“Today, I will be continuing my Holy Week series on Jesus’ Final Words. Today, we will study The Faithful Life marked by Jesus’s final words, “Father, into your hands I entrust my spirit.”
If you have missed the previous entries in this series, click the links below:
Now on to today’s post.
Author interruption: For holy week, I am posting on the final seven words of Jesus as he was crucified. You can also check out the podcast I host with my good friend Matt on Spotify. You can also join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter and Threads @revsteve83
The Faithfulness of Jesus
Jesus, on the cross, demonstrates what it means to live a Faithful Life. Jesus remained faithful to God throughout his entire life and throughout his entire ordeal on the cross. Up to the very end, Jesus trusted God and remained loyal to him. Up to the very end, Jesus did his father’s will without fail. Jesus lived the Faithful Life until his very last breath.
It is important for us to remember that unlike the thieves who were crucified on either side of him, Jesus actually did have a choice in this matter. Jesus did not have to stay on the cross. He was capable of the miraculous. He walked on water. He calmed storms. He raised the dead. I don’t think it was beyond him to remove himself from the cross.
We see this several times leading up to his death. In the Garden of Gethsemane before he was betrayed, Jesus cried to God to remove this cup from him, or to find another way that didn’t involve his suffering. So troubled was Jesus that he sweat blood from his pores. He closed this prayer by saying “Father may your will, not mine, be done.” Jesus is prepared to follow his Father to the very end, though he knows that will involve intense suffering.
We also see Jesus rebuke the disciples, especially Peter, for drawing swords against those who came to arrest him. He tells them that he could call 12 legions of angels and they would come and wipe out his enemies for him. Jesus knows that he doesn’t have to go down this route. He has a choice. And he consistently chooses to obey God and fulfill his desires. God desired that all sinners be rescued from the power of evil and reconciled to him. Jesus knows the cross is how he will accomplish this.
I Entrust My Spirit
So, on the cross, Jesus does not try to save himself. Instead, he continues to obey God through all the pain and suffering. He continues to trust God. Instead of saving his own life, Jesus says to God, “Father, into your hands I entrust my spirit.” “Spirit” here could also be translated, “life.” Instead of saving his life, Jesus entrusts his life to God. Jesus lived the Faithful Life until his death.
Luke continues his story by highlighting the centurion who was overseeing Jesus’s execution. Verse 47: “When the centurion saw what happened, he began to glorify God, saying, ‘This man really was righteous!'”
Luke bookends his gospel with unlikely people praising God. When Jesus was born, it was the lowly shepherds from the field who glorified God and worshiped him. When Jesus died, it was a Roman soldier who worshiped God.
The centurion remarks that Jesus “really was righteous.” Luke here is playing on a dual meaning in Greek that we don’t really have in English. Some translations render the word here as “innocent.” The centurion, moved by Jesus’s words and actions on the cross, believes that they have just executed an innocent man.
But Jesus is more than just innocent in a legal sense. He is also “righteous.” A righteous man is in lock-step with God. A righteous man does what God wants him to. A righteous man has a good relationship with God, is in right harmony with God. Jesus, through his death on the cross, proves his righteousness and proves his right standing with God his Father. He is truly righteous because he is truly faithful. He was faithful to the end to complete his Father’s will.
And his father’s will? That his Son, Jesus, might take the sins of the whole world upon him where they would be nailed to the cross with him. Jesus’ death covers our sin and makes it possible for us, who are not faithful, to anyway be called righteous before God. Jesus removes our sin and our shame so that we too can be in relationship with God and so that we might learn to live the Faithful Life.
The Nails Didn’t Hold Jesus
It wasn’t the nails that held Jesus to the cross. It was his faithfulness to his Father and his love for us that kept him there. Jesus died for you and he died for me. He died in order to complete his Father’s desire to save sinners. Jesus was faithful to God and faithful to us through his final breath. We are saved because of Jesus’ faithfulness. We are saved because Jesus lived the Faithful Life.
The only proper response is to receive God’s gift of salvation and forgiveness of sin and to seek to live lives that are obedient to the Father just as Jesus was. Can we be faithful to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves? Can we be faithful to serving God in whatever form he may be asking us? Can we be faithful to emulate our teacher, our lord, our master, our King Jesus?
It wasn’t the nails that held Jesus to the cross. It was his faithfulness to God and his love for you and for me. We are saved because Jesus lived the Faithful Life.
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