Sayings from the cross #6: Trust

‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit’ (Luke 23:46)

Twice on the cross Jesus addresses His heavenly Father.  The first time it is for others, interceding for them by asking for their unmerited forgiveness: ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’ (Luke 23:34).  This second time it is for Himself, as He entrusts Himself to loving care of His Father.

Three times on the cross Jesus quoted from the psalms.  His cry of, ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’ came from Psalm 22, a psalm describing the distance of isolation and the apparent triumph of evil in the face of abandonment.  His cry of ‘I thirst’, underlining His humanity, came from Psalm 69 which describes a litany of horrific suffering. 

The words Jesus quotes here, just before His life is snuffed out, are from Psalm 31:5: ‘Into your hands I commit my spirit.’  Psalm 31 is a psalm laced with statements of an unwavering trust in God, the Rock, who is immovable and reliable, perfect and just.  This psalm does not deny the presence of enemies but the focal point is not the unjust suffering or what man can do to the author.  Instead, the focus is on God who preserves the faithful.  The psalm is a call to place one’s trust in Him again.

It is interesting that Jesus goes so readily to the psalms.  For Him these songs are not dry poetry or empty lyrics.  These are words which enable Him to frame His experiences in a way which healthily acknowledges reality but never loses heart.  For Jesus, the psalms provide truth which, in the midst of suffering, enable Him to place His attention on the Father.  In this cry, we hear Jesus acknowledge that He know that there is no way of falling from the Father’s hold. 

When all is said and done, when the world has thrown all it can at you, when life has gobbled you up and spat you out again, God our rock and fortress remains exactly that.  But He is not a remote unfeeling megalith.  Jesus addresses His rock as ‘Father’, a term of intimacy and closeness which indicates their eternal relationship.  Even among these seven short sayings from the cross we see Jesus experience His suffering as isolation from the Father, and at the same time experience the strong grip of a hand which won’t let go.

Peter expands on this when he writes: ‘Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.  He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth.  When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.  He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.  By his wounds you have been healed.’ (1 Peter 2:21-24, emphasis mine).

Throughout His crucifixion, Jesus rested on the Rock of the Father.  He ‘continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.’  The suffering, real and horrible as it was, would be temporary; the reward of the Father, eternal.

It was into those hands that Jesus gave His spirit for safekeeping.  And those everlasting hands of the Father are there for you too.  They will hold you.  You, too, can trust Him and say, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.’