Peter SmytheIntelligent Holy Ghost Christianity

And Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. (Luke 23:46, NASB)

In the previous essay, I demonstrated that quite a few of our preachers and theologians see this verse as proof-positive evidence that Jesus immediately went to the Father once He gave up the ghost. In one of his articles, Wayne Grudem says it this way:

Finally, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit’ (Luke 23:46) also suggests that Christ expected (correctly) the immediate end of his suffering and estrangement and the welcoming of his spirit into heaven by God the Father (note Stephen’s similar cry in Acts 7:29) (Wayne Grudem, He Did Not Descend Into Hell, Evangelical Society Journal (March 1991) at 113)

In this quote, Grudem likens Jesus’s cry to Stephen’s cry in Acts 7:29. But is this a false analogy? The short answer is “yes.” Acts 7:59 reads as follows:

They went on stoning Stephen as he called on the Lord and said, ‘Lord Jesus, receive [Greek: dezai] my spirit.’ (Acts 7:59, NASB)

Stephen is known as the first Christian martyr. When Acts 7:59 occurred, Jesus had already been resurrected and Christians had received eternal life. We understand this by the Gospel account in John. On the third day, the day of His resurrection, Jesus appeared to the disciples and blew into them:

And when He had said this, He breathed on [into] them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” (John 20:22, NASB)

This verse signifies the birth of the New Testament church where men became re-born as the sons of God. (See Romans 8:14 - those led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God; 1 John 5:19 - we know that we are the sons of God; see also my posts - The Birth of the Church). Stephen, as a Christian, was born of God and could therefore say “take my spirit” upon his impending death. What is significant here is that Stephen used the word dezai which means “to readily receive” or “to readily take.” Jesus didn’t use that word and that alone confounds Grudem’s analogy.

When Jesus said, “I commit my spirit,” he used the word paratethemai. When you look up that word in the Greek, the primary definitions are:

Louw: “to give or to provide for, with the implication of placing something in front of a person” or “to establish evidence to show that something is true; to present evidence of truth”

BDAG: “to place something before someone; to set forth teaching [before someone]”

Moulton/Miligan: “set before; place beside”

When we put our heavy lexicons down and go to the Word itself, we see that the NASB translators, good folks that they are, did not translate paratethemai in Luke 23:46 in the same manner that they did other scriptures where the word appears:

for a friend of mine has come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him. (Luke 11:6, NASB)

And He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up toward heaven, He blessed the food and broke the loaves and He kept giving them to the disciples to set before them; and He divided up the two fish among them all. (Mark 6:41, NASB)

And according to Paul’s custom, he went to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, “This is Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you is the Christ.” (Acts 17:2,3, NASB)

In these verses you can see that paratethemai is not used to describe an estranged son’s wish to be with his dad. Rather, it constitutes the setting forth of some thing or evidence for a third party’s consideration; the man and the disciples were to set out food for the visitor and the crowds to decide to eat. Paul set out the facts of the gospel for his hearers to weigh and judge. This use of the word is also seen in extra-Bible literature. Moulton and Miligan report of an ancient document that uses paratethemai: “the veteran straightway ran and reported it to his lord.” Moulton & Miligan, Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson 2004) at 490. It’s easy to see that this veteran didn’t commit to his lord in the Grudem sense of male-bonding. No, he laid out [set before] facts before his lord for the lord to decide what to do with them. The matter’s fate, so to speak, was presented and given into the lord’s hands to judge. (Same with the disciples’ food: “Fish? I gotta eat fish?”)

When we apply the correct meaning behind paratethemai to Luke 23:46, Jesus’s cry looks more like this:

“I set before you, in your hands, the spirit of me.” (Smythean version)

“I present before you [for your consideration/judgment] my spirit which is now in your hands.” (Smythean paraphrase)

Oddly enough, though this cry from the cross was prophesied in Psalm 31:5, not a single preacher’s or theologian’s exposition of Luke 23:46 that I researched dealt with the psalm at all. That psalm, another first-person Jesus prayer, acts as a Narnian door as to why Jesus cried paratethemai instead of dezai.

(I’ll take that up in the next post.)

[Note: Practically every English translation uses the phrase “Into your hands” instead of “In your hands.” Personally, I believe that “into” has been part of the cause of the misconstruction of this verse. This is what A.T. Robertson, an uber-eminent Greek scholar, says about the difference between “into” [eis] and “in” [en] in the New Testament:

“En and eis are really the same root only slightly altered by the addition of the s… . In the New Testament there is no absolute line of cleavage. It is idle to insist on a fast meaning of “into” for eis. In reality it simply means “in” just like en. One must be prepared to find en and eis used interchangeably for they are in truth the same word.” A.T. Robertson, The Minister and His Greek New Testament (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers 2001) at 50-51.]