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The Seven Last Sayings of Jesus – “Into Your Hands I Commit My Spirit”
The Seven Last Sayings of Jesus – “Into Your Hands I Commit My Spirit”
As Jesus’ time upon the cross hastens to its last few seconds, after Jesus has moistened His throat to be able to clearly speak, we read in Luke 23:46-47,
Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.” Having said this, He breathed His last. Now, when the centurion saw what had happened, he began praising God, saying, “Certainly this man was innocent.”
Jesus’ statement is a conscious echo of Psalm 31:5, which David wrote in a time of suffering, to confess his trust in God. The efforts of the wicked are never the last word, even when they seem to have temporarily gained the upper hand. At this moment, Satan was probably cheering. But as God had predicted all the way back in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:15), Satan only bruised Jesus’ heel, a mere side-effect of Jesus fatally crushing Satan’s head.
Jesus knew that in a righteous person’s darkest hour, God in heaven sees and saves. Jesus knew that even in His death, God would be His protector and Savior. In the precarious position of an ebbing life, God placed Him in a “large place” (Psalm 31:8) of firmness and stability. The man Jesus had no special advantages, and like any of us, had to completely trust the mercy and strength of His Father. Jesus’ death shows that salvation and eternal life are not found in struggling to escape death, but in trusting that God remains with the righteous in death. “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His godly ones” (Psalm 116:15).
Now, more than ever, Jesus trusted God as He experienced death. Jesus “committed” His spirit to God, a word which means “to deposit, to entrust for safe keeping” (see how the same word paratithemi is used in Acts 20:32, 1 Tim. 1:18, 2 Tim. 2:2, and 1 Peter 4:19). Little is sure in this world. I purchased a firesafe for my house, and I still don’t feel at ease, because I don’t know that I can find a safe place to put the safe! What care we must take when entrusting to someone our social security number or passwords. How much more convinced we must be that God in heaven can care for our eternal souls! It’s our greatest possession, more valuable than all the world’s goods. Yet this was the belief of Christ, and also of Paul, who said in 2 Tim. 1:12, “For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day.”
May we live our lives in such as way, that when we inevitably, unavoidably come to the moment when we must succumb to death, we have lived in fellowship and obedience to our Father, so that we may surrender our spirit in hope rather than fear, confidently expressing the same words of trust, “Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit.”
Alfred Edersheim makes a good point: “His last cry with ‘a loud voice’ was not like that of one ebbing away. It was not Death which approached Christ, but Christ Death. Christ encountered Death, not as conquered, but as conqueror” (Life and Times, p. 893)!
The effect on others was noticeable. Mark adds to Luke’s account, “When the centurion, who was standing right in front of Him, saw the way He breathed His last, he said, ‘Truly this man was the Son of God!’ ” (Mark 15:39).
The centurion was likely a hardened man. Matthew’s word is hekatontarches, meaning literally, “ruler of a hundred.” He was no pushover, no stranger to violence and blood. The centurion had surely presided at many crucifixions. He probably was bored with them. He had probably heard the most outlandish protestations of innocence, and the most vulgar spitting for vengeance, and the most pitiful whines and despair. But something was different this time! This Jesus was not what His enemies declared Him to be. His speech and attitude showed that He was actually innocent.
Yet, why would the centurion then begin “praising God”? One would think the realization that he had just presided over the execution of an innocent man would cause him heartache, not rejoicing. The centurion said, “truly this was the Son of God.” Maybe this suggests that the centurion had heard some of Jesus’ claims, and now, combined with the miraculous signs happening in the natural realm, believed them. Maybe he began to understand something not only of the purity of Jesus, but His vicarious death. The centurion was enantios, meaning not “standing over against Him” or leaning on the cross, but immediately in front of the cross, facing upwards at Christ. If only all of us would stand back, behold that scene, stare boldly at the Son of God hanging suspended between heaven and earth, for our sins, and come away with the same conclusion and confession of faith!
It would seem that many from the mob went home disturbed and uncomfortable, too, for Luke says, “all the crowds who came together for this spectacle, when they observed what had happened, began to return, beating their breasts” (23:48). It could be that this planted the seed that bore fruit on the day of Pentecost, when Peter preached the gospel, convinced them of the true identity of Jesus, and cut them to the heart.
~John Guzzetta
