One big reason people want to say that God suffers is because of the cross of Christ. It is important therefore to understand the doctrine of the two natures of Christ (see part II).
It was the human nature that suffered and died and came under the judgment of God, not the divine nature of Christ. But because Christ was truly one person, it is true to say that the God-man died, suffered and came under the judgment of God.
Gerald Bray sums it up this way:
Once again the answer must be that on the cross the divine person of the Son of God suffered and died for us in his human nature, which he had assumed in the womb of Mary. The mystery of the incarnation is that the immortal person took on a mortal nature, in order to make it possible for him to suffer and die on our behalf. To claim, as some modern theologians have done, that the divine nature died at Calvary is absurd. Not only would it automatically entail the death of the entire Trinity, thereby making a nonsense of the atoning sacrifice offered to the Father, but it would involve God's essence in a logical contradiction. It would suggest that somehow God's essence could become sin, which goes against the entire witness of Scripture to the perfection and goodness of God's being. (The Doctrine of God, p. 100)
