Commenting on the reasons for the Father’s withdrawal from Jesus at the cross (Matt 27:46), LDS scholar Andrew Skinner wrote the following:
. . . another factor also influenced the Savior’s death: the withdrawal of the Father’s Spirit and power. The Father’s Spirit is pure life and light, especially the intensity or extent to which Jesus enjoyed it. As the Joseph Smith Translation says in John 3:34, “For God giveth him [Jesus] not the Spirit by measure, for he dwelleth in him, even the fulness” (emphasis added). In short, Jesus was able to die because the Father completely withdrew his life-giving, life-sustaining influence and powers.
Thus, there is another reason for the Father’s withdrawal from his Son. Besides the need for the Son to descend below all things, besides the requirement that Jesus suffer spiritual death and hell, besides the need for him to know all our circumstances in order to be able to succor us according to the flesh, the Father withdrew from Jesus so that he, the Son, could have the sole power to determine from his own death. “The Savior of the world was left alone by His Father to experience, of His own free will and choice, an act of agency which allowed Him to complete His mission of the Atonement” (Hales, “Behold, We Count Them Happy Which Endure,” 75). (Andrew C. Skinner, Golgotha [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2004], 165-66, emphasis added)
