Forsaken cry; Word needs no help; ‘I am’ drops the arresters

“And Jesus cried with a loud voice: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” So then — do we say that even the Word from God the Father himself needed help from above? And yet how is this not altogether silly? For he co-rules all things with God the Father, and he established the heavens by his own spirit, and he is named — and truly is — Lord of the powers. Or did he grow weak before the Jews’ plots, and was the hand of those crucifying him unmatched against him? Yet the prophet Isaiah says: “If all the nations were counted as a drop from a bucket and as a turn of a scale, and will be counted as spittle — to whom have you likened the Lord, and to what likeness have you likened him?” (Isaiah 40:15–18) Know that the servants of the Jews’ synagogue were present with the cohort of soldiers, and the traitor leading; and when they sought to seize him he met them saying: “Whom do you seek?” And they said to this: “Jesus the Nazarene.” Then the Savior to them: “I am.” And they went back and fell to the ground (John 18:4–6). Then how would he have grown weak — he who by the voice alone exposed the weakness of those plotting? What then does he mean by saying: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1) (Matthew 27:46) We say that when the first father Adam trampled the command given him and disregarded the divine laws, human nature was somehow forsaken by God, and for this became also cursed and held by death. And since he reconstitutes what has suffered into incorruption, the Only-begotten of God came…