“And when Jesus cried with a loud voice, he said,
Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit,
and having said thus, He gave up the spirit” (Luke 23:46).

This was the last utterance of the Savior before He expired.  While he hung upon the Cross seven times His lips moved in speech.  Seven is the number of completeness or perfection.  At Calvary then, as everywhere, the perfections of the Blessed One was displayed.  Seven is also the number of rest in a finished work.

Seven times the dying Savior spoke.

Three of His utterances concerned men:

• to one He gave the promise that He should be with Him that day in Paradise.
• to another He confided His mother
• to the mass of spectators He made mention of His thirst.

Three of His utterances were addressed to God:

• to the Father He prayed for His murderers
• to God He uttered His mournful plaint
• into the hands of the Father He commends His spirit

Now in the hearing of God and men, angels and devil, he had cried in triumph, “It is finished.”

Communion With The Father

“Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit.”

Here we see the Savior again in communion with the Father.  For awhile that Communion was broken.  Up to the cross there had been perfect and unbroken communion between the Father and the Son.

On the cross, at the beginning, the Lord Jesus is still found in communion with the Father.  “Father, forgive,” and now his last words is,
“Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.”

Between the utterances He had hung there for six hours.  Three were spent in sufferings at the hands of man and Satan.  Three were spent in suffering at the hand of God.  During those last three hours God had withdrawn from the Savior.  “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”  But now all is done.  The darkness is past and the Savior is seen once more in communion with the Father – never more to be broken.

Christ’s Perfectly Yields to God

We see evidence of this all the way through His life.  When His mother sought Him in Jerusalem as a boy of twelve.  When he hungered in the wilderness after a forty day fast and the Devil urged Him to make bread out of stones, He lived by every word of God.  When the mighty works which He had performed and the message He had delivered failed to move his auditors, He submitted to the One who had sent Him, saying,

“I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou has hid these things
from the wise and prudent, and has revealed them unto babes” (Matthew 11:25).

When the sisters of Lazarus sent to the Savior to acquaint Him with the sickness of their brother, instead of hurriedly going to Bethany, He abode two days still in the place where He was, saying,

“This sickness is not unto death but for the glory of God.”

It was not natural affection which moved Him to action, but the glory of God!  In all things He submitted Himself to the Father.

See Him in the morning,
“rising up a great while before day” (Mark 1:35), in order that He might be in the presence of the Father.  We see Him anticipating every great crisis and preparing Himself for it by pouring out His heart in supplication.

We see Him spending the very last hour before His arrest on His face before God.  How fitting that we might learn from Him when He says,
“Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart.”

As He lived, so He died.  He yielded Himself into the hands of the Father.  This was the last act of a dying Savior.  He showed His perfect confidence in the Father.  He exhibited His absolute dependency upon God.  This all revealed the blessed intimacy there was between Them.

We see that in all things He has left us an example.  The Savior committed His spirit into the hands of the Father in death, because it had been in the Father’s hands all through His life.

Is this true of us?

Have we as a sinner committed our spirit into the hands of God?  If so, it is in safe keeping.  Can we say with the apostles, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day”  (11 Timothy 1:12)

Have we as Christians fully yielded ourselves to God?  Have we paid attention to the word, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” (Romans 12:1)

Are we living for the glory of Him who loved us and gave Himself up for us?  Are we walking in daily dependence upon Him, knowing that without Him we can do nothing. (John 15:5), but learning that we can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth us (Philippians 4:13)!

If our whole life is yielded up to God, and death should come before the Savior returns, it will then be easy and natural for us to say, “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.”

Uniqueness of the Savior

The Lord Jesus died as none other ever did.  His life was not taken from Him; He laid it down of Himself.  This was His claim:

“therefore doth My Father love Me, because 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”
(John 10:17,18)

The most convincing evidence of all was seen in the committal of His spirit into the hands of the Father.  The Lord Jesus Himself said, “Father, into thy hands I commend My spirit,”.

Two Things Necessary

Two things were necessary in order to the making of Propitiation.
First, a complete satisfaction must be offered to God’s outraged Holiness and offended Justice and this, in the case of our Substitute, could only be by Him suffering the outpoured wrath of God.

Second, was the Savior must die.  “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgement” (Hebrews 9:27)   With the sinner it is death first, and then the judgement.  With the Savior the order was, reversed.  He endured the judgement of God against our sins and then He died.

Christ  was unconquered by death.  He cries with a loud voice of
un-exhausted strength, and delivers up His spirit into the hands of His Father.  In his uniqueness he showed that no one else had ever done this or died like this.

His birth was unique.  His life was unique.  His death also was unique.  In “laying down” His life, His death was differentiated from all others deaths.  He died by an act of His own volition!  Who but a Divine Person could have done this?  In a mere man it would have been suicide.  But in Him it was a proof of His perfection and uniqueness.

A Place of Eternal Security

Again and again the Savior spoke of a people which had been “given” to Him. (John 6:37).  Again at the hour of his arrest He said, “Of them which thou gavest Me have I lost none” (John 18:9).

At the hour of His death the blessed Savior commends them now into the safe-keeping of the Father!

On the Cross Christ hung as the Representative of His people.  When the Lord Jesus commended His spirit into the hands of His Father, He also presented our spirits along with His to the Father’s acceptance.

Jesus Christ neither lived nor died for Himself, but for believers.  What He did in this last act referred to them as much as to Himself.  We must look then on Christ as here gathering all the souls of the elect together, and making a solemn tender statement of them, with His own spirit, to God.

The Father’s hand is the place of Eternal security.  Into that Hand the Savior committed His people, and there they are forever safe.  Christ said, referring to the elect,

“My Father, which gave them Me, is greater than all: and none is able to pluck out of My Father’s hand.” (John 10:29).

Here then is the ground of the believer’s confidence.  Here is the basis of our assurance.  Just as nothing could harm Noah when Jehovah’s hand secured the door of the ark, so nothing can touch the spirit of the saint which is grasped by the Hand of Omnipotence.

None can pluck us.  Weak we are in ourselves, but, “kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:5).

Final Remarks

My friend we are in a world that is full of trouble.  We are unable to take care of ourselves in life, much less will we be able to do so in death.

Life has many trials and temptation.  Our souls are aggravated from every side.  All around us there are dangers and pitfalls.  The World, our own Flesh, and The Devil, are combined against each of us.  They are too much for our own strength.

Here we find a “beacon of light” amid the darkness.  Here is the “harbor of shelter” from all storms.  Here is a “blessed canopy” that will protect us from all the fiery darts of the evil one.

Thank God there is a Refuge from the “gales of life” and from the “terrors of death” – the Father’s hand – the hearts true haven.

“There’s a peace in my heart
that the world never gave.
A peace it cannot take away;
though the trials of life
may surround like a cloud,
I’ve a peace that has
come here to stay!”

excerpts from the hymn Constantly Abiding.

Have a GREAT day . . . someday it will be HISTORY!