Into Thy hand I commit My Spirit

“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.” (Luke 23:46).

 

That one concise whisper made it all the way to God’s ear. In it Jesus was saying with broken heart, “Father.” “Father, I know you can hear Me. I’ve always done those things that pleased You. But, You seem so, so far away. Yet, despite My horror of knowing the sins from everyone who has ever lived on this planet; despite the pain wracking My body; despite all the commotion and the hateful calumny being heaped upon Me; despite the clouds of evil angels whelming Me in darkness and obscuring My sight of You; I know, I just know You are still there. You are still with Me. And, Father, I keep Myself in Your hands, for You to do with Me as You please. We both drew up the plans for saving this people, this Our most precious race. We said I would take their place under Your infinite wrath against their sin and offense. Now, for their sake, blot out My name from under heaven, Your throne, forever as You would have done to them. Through Your eternal Spirit of righteous indignation, blot Me out and save them. Thy will be done. Salvation is of the Lord.”

 

The full knowledge of a world of sin was exposed to Jesus. It wasn’t the first exposure to sin He had ever had. All during His pristine life, sin had always caused revulsion in His deepest soul which He could not disguise. But, Jesus had always had His Father’s eternal merciful Spirit consoling the grief that sin and sinners had given His heart.

But, ever since Gethsemane, His Father’s eternal Spirit had changed toward Him. Instead of generous, endless peace and acceptance and fellowship, now He heard and saw and felt nothing but endless, grinding rejection and silence and unsettling, nerve-jangling unrest. It was a disturbance upon His sensitive soul that nothing could remove. It was stuck hard to His heart and mind. It was inescapable, like the withdrawals of a heroine addict, constant, digging, biting, badgering, tormenting. The separation from His Father, His Father’s wrath was more than He had ever conceived possible.

 

He had been preparing Himself for this moment all of His life. “I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!” (Luke 12:50). He had spent a lifetime enduring pain and hardness, hunger and thirst. He had purposely hardened His patience and endurance with every difficulty that had come His way. Through the strength He gained from communion with His Father, every new challenge He had met with courage and power to overcome. He had harnessed the hard things and used them for His Father’s advantage. Nothing was too hard for Him, because He had His Father ever near Him. Every trouble that the devil could ever muster Jesus met with, “As the LORD God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand….” (1Ki. 17:1). His beloved Abba was always His constant companion. In Him He lived and moved and had His being. The air was always thick with His Father’s Spirit.

 

He knew His Father. No son ever reverenced a father like Jesus revered His everlasting Abba. And no one knew His Father like Jesus did. “All things are delivered unto Me of My Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him.” (Matt. 11:27).

 

No one knew God; there was none who sought after God. They were all gone out of the way of righteousness, they had all become unprofitable, compared to Jesus, the obedient One, in whom was no sin (1Jn. 3:5; 2Cor. 5:21). There was none that did good like Jesus, no, not one. Their throats were an open sepulcher, even David’s, compared with Jesus’ throat. With their tongues they had used deceit; but His was 100% ever with pure genuineness. The poison of snakes was under their lips, whose mouths were full of cursing and bitterness. But from His mouth flowed only life and blessing.

 

“The law of the Wise is a fountain of life.” (Prov. 13:14).

“For with Thee is the fountain of life: in Thy light shall we see light.” (Ps. 36:9).

“In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.” (John 1:4).

 

Destruction and misery had always been in all their doings, their feet were quick to hurt and destroy and even kill. But, His feet had ever, forever been involved in missions of mercy, encouraging and uplifting everyone trodden down by the adversary. To every needy heart and troubled mind, He said that His Father would “give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.”

 (Rev. 21:6).

 

The way of infinite peace even the most righteous had never known, and the strongest fear of God even the godliest had not experienced. However, that peace and fear Jesus had always known, in the presence of His almighty Father’s holiness and gravity. It continually set His feet on the path of perfect service to resolving His Father’s agonizing unrest because of sin.

 

Yet, despite all that Jesus had done to prepare by afflicting His soul, the Father had never revealed to His incarnated Son the hugeness, the full immensity and intensity of His outrage toward sin. He had held back His complete wrath, while His Son had interceded for our fallen race. He had forborne toward His beloved race some of their imputed guilt, while Jesus for 33 years upheld “all things by the word of His power.” (Heb. 1:3).

 

But, not now. Since His Son’s incarnation into the body which He had given Him, the Father had increasingly prepared His Son for His full wrath in every way He could without destroying Him. And now for all to see, He must unload all of His pent up righteous wrath against sin. He must unload, painfully He must, knowing what it would do to His most beloved Son. His only Begotten, the divine Son who no one knew so intimately as He, must finally know and be the exhibition of all the hatred of sin that had ever dwelled in the Father. Knowing it would utterly destroy His anointed One, the time had come to see if Their infinite love could overcome the devil’s infinite selfishness. But, the Godhead was determined to succeed. And so was the third person, Lucifer, determined to win the war for universal obedience and worship.

 

By crying, “Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit”, Jesus was reminding His Father of the King’s gentleness. “Thy hands, Thy carefulness, Thy protectiveness, Thy abundant providence and provision for those” “whom Thou lovest.” (Gen. 22:2). Speaking for His Father, Jesus had already made it known, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand. My Father, which gave them Me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of My Father’s hand. I and My Father are one.” (John 10:27-30).

 

His Father’s hands could be rough and hewing, “for what son is he whom the Father chasteneth not?” (Heb. 12:7). But those hands could also be equally healing and restoring. “Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for He hath torn, and He will heal us; He hath smitten, and He will bind us up.” (Hos. 6:1). Standing in for His Father, Jesus had shown His Father’s loving discipline to the human race since the beginning of Adam’s departure from Eden. But, all the punishment was for our good. There is none more good than God. And His goodness will lead us to be so sorry for sin that we turn away from sin—for good.

 

“Into Thy hands I commit My Spirit. That which You love the most about Me, My Spirit of love toward You and toward My human family, I lay down at Your feet.” All of His Father’s heart strings that Jesus had gathered He pulled on; He was using all of the leverage of love possible to take His Father’s mercy for Himself and redirect it toward His precious race. Even if they had slapped Him and pushed down the crown of spikes and flogged Him twice, they were His only begotten race. They were all that He had. “Please, don’t hurt them. Hurt Me, but let them go. Take My life; let My death be surety for their life.” For Adam and his descendents Jesus told His Father, “I will be surety for him; of My hand shalt Thou require him: if I bring him not unto Thee, and set him before Thee, then let Me bear the blame for ever.” (Gen. 43:9).

 

“Father, into Thy hands I commend^G3908 My Spirit.”

Commend—G3908 paratithēmi From G3844 and G5087; to place alongside, that is, present (food, truth); by implication to deposit (as a trust or for protection): - allege, commend, commit (the keeping of), put forth, set before.

 

“Father, into Thy hands I deposit, I entrust Myself for Your protection. Father, I commit the keeping of My soul to Thee. I present, as an offering, My whole being to You for Your purposes of ultimate mercy and wisdom, Your gracious kindness.”

 

Aligning Himself with humanity, with Israel being the theater for the rest of the fallen race, He continued, “O Lord, to Us belongeth confusion of face, to Our kings, to Our princes, and to Our fathers, because We have sinned against Thee. To the Lord Our God belong mercies and forgivenesses, though We have rebelled against Him.” (Dan. 9:8,9).

 

“O Lord, according to all Thy righteousness, I beseech Thee, let Thine anger and Thy fury be turned away from Thy city Jerusalem, Thy holy mountain: because for Our sins, and for the iniquities of Our fathers, Jerusalem and Thy people are become a reproach to all that are about Us. Now therefore, O Our God, hear the prayer of Thy Servant, and His supplications, and cause Thy face to shine upon Thy sanctuary that is desolate, for the Lord’s sake. O My God, incline Thine ear, and hear; open Thine eyes, and behold Our desolations, and the city which is called by Thy name: for We do not present Our supplications before Thee for Our righteousnesses, but for Thy great mercies. O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord, hearken and do; defer not, for Thine own sake, O My God: for Thy city and Thy people are called by Thy name.” (Vss. 16-19).

 

“And having said thus, He gave up the ghost.” (Luke 23:46).

 

Of the Father the prophecy said, “He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied.”  God would say, “by His knowledge shall My righteous Servant justify many; for He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong; because He hath poured out His soul unto death: and He was numbered with the transgressors; and He bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” (Isa. 53:11,12).

 

The Anointed “was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth: He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb”, “neither was guile found in His mouth. Who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously: who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.” (Isa. 53:7;1Pet. 2:22-25).