“Into Your Hands I Commit My Spirit” Luke 23:44-46

There’s something special about preparing something for someone. We prepare a meal for a loved one, hoping they will enjoy the meal and appreciate the love included in the preparation. Or we finish a paper or work project and present it to the teacher or boss, knowing they are getting our best and looking forward to the affirmation that will accompany the paper.

The same idea is present in Jesus’ final words on the cross. “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.”

I read a commentary that mentioned Jesus’ last words as recorded by John—“It is finished”—is Jesus’ farewell to the world and His last words recorded in Luke is Jesus’ greeting to heaven. There is some element of truth in this understanding. Certainly, Jesus is stating that He has completed the task for which He was sent, and now He is prepared to return to the Father. In John 13:1-2, John records that Jesus knew the time had come for Him to return to the Father. Knowing this, Jesus wanted to demonstrate His love for His disciples. In that upper room, Jesus told the disciples, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). The greatest demonstration of Jesus’ love is seen on the events at Calvary.

As Jesus hung on the cross, He took the time to express His forgiveness for those who had placed Him there. He assured a repentant thief that the repentance would be rewarded with the promise of eternal life. He saw to the needs of His mother being taken care of. Having dealt with everyone around Him, Jesus then focused on the reason for being on the cross. Jesus’ last four statements from the cross all seem to have come in rapid sequence around 3 p.m.

There has been a darkness that came at noon and stayed until 3 p.m. As the third hour approached, Matthew and Mark record that Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?,” a quote from Psalm 22:1. It is believed the statement was made as much to express the depth of despair as the fullest extent of the world’s sins fell upon Jesus. Immediately following this, Jesus says, “I thirst,” a recognition and reminder of Jesus’ physical agony and humanity. Then John records Jesus saying, “It is finished,” and Luke records what we look at today. In all four Gospel accounts, these words were said immediately before Jesus’ earthly life came to an end.

Central Truth: Jesus’ final statement on the cross reveals His lordship and command of the circumstances.

Jesus said these words because:

He had fulfilled the Father’s will

We’ve already discussed that Jesus knew from an early age the reason He had come to earth. He knew that His destiny would bring Him to Calvary. Luke tells us that Jesus was resolved and resolute in coming to Jerusalem, knowing that it would mean His betrayal and crucifixion. We know that Jesus struggled with this reality, asking the Father to find another way, but yielding Himself to the cross when the Father told Him it was the only way. Throughout the trials at the Sanhedrin, before Herod and before Pilate, Jesus demonstrated His control over the situation. He spoke only when He had to. He didn’t resist the efforts to condemn Him to the cross. Instead, Jesus went willingly. It was the Father’s will, and the Son was obedient to the Father.

Having hung on the cross, having taken on the burden of our sins, having paid the price for our sins, Jesus now was the atonement and the redeemer of sinners who profess their faith in Him. Jesus fulfilled the plan God had set into motion before the creation of our world and ourselves. God demonstrated His love to us by sending His Son to die for us, and Jesus demonstrated that love for us by going to the cross. Jesus demonstrated His absolute love for the Father by doing exactly what God had asked Him to do.

Having completed the task, Jesus could then say to the Father, “Here’s what I have done. Now, I give You My spirit in trust and celebration.”

It’s significant that Jesus said, I commit My spirit,” because it reminds us that the obedient person is the one who is rewarded. In Jesus’ pastoral prayer of John 17, Jesus asks the Father to glorify Himself and the Son. This act of sacrificial obedience does indeed glory the Father and the Son.

It also demonstrates for us how we, as the children of God, are called upon to follow in obedience. Not a blind obedience that doesn’t question or reason, but an obedience that is based upon a faith that has been and continues to be proven as we live in fellowship with the Father and Son through His Spirit.

Jesus knew that His work was exactly what the Father had asked Him to do, and so, with confidence and faith, Jesus committed Himself to the Father.

He knew Who He is

Just as Jesus had fulfilled the Father’s will, Jesus knew He could commit His spirit to the Father because Jesus knew who He is.

Paul writes in Philippians 2, that Jesus Christ, “who, being in very nature, God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant . . . became obedient to death—even death on the cross” (Philippians 2:6-8). The idea of Jesus not grasping equality with God refers to someone not desperately clinging to His Godness, but willingly seeding His rightful place to take on the position as Son of Man and Son of God.

Jesus knew from early on that He was the Son of God—witness His words as a 12-year-old when Joseph and Mary found Jesus at the Temple—and Jesus walked securely in that relationship. I have no doubt Satan tried to convince Jesus otherwise—it would be consistent with the temptations we all experience—but Jesus never wavered. Jesus knew His place in the kingdom, and He knew His relationship to the Father. Knowing this, Jesus knew that, when the time had come, He could commit His spirit to the Father.

Just as Jesus is the Son of God, when we come to fellowship with Him through a faith profession in Him as our personal Savior and Lord, we become children of God. We are created into a new being, no longer under the lordship of sin, but under the Lordship of God. We are set free from slavery to sin and given the freedom to serve the One who saves us daily. We are victorious in Christ, we are seated at the right hand of the Father in Christ our Lord, and we therefore have no need to ever doubt who and what we are.

Because Jesus was secure in His relationship with the Father, because Jesus knew who and what He was and is, He knew He could commit His spirit to the Father. In Jesus Christ, we, too, can know who and what we are, and we, too, can commit our spirits to the Father.

He knew what He has done

Jesus committed His spirit to the Father because He knew that He had broken the rule of Satan and that He had set in place the Way, the Truth and the Life. In Christ’s actions on the cross, Jesus knew that the curtain that had separated God from His people was no longer there. Matthew, Mark and Luke each record that the curtain that separated the Holy of Holies had been torn at the moment Jesus spoke His last words. Significantly, both Matthew and Mark record that the curtain was torn from top to bottom. Had a person torn the curtain, it would have been torn from the bottom up. But because it was torn from top to bottom, the suggestion is that God is the one who tore down the barrier through the death of His Son. As the writer of Hebrews wrote, “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened to us through the curtain, that is, His body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to GOd with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith” (Hebrews 10:19-22a).

Jesus, by finishing His task, established a way for you and me to have a real and personal relationship with God, Creator of all things, ever-powerful, ever-knowing and ever-present. We can always enter into His presence because Jesus died on the cross, and because Jesus paid it all, we know the Father and fellowship with Him daily.

Jesus knew what He had done, and so He said with confidence, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.”

Conclusion

Looking at the statements of the cross, we see the entire ministry of Jesus played out in six short hours. From the moment Jesus was nailed to the cross, He was showing us what it means to be a child of God, what it means to be one of His disciples.

But the significance of the cross would fall short if that was the end of the story.

It is not.

All four Gospels record that Jesus was taken down from the cross and placed in a tomb. Because His death was so late in the evening on the day of preparation for the Passover, Jesus’ body was not properly prepared for burial. It was the intent of the women who followed Him to come back to the tomb and properly prepare the body at the first opportunity after Passover.

But when they got there, the stone at the tomb had been rolled back, and the tomb that had held the body of Jesus was now empty.

It is the empty tomb, the risen Christ, that puts the exclamation point on the events of Calvary. It is with the resurrection that God puts His seal of approval and verification upon the death of Jesus. Jesus lives, and because He lives, we have the promise of eternal life and fellowship with Him. That eternal life begins the moment we believe, and we live in Him.

Without the resurrection, the words from the cross, though stirring and inspiring, would not be half as valuable. With the resurrection, the words of Jesus wring throughout the ages. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him. And because He lives, we can face tomorrow. We face tomorrow because we serve a risen Savior, and we face today because He is the same yesterday, today and forever.

Jesus lives. Let us pledge to let Him live through us beginning this day and every day from now on.