Peter SmytheDecidedly Unprofessional

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

“I set before you, in your hands, the spirit of me.” Luke 23:46 (Smythean version)

“I present before you [for your consideration/judgment] my spirit which is now in your hands.” Luke 23:46 (Smythean paraphrase)

In the previous essay, I commented on how all of the preachers and theologians that I researched for the proper construction of Luke 23:46 failed to mention that Jesus’s statement was prophesied in Psalm 31, e.g., N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God doesn’t even refer to Luke 23:46 or Psalm 31. When we see “commit” (paratethemai) in its correct light - its true lexical meaning and Psalm 31 - we see a truer and much richer picture of Jesus’s faith and the breadth of His sacrifice for us.

Jesus, scripture tells us, willingly laid aside all of His pre-incarnate glory to become a man to rescue us from this evil age. Once He emptied Himself of His glory, He had to faithfully live out the Father’s redemption plan in order to perfect an eternal redemption:

“The Righteous One shall live by his faith.” Habakkuk 2:4 (ASV)

That meant strict adherence to the only plan and the only way to save mankind:

“My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.” Matthew 26:39b (NASB)

“For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.” Romans 5:19 (NASB)

During His earth-walk, He could have bowed His knee to Satan in the desert to lay claim to the kind of glory that most men crave. Before Pilate, He could have called down 12 legions of angels to save Himself from the ghastly crucifixion that lay ahead. In the Garden, He could have succumbed to the blood-sweating terror that all of our iniquity would be laid upon Him and that He would die “abandoned” by God. But He didn’t do any of this. He “lived not to please Himself” and He did not shrink back from his role as our unblemished Lamb and solitary protagonist hero.

Luke 23:46 presents one of the most endearing of scenes of our Lord. He had been through the Garden and had seen the depths of what it meant to have our iniquity “made to light upon Him.” He intimately understood that, as our Substitute, He would have to die “apart from God” and bear the howls of the heart of the earth for three days and three nights. Despite all this, He still offered His body on that tree. On the cross, while the bulls of Bashan surrounded Him with their gaping mouths, and He became “a worm and not a man” with our sin, He still didn’t shrink back. And as death came upon Him and His eyes “grew dim,” you can hear the most tender love and trust in His cry, “Father, I lay all of my fate in your hands to raise Me out of destruction when they can be justified.”

“Into your hand I commit my spirit,
You have ransomed me, O Lord [Yahweh],
God of truth.” Psalm 31:5 (NASB)

“But as for me, I trust in You, O Lord [Yahweh],
I say, ‘You are my God.’”
My times are in your hand;
Deliver me from the hand of my enemies
and from those who persecute me.” Psalm 31;14, 15 (NASB)

“Let me not be put to shame, O Lord [Yahweh]
for I call upon You;
Let the wicked be put to shame,
Let them be silent in Sheol.” Psalm 31:17 (NASB)

“As for me, I said in my alarm,
‘I am cut off from before Your eyes.’
Nevertheless, You heard the voice of my supplications
When I cried to you.” Psalm 31:22 (NASB)

In all of these first-person prayer psalms of Jesus, we not only see the terrors of Jesus’s soul in hell, but also His profound love and trust in the Father. His “times” were in the Father’s hands and He “waited patiently for Yahweh.” But while He suffered the tortures of the damned, He praised the Father and continually confessed His righteousness among “those in Sheol.” No wonder the apostle encourages us to endure with our eyes fixed on Him: “let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith.”

[Note: Many Christians complain that their prayer life is difficult. In my own prayer life, I pick up these Jesus Psalms - 22, 31, 40, 69 and others - and speak with the Father (and Jesus) about them. Once you understand what they are and who is speaking, your prayer life will become one of the most delightful things that you can imagine.]