30. The Word of Confidence
“Father, into Thy Hands I Commend My Spirit.”
7. The Word of Confidence
WITH AWE and reverence we now approach the watershed of the eternities. The eternal Son of God dismisses His spirit. “When Jesus had cried with a loud voice, He said, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost” (Luke 23:46). The body that had housed the Christ was about to be laid in Joseph’s tomb, but before He took leave of the earth, Jesus uttered His last word from the throne of His cross, and not in subdued tones, but with a loud, triumphant voice.
The habits of a lifetime are not easily shaken off. The Master was a Man of prayer and a Man of the Book. How natural that His last words should blend both characteristics, for this word is at once a prayer and a quotation from the Old Testament. He could not have been more appropriately occupied in the moment of death. He ended His ministry as He began it—with a quotation from Scripture on His lips.
Only eight words in English, yet they enshrine a rich vein of truth.
His Death Was Voluntary
The word “commend” could be translated appropriately “lay down.” When opening His heart to His disciples, the Savior had said, “I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father” (John 10:17–18).
In Matthew’s account of the crucifixion (Matthew 27:50), it is stated that He dismissed His spirit. Although from one point of view it is true that man did take His life from Him, it was only by His permission. Before allowing His tormentors to arrest Him, Jesus demonstrated His innate power by causing them to fall backward to the ground. But having done this He steadfastly refused to exercise this power to deliver Himself from death. He chose the death of the cross. He could have saved Himself, but for our sakes He refused to do so.
The bitterest ingredient in the cup of His suffering had been the midnight gloom that enveloped not only His body but also His soul, when His Father made the iniquity of us all to meet on Him (Isaiah 53:6). Three hours of torture at the hands of His creatures were succeeded by the infinitely darker three hours into which an eternity of suffering was compressed.
But now He is in the light again. In the midst of His awful desolation there came the renewed realization of His indissoluble union with His Father. “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30). He does not now cry, “My God, my God!” but, “Father.” The communion He had enjoyed from eternity is restored, never again to be interrupted. Small wonder that He cried with a loud and triumphant voice.
Father!
Cry of committal.
Communion is restored.
Rent is the temple veil.
As the Prince of Life through His broken flesh
Throws open a highway to God.D. ROBERTS
“If the words, ‘It is finished’ be taken as our Lord’s farewell to the world He was leaving,” wrote F. B. Meyer, “these words are surely His greeting to that on whose confines He was standing. It seems as though the spirit of Christ was poising itself before it departed to the Father, and it saw before no dismal abyss, no gulf of darkness, no footless chaos, but hands, even the hands of the Father—and to these He committed Himself.”
Transcendent joy must have flooded Him as His spirit rose from the miasmas of earth’s sin to the warmth and crystal purity of the celestial air. His was no reluctant farewell to the scene of His suffering and humiliation.
His Trust Was Unshaken
It is to be questioned whether Christians realize sufficiently that our Lord’s life on earth was a life of momentary faith and trust in His Father. John’s gospel especially reveals the extent of His dependence on His Father. Such characteristic statements as “I can of mine own self do nothing” (John 5:30) and “The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself” (John 14:10) reveal the important part trust played in His relationship with His Father.
Will He trust Him fully in the hour of death? Has His trust been impaired by the awful experience of the cross? Here as everywhere He is our exemplar. He will show His disciples in every age how to deport themselves in the hour of death—no yielding to craven fear, but an attitude of calm, assured confidence.
The first Christian martyr, Stephen, followed His Master very closely in his dying hours. Paralleling Jesus’ first word from the cross Stephen prayed, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge” (Acts 7:60). Like his Lord, too, his closing words were, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (Acts 7:59). His dying concern was not the suffering of his body but the keeping of his soul. He committed it to the One who while still impaled on the cross cried, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46).
Paul displayed a similar confidence in the keeping power of the Savior: “[I] am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day” (2 Timothy 1:12). These words of our Lord have been among the dying utterances of a multitude of saints, among them Polycarp, Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, Jerome, Luther, and Melancthon.
The Secret of Our Security
Our Lord obviously entertained no thought that death ended all. Already He had assured the penitent thief of a place with Him in paradise. Now He speaks as though “He was making a deposit in a safe place, to which, after the crisis of death was over, He would come and recover it. Such is the force of the word.”
Who would be afraid of death when it means that our spirits are in His hands? How safe and strong they are! “My Father, which gave them [His sheep] me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand” (John 10:29). When we are called upon to face that last enemy, death, let us look on it in the same manner as did our Lord.
It is told of John Huss that when he was being led out to his treacherous execution, a paper cap was thrust on his head. On it were scrawled caricatures of leering devils. It was to those paper fiends that his priestly accusers mockingly consigned his soul. But Huss lifted up his voice in one brief cry, “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit,” and with those sacred words on his lips he traversed the flames of death.
As our Lord closed His eyes in death, a truly human death, His spirit reposed in His Father’s hands as restfully as a babe on its mother’s breast. His final act of self-committal was a simple and genuine act of faith. Nothing more remained to be done. All was completed perfectly according to the divine planning, so by a definite act of His will He dismissed, or breathed out His spirit. Redemption was completed, awaiting only the resurrection as God’s seal of final acceptance of His Son’s sacrifice.
Christ, His last word having spoken,
Bows His head, as life is broken,
Mournful, mournful, stands His mother, weeping.
Loved ones, loved ones, silent watch are keeping.MICHAEL GRODZKI
When Thou didst hang upon the tree,
The quaking earth acknowledged Thee;
When Thou didst there yield up Thy breath,
The world grew dark as shades of death.GREGORY THE GREAT
The great veil was torn asunder,
Earth did quake ‘mid roars of thunder,
Boulders, boulders, into bits were breaking,
Sainted, sainted, dead from death were waking.MICHAEL GRODZKI