"I Commit My Spirit"; Luke 23:46, Psalm 31

 

“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?”