Dying Well
Luke 23:44–49
Father, into your hands I commit my spirit! Luke 23:46

As Jesus died, commending his spirit to God, so may we die in like faith.

We can echo Jesus’s words, knowing that as we pass from this life trusting Jesus’s death on our behalf, we pass into the loving hands of the Father who is waiting in heaven to receive us to himself. This is how the saints of all ages have died, many with these very words on their lips. We can also learn, in spite of our fears about death, how to die well. Have you noticed that when Jesus said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit,” he was quoting Scripture, just as we do when we say the same words? The words come from Psalm 31, which says, “Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God” (v. 5).

This shows what Jesus was doing on the cross, particularly in these last moments. He was reflecting on Scripture. And not only on Psalm 31! “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?,” the fifth of Jesus’s seven words from the cross, comes from Psalm 22:1. In my opinion, the words “it is finished,” the sixth of these sayings, come from the end of the same psalm, since the words “he has done it” (v. 31) can be equally well translated, “it is finished.” Even the words “I am thirsty” were spoken, according to John who records them, so that Psalm 69:21 might be fulfilled (see John 19:28). That verse says, “For my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.”

Four of these seven last words were from the Old Testament. Only Jesus’s direct addresses to God on behalf of the soldiers, to the dying thief, and to his mother and the beloved disciple were not. This means that Jesus was filling his mind and strengthening his spirit not by trying to keep a stiff upper lip or look for a silver lining, as we might say, but by an act of deliberately remembering and consciously clinging to the great prophecies and promises of God. If Jesus did that, don’t you think you should do it too? And not only when you come to die.

You need to fill your head with Scripture and think of your life in terms of the promises of Scripture now. If you do not do it now, how will you ever find strength to do it when you come to die? You must live by Scripture, committing your spirit into the hands of God day by day, if you are to yield your spirit into God’s loving hands trustingly at the last.

Taken from Come to the Waters by James Boice ISBN 9798887790954 used with permission from P&R Publishing, Phillipsburg NJ 08865

Scripture quotations are from the ESV (the Holy Bible English Standard Version) copyright 2001 by Crossway a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.