Luke 23:46 And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus… Jesus Christ did not die for Himself, any more than He lived for Himself; and He not only "died, the Just for the unjust, to bring us to God," but the manner of His dying was a lesson and a pattern for us. That is the Christian way of dying — the way for all to die; and who would wish, or could imagine, any fitter or happier way? Who would not, in this sense, say, "Let me die the death of my Saviour, and let my last end be like His!" And how it disarms our helplessness of its terrors! "I am powerless," it seems to say, "and therefore I commend to Thine omnipotence this frail and sensitive soul, which came at first from Thy creating hand. I do so reverently, but I do so confidently, for I do so as a child who calls Thee, 'My Father.'" I have said it expresses dependence — and so it does; but in Christ's case, and even in our own, the confidence expressed is more prominent still. In His case there seems a suggestion of the words, "No man taketh My life from Me, but I lay it down of Myself"; "I, as My own act, commend it, Father, to Thee." We do not possess that power; our souls are "required" of us. But, more than that, we are accustomed to think of dying as the most terrible crisis of our history; the hour of supreme peril to our souls; the appalling event which decides our fate for ever. It is a great mistake. Our dying does not decide our future fate: it is our living which does that; the course we have taken, the choices we have made when opportunities were in our hands, and we used them, or threw them away! And therefore, I say, the peril of living is greater far than any peril there can be in dying. I commend My spirit into Thy hands to be delivered. Consider any human spirit now; consider your own. Before it are great possibilities of good and of evil. It must be so. If we can be God's true children, and live with, and become like our Father, it is terrible to fail of this; and it is more dreadful still — it is an indescribable degradation — not even to care about it. Since, then, we are in this case; capable of being God's children, but hindered and prevented from being so by our evil, there is supreme need for us each to cry, "Father, hear met deliver me! Into Thy hands I commend my spirit — my sin-stained spirit. I am Thine. Save me!" I commend my spirit into Thy hands, to be made pure. The deliverance and reformation which the Scriptures say that we require, they describe by the strong expressions "a new birth," "a new creation." They say that is needed in order that we may stand "without blame" before God. Does not our sad experience say the same? God prescribes it. God promises to perform it, and on us. (T. M. Herbert, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: And 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. |
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