Luke 23:46

THE LAST WORD FROM THE CROSS

‘Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.’

Luke 23:46

Do those we have lost still live? The last word of Jesus gives us the answer, an answer which we cannot mistake. Yes; the soul lives. ‘Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.’

I think our Saviour helps us very simply by dwelling on two fundamental truths of religion which we are very apt in the strain and stress of life to forget or overlook.

I. First of all there is the true Fatherhood of God.—If God seems other to us than the Father, if He seems a hard taskmaster or tyrant, if He seems to us a relentless force that carries us we know not where, we have yet to learn the chief lesson which Jesus came to teach; and if that great truth is to sustain us at death, as it has sustained so many, we must learn to grasp it and make it our own now.

II. And the other great truth that Jesus would have us remember to hold fast throughout life is the reality of spiritual things.—You have only got to look within you, and there you find the presence of your Lord Jesus Christ. If you have only got a longing to serve God better, that longing is His gift, whereas if you know that you have the Spirit of your Father within you, you need no other evidence that He is at work in the world, and that God Himself is your God, your Father, your ‘guide even unto death.’

III. Every Christian man and woman lives in two worlds.—There is this world that surrounds us and hems us in so closely that it seems, as it were, to shut out the sight and the thought of God. And yet there is another world. The Christian is in London, just as of old he was in Galilee, in Philippi, in Rome, in Ephesus; but he is also in Christ. There is his true home. And here is our comfort, our last word of comfort, as we think of the dead. We and they are alike in Christ—one in Christ as our home, as the atmosphere in which we walk and move, and they also are in Christ.

Illustration

‘If you once begin honestly and whole-heartedly to believe in the Fatherhood of God, you are on the way to become one of those who adore the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and who find their freedom and their joy and their blessedness in the ancient faith of the sons of God from the beginning. Hold fast to the Fatherhood of God. There you shall find a secret that shall transfigure life. You will look upon all your work as given you by a Father’s hand; you will look upon your suffering as measured by a Father’s love; you will feel that sense of sonship growing up within you which will imperatively lead you to acknowledge the Divine Sonship of the blessed Saviour Himself.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE UPWARD LOOK

I. Up to the Father the Son’s heart went, at the opening of the Passion, as they nailed Him to the tree. ‘Father, forgive!’

II. Up to the Father His eyes still turn as the agony hastens to its end: the last and the first words, ‘Father.’ From first to last the Father is felt overshadowing, embracing the entire scene.

III. Up to Him our hearts turn, in Him our last thoughts close. Into His hands, as our dear Lord does, may we too venture to commend our spirits!

—Rev. Canon H. Scott Holland.

Illustration

‘We dare not imagine, of course, what pain and sorrow can be to God the Father! But this one thing the Cross makes sure to us, that the pain and the sorrow, bitter and searching, which the Son endured, are the true and perfect expression of that intense desire which works in the heart of the Father for our forgiveness and for our glorification. We may not sound or measure the deep things of the Father’s spirit. But we do know that as we shudder at the awful price paid for our winning by the Beloved Son—we do know a little of what it costs the Father. Through the gaping wounds in feet and hands and side we read out all that can be told us of the Father’s longing, of His passionate tenderness, of His unshaken faithfulness, of His inexhaustible pity.’

(THIRD OUTLINE)

THE DEATH OF CHRIST

I. Nothing now remains but to die.— To die—the last sad necessity of human kind—was needful to the Saviour: (a) That He might go through the conditions of human life. (b) That He might become Lord of the spiritual as of the physical and external worlds, making (as it would seem) the dwellers ‘behind the veil’ sharers of the benefit of His atonement by actual communication with them (1 St. Peter Luke 3:19).

II. The death of Christ a pattern for us at the hour of death.—The words with which He died ought to be our words when we die. Could we so use them? The Church is a witness to us of our duty, in that a ‘Commendatory Prayer’ for the parting soul is put into the lips of the priest who is attending the dying. But how can the soul that remains still in its sins appear before its righteous Judge? For it there is no resting in faith and love—no ‘committing itself as unto a faithful Creator’ (1 Peter 4:19), but rather the ‘fearful looking for of the judgment’ which the past life has deserved. But to Christ’s own people His death and passion the source of all peace and joy.

Thine the sharp thorns, and ours the golden crown.

III. Let us therefore go on our way with thankfulness in our hearts too great for words.—We have seen the Saviour suffer; we have heard His words; we have seen Him die. Let us enshrine this memory in our hearts, to be their holiness and their safeguard in time of temptation. Let our life be modelled on the spirit of Christ’s passion.

Illustration

‘ Our souls are sinful, sin-stained at their best, serving God with a divided allegiance, unworthy to offer themselves to Him, still more unworthy to be “commended” to Him. But He makes us one with Himself. Because we are made one with Him, therefore we, too, are “accepted in the Beloved.” When God accepted the human soul of Christ, He accepted also the brethren of Christ. This commendation of His soul to God includes us too. We, listening to these words, take courage that when our last hour shall come we may do the same, though our obedience has fallen so far short, so utterly short, of His. So, as these closing words went through the spaces up to the throne of God I fancy that I hear the great response “ From henceforth blessed are the dead that die in the Lord. Yea, saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labours.” They who die in the Lord are accepted in Him. His words are their words; in His steps their feet tread; He receives their spirits; He presents them to the Father. The words of the first martyr tell us this.’

(FOURTH OUTLINE)

THE LOOK FORWARD

All the last four words from the Cross are words which come from the human soul of Christ, from His human soul in its suffering, in its endurance, in its emergence from that endurance, and lastly in its blissful self-surrender into the Father’s keeping.

I. This last word is a word of peace.—Those of us who have striven to enter into the fellowship of the sufferings, to conceive something of the agony of the long slow hours of bodily anguish, and still more frightful spiritual trial—those of us who have in any degree striven to realise this, will find no difficulty in sympathising with the intense joy and peace of this final commendation. It is the return to the Father of Him Who has done the work it was given Him to do, and Who knows that He has done it.

II. As the ‘It is finished’ looked back on trial conquered, so the ‘I commend My spirit’ looks forward to the recompense of the reward: the human soul of Christ triumphant; perfected through sufferings, now commended unto God.

III. It is the crown and triumph of the human soul to be able to commend itself to God.

Illustration

‘Have we noted that no less than three of the seven sayings from the Cross, three of the four that alone had reference to Himself, are quotations from the Psalms? In those hours of darkness, was the Lord recalling through and through those prophetic Psalms of the suffering servant, and applying them to Himself? We know not; but we know that He was steeped in the Old Testament, that His whole life was a fulfilment of its prophecy, that the words with which He repelled temptation at the beginning were words from the Old Testament. It is written, it is written, it is written. Is not this meant to enhance our reverence for the sacred Scriptures when we reflect that not only did Christ base His own moral teaching upon the Old Testament, but made it and its language the staple of His own religious life? It has been finely said: “What was indispensable for the Redeemer can hardly be other than indispensable for the redeemed.” In these days of higher criticism, when the Old Testament is likely to be disparaged, let us remember that. Let us Churchmen who say, and truly say, that it is the province of the Church to teach the Bible, remember that it is better to say it after, and not before, we have steeped and saturated ourselves with the teaching and words of the Bible.’

(FIFTH OUTLINE)

PEACE AND SECURITY

I. There is a false peace of death, the peace of mere exhaustion, or the peace of the unawakened conscience, when the spirit is asleep and there is no sense of sin, none of the feeling that prompted the publican to cry, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner!’ That is a false peace.

II. But there is a true peace, too, and it may be ours, the peace of a will that, having been surrendered to God, has with it the sustaining will of our Redeemer. That peace will carry us through the valley of the shadow, and, as we come out into God’s presence, we may come with Christ as our Companion.

III. ‘Father.’ Hear the word once more, see the glad confidence in it, the old confidence restored, the full certainty now that the darkness is gone, the light of the Father’s face revealed.

IV. ‘Into Thy hands.’ What security is there? God bears Jesus into Paradise. The spirit returns to God Who gave it, and on the third day God raises Him again to sit at His right hand for evermore. So for us also, if our wills are God’s now, He will bear us into Paradise, and at the last raise us again to eternal life with Him in heaven.

—Rev. Lionel G. B. J. Ford.

(SIXTH OUTLINE)

OBEDIENT UNTO DEATH

This is the word of Expiration. I always like to remember that our Lord said this ‘with a loud voice,’ because He died when He willed. No man took away His life—He laid it down. It is not, He was ‘put to death’ for me—a thousand times No—He ‘died’ for me.

I. We have all to taste of death.—However young you are, however strong, you have to go through it. The coward dies a thousand deaths, the strong man only one. Face it with a heart that can love and a mind that can think. Expiration, dissolution, death. It is so hard to become obedient to this. The Lord, we are told, ‘learned obedience by the things that He suffered.’ Let all that you suffer teach you the same lesson. I am speaking to dying men and women, and I am a dying man myself. It is a certain fact; and we can learn to die best at Calvary. That is why I say, Learn to die now, that, through the grave and gate of death, with Him you may pass to your joyful resurrection. Be true men and women now, and learn how to die, because you do not know how you are going to die. It may be a sudden death, or a lingering death; it may be without pain, but it may be ‘even the death of the Cross’; but whatever death it is, ‘let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus, Who became obedient to death, even the death of the Cross.’

II. When you think about your death, say our Lord’s own words, ‘Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.’ And then we must add, ‘For Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, Thou God of truth.’ The spirit came from God: we give our spirit back to God from Whom it came. ‘Into Thy hands’—the Creator’s hands, and now the wounded hands—‘I commend my spirit, for Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, Thou God of Truth.’

—Rev. A. H. Stanton.

(SEVENTH OUTLINE)

FATHER!

It was that word ‘Father’ which summed up the whole purpose of Christ’s life.

I. The removal of sin.—And it suggests, first of all, that here is the result of the removal of sin. Through the darkness He was bearing the curse of sin as He had borne it at no other time. Then, having made atonement, having borne the curse, having taken it away, having made a living new way by which men might approach and come back to God, it is not ‘My God,’ but it is ‘Father.’ So it is with us.

II. The purpose of life.—And yet, again, that word ‘Father’ seems to sum up the whole purpose of our Blessed Lord’s life. You remember how constantly He was saying, ‘I go to My Father.’ Now the time has come when He is going to His Father. If you and I could have that same thought in our minds, do you not think that as we look upon our lives it would unravel many of the mysteries? We are faced with so many problems, but our Lord saw no mystery in them. He saw no mystery in suffering and pain as He shared it. It was quite plain. Why? Because of this great fact of Fatherhood.

III. The source of comfort.—Not only that, but they also come to us in words of comfort. The death of Jesus has been called a magnificent and royal procession, and yet how He shuddered and shrank from it! You and I need not think that we are faithless because we have a fear of death. Most of us have that, and, believe me, the more we realise what life is, the more we realise what life can be, the more we realise that our bodies are the temples of the living God, the more, perhaps, will that fear of death come to us.

—Rev. T. G. Longley.

Illustration

‘The sunshine of love came through the darkness. “Father,” it thrilled the heart of Jesus, “I am coming back to Thee. Take care of Me. I commit all to Thee.” Perfect trust. Perfect love. Oh, let us come back to our Father God. He will receive us. Daily, let this be our first step on rising. Each day committed into the Father’s hand will be our rest and peace. Soon for us will dawn the long day that knows not night.’