In the New Testament it is St Mark who describes the total dereliction and death of Jesus. It was darkness, destruction and apparent defeat. But St. John shows that because it was self-giving love it was also glory and victory. The self-giving love of Calvary discloses not the abolition of deity but the essence of deity in its eternity and perfection. God is Christlike, and in him is no un-Christlikeness at all, and the glory of God in all eternity is that ceaseless self-giving love of which Calvary is the measure. God’s impassibility means that God is not thwarted or frustrated or ever to be an object of pity, for when he suffers with his suffering creation it is the suffering of a love which through suffering can conquer and reign. Love and omnipotence are one. . . .
But while the orthodox Christian can be very sure of the fallacies of the doctrine of God’s self-destruction, he can do so only by a costly act of faith. It has been too common for us to talk in a rather facile way about human suffering and the suffering of Christ. We may too easily posit side by side the fact of suffering and the belief in God’s ultimate sovereignty, as if to say rather naively: ‘Men suffer, Christ suffered. That is true. But God is supreme and his kingdom will come.’ In truth the sovereignty of God is no easy assertion, and the Christian dares to make it only in the light and at the cost of Calvary. Calvary is the key to an omnipotence which works only and always through sacrificial love. It is the lamb who is on the throne. Divine omnipotence and divine love (in terms of history a suffering love) are of one. And the assertion of this is meaningful when we are ourselves made one with the crucified and in his spirit can say: ‘All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.Let me here quote some words of David Jenkins:
The man Jesus Christ who is the embodiment of the pattern of the personalness of God is brought to nothing. He is not thereby reduced to nothing, because he is the expresion of the transcendent and omnipotent God. But this transcendent omnipotence is the power of absolute love which finds true expression in going out from the pattern of personalness wholly into and wholly for the other. This is not to give love away nor to empty out what it is to be divine, but rather to give expression to what it is to be divine, to be love. Hence the bringing to nothingness is not the final reduction to nothingness but the completion of that identification which is the triumphant and free work of love whereby love works forward to fulfilment at any costs and through any odds . . . In relation to the practical problem of evil, God is neither indifferent, incompetent nor defeated. He is involved, identified and inevitably triumphant. (David Jenkins, The Glory of Man)