanity, He was killed. In the mystical view of Christ in His divinity, He was empowered with life.
He cast out demons in His humanity by the Spirit of God (Matt. 12:28), and He performed the miracles of feeding the five thousand and feeding the four thousand in His humanity by the blessing of the Father; all these prove that what Christ did in the synoptic Gospels was in His humanity with His divinity.
It was in His humanity that He prayed to the Father with sorrow and distress (Matt. 26:37-38), sweating with drops like blood (Luke 22:44), and even cried strongly with tears, asking God to save Him out of death (Heb. 5:7). At that juncture, He needed an angel to strengthen Him (Luke 22:43), needless to say that He needed the Spirit to support Him (Heb. 9:14). As a man He offered Himself in His humanity to God, so He needed the eternal Spirit to support Him.
The third time, He cried with a loud voice, before He expired, saying, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit” (Luke 23:46). This tells us that the first God-man as a genuine man trusted in God to the end of His human life. Surely such a prayer of Christ was made by Him in His humanity.
We need to see that the prayers made by Christ in the synoptic Gospels were made by Him in His humanity with His divinity. But His prayer in John 17 was not in His humanity but in His divinity. John 17 shows us how Christ prayed that His believers would practice the oneness of the Divine Trinity as the Divine Trinity does. He prayed that the Father would make us one as He and the Father are one. We are to be one in Them as They are one (vv. 21-23). This is the oneness of the Triune God. We cannot practice this oneness in ourselves. We must practice it in the Triune God and according to what the Triune God does.