“I commit my Spirit into Your
hands.” These are dying words. They are literally the dying words of
Jesus—His last statement from the cross.
These are the dying words of Stephen, the first martyr, who in his own
death, mirrored Jesus in all of his words and actions including interceding for
forgiveness for his murderers. These are
words of total surrender to and trust in God the Father. But one doesn’t have to wait until one is
dying to utter these words. These words
were first spoken by David in a psalm he gave to his choir director so that it
could be performed for corporate worship.
They came from a personal place in his own experience but can be used by
anyone. These are words that we can use
as an expression of our own trust in God.
The psalms are the prayerbook of the Hebrew people. Both Jesus and Stephen would have grown up
singing and reciting Psalm 31. Think of
how many hymns you know by heart. Jesus
and Stephen would have been able to recall these words and apply then to their
situation.
As David wrote these words for
the choir director, it’s clear he was thinking back on his own life when he had
been in a dire situation, one in which he didn’t know if he would live or
die. He did live, and so the psalm ends
in praise to God for preserving him and being his refuge. But the promise of preservation is for all of
God’s people. We might be saved like
David was, able to live many years, or we might lose our lives like Stephen,
but that doesn’t mean God does not preserve us, for we have been given eternal
life.
The
Brief Statement of Faith of the PC(USA) begins, “In life and in death, we
belong to only comfort in life and in death?
The answer is, “That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life
and in death—to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with His
precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that
not a hear can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven. In fact, all things must work together for my
salvation. Because I belong to him,
Christ, by His holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me
wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for Him. “I commit my Spirit” ought to be our response
to the fact that in life and in death, we belong to God and in response for all
that Jesus has accomplished for us. Biblical
scholar J. Clinton McCann Jr says, “Into Your hands I commit my spirit” can be said as, “I turn my
life over to you.” Our lives already
belong to God, but committing our spirit to God shows that we acknowledge this
fact, and both willingly and with hope surrender ourselves to God.
Unlike us, Jesus was fully in charge of His own death. He had told Pilate that Pilate couldn’t take
His life unless He, Jesus, permitted it.
Jesus had preached as recorded in John 10 how He lay down His own life
only to take it up again, and “No one takes it from Me, but I law it down on my
own initiative. I lay it down, and I
have authority to take it up again. This
commandment I received from My Father.” When
Jesus said, Father, into your hands I commit My Spirit,” He was reiterating
that He was surrendering His life to the Father. The Romans and the Jewish leaders were only
the means by which Jesus died. But they were not in control of Jesus’s death any more or any
less than you and I were. Jesus’s last
breath was His to surrender. Jesus died
on purpose with purpose. He died to
accomplish all those things stated in that first answer to the first question
of the Heidelberg Catechism.
The last words
that Jesus spoke before His death were not the first time that He had committed
His spirit into the Father’s hands. From
the time He entered humanity, Jesus submitted Himself to the Father. He constantly sought the Father’s will and
obeyed it. He lived in the Father’s
hands and He died in the Father’s hands.
His life is a model for us that we can make the same commitment any and
each day of our lives.
The sentence “Into
your hands I commit my spirit” is not the only forshadowing of Jesus’s life we
see in the psalm. David speaks of being
falsely accused. Jesus had been falsely
accused of blasphemy. The psalm says,
“My eye is wasted away from grief, my soul and body.” Jesus was the “Man of Sorrows.” But unlike the psalmist, it was not His
iniquity that caused His pain, but ours.
The psalmist speaks of being rejected by and repulsive to his friends
and neighbors. With the exception of
John and some of the women, the disciples fled when Jesus was arrested. But the psalmist also confesses, “My times
are in your hands.” And at the beginning
of each stanza confesses that he trusts in God.
God orders everything from our births to our deaths to everything in
between—times of abundance and times of scarcity, times of doubt and times of
surety, times of hardship and times of ease.
The writer of Ecclesiastes words it, “To everything there is
season: a time and a purpose under
heaven.” In life and in death, we belong
to God.
What about
you? Do you commit your life into the
Father’s hands in times of affliction?
What about all the time?
Everyday? With every moment of
your life? Is Jesus truly Lord of your
life? I see people who claim to love
Jesus, but they really haven’t fully committed themselves into the Father’s
hands. The Bible study group is working
on Lesson 4 in our study, which looks at the expectation of suffering in the
life of a disciple. It is far more
normal and to be expected that one who is really committed to following Jesus
will suffer. Even in our world today,
far more believers are persecuted for their faith than not. One of the passages we are looking at is I
Peter 4. The chapter ends with verse 19
which says, “Therefore, let those who suffer according to the will of God
commit their souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right.”
A test of whether or not we have
committed our souls to God is will we do the right thing even when it costs us
dearly.
Committing our spirits into
God’s hands doesn’t mean all of our problems will go away. As Craig Broyles
writes, “God does not automatically or instantaneously solve problems.” However, not submitting to Christ’s
Lordship doesn’t mean that we will have less problems. In fact, I
guarantee it will mean more because you will be working against the Holy Spirit
instead of in cooperation with the Spirit.
Have you ever thought of
your problems as God’s problems to fix? David
did. He didn’t blame God for his
problems in this psalm, but he does expect God to do something about them. He knows his problems are way too big for him
to solve on his own. He ask God more
than once to “deliver me,” “rescue me quickly,” “save me,” “don’t let me be put
to shame,” “make your face shine upon your servant,” (that’s a prayer for God’s
blessing and favor), “let the wicked be put to shame,” “let the lying lips be
silent.” All of these are requests for
God to solve his problems. Committing
our lives into the Father’s hands is “letting go and letting God be God.”
Despite all
the hardships and suffering, God is good and has great goodness stored up for
those who fear Him, those who commit their spirits into His hands. The apostle Paul considered all of his many
sufferings as “light and momentary afflictions” compared to the eternal weight
of glory he would experience. In the
Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “If a son asks his father for bread,
will the dad give him a stone? Or if he
asks for a fish, will he give him a scorpion?
If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how
much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask
Him!” God has good things to give
us. When you worry about what God might
take away and use it as an excuse to not surrender to God, you miss out on all
the wonderful things God would have for you.
It is God who wants the best for us.
It is the world that harms and takes away, and it is the devil who comes
to “steal, kill and destroy.” God is
worthy of our trust. Jesus is worthy of
our total devotion. Will you like Jesus,
David, Stephen, Peter, and Paul and so many others “commit your spirit into His
hands?”