Seven Utterances of the Lord on the Cross Part 2: February 2026
Table of Contents
Seven Utterances of the Lord on the Cross, Part 2
In Matthew and Mark our Lord is seen on the cross suffering for sin and our sins, and uttering that cry of deepest anguish under the sense of God's face, then first, then only, hidden from Him: “My God, My God, Why hast Thou forsaken Me?” Here He is seen as the true sin offering, but Luke presents Him subsequently saying, “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.” This is rather the Burnt Offering and the expression of conscious acceptance; not His soul realizing His holy horror and infinite suffering in bearing the divine judgment, but the outpouring of His confidence and unclouded enjoyment of His relationship. John lets us know His calm and divine satisfaction in His dying words: “It is finished"; and He dismissed His spirit, for He had title, He alone, to lay down His life and to take it again.
Bible Treasury, Vol. 18
Three Loud Cries
The Cry of Abandonment
“But about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? That is, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46 JND).
“And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, [saying], Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? Which is, being interpreted, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Mark 15:34 JND).
The Cry of Victory or Conquest
“And Jesus, having again cried with a loud voice, gave up the ghost. And the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top to the bottom” (Matt. 27:50-51 JnD).
“And Jesus, having uttered a loud cry, expired. And the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top to the bottom” (Mark 15:37-38 JND).
“After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now finished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, says, I thirst. There was a vessel therefore there full of vinegar, and having filled a sponge with vinegar, and putting hyssop round it, they put it up to His mouth. When therefore Jesus had received the vinegar, He said, “It is finished”: and having bowed His head, He delivered up His spirit” (John 19:28-30 JND).
The Cry of Committal
“And Jesus, having cried with a loud voice, said, Father, into Thy hands I commit My Spirit. And having said this, He expired” (Luke 23:46 JND).
E. L. Ferguson
The Atoning Sufferings of Christ
How was it during those hours of darkness on the cross? Was there any ministering or strengthening angel? Was there any voice from the excellent glory expressing untold delight in His blessed Person? Was there any ray of light from that glory to relieve the awful gloom? No, God had abandoned the Man Christ Jesus. This is an hour that stands alone. There is none like it in the annals of eternity.
But why? God’s Word answers: “He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin.” He “bare our sins in His own body on the tree.” He “was delivered for our offenses.” “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities.” “The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” This, then, is the reason. Christ was made sin for us—a sin offering. “Our sins,” “our iniquities,” were laid on Him, and He bore them on the tree. When we were under condemnation, He was “made a curse for us,” to redeem us from the condemnation.
Now, who “made Him to be sin for us”? Who made Him to be “a curse for us”? Who laid our iniquities on Him? Who smote Him? Who bruised Him? Was it man, or was it God? Of course Scripture must answer. Let us then see if Scripture furnishes an answer to these questions.
Who Could Deal With the Sin Question?
It will be seen that it is all connected with the question of sin. I might ask then, in the first place, Who could deal with the question of sin? Of course, God alone could do this. Man neither could nor would. Blessed be God, He Himself has dealt with it in the Person of Christ when He made Him to be a sin offering on the cross.
It was Jehovah that laid our sins on Jesus. He bruised Him, He smote Him.
“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord [Jehovah] hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6).
“It pleased the Lord [Jehovah] to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief: when Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin.” (v. 10).
“Awake, O sword, against My shepherd, and against the man that is My fellow, saith the Lord [Jehovah] of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered” (Zech. 13:7). Compare also Matthew 26:31 and Mark 14:7. “Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of Me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.”
The wounding, the bruising, the chastisement, the stripes, the smiting, the forsaking, and, I may add, the indignation and wrath (Psalm 102:10), were all from Jehovah—from God who was dealing with sin as having been laid on Christ at the cross.
You say, “Think of a father who pleased to bruise his own only son.” But, dear brother, we must not set Scripture aside by our feelings and reasonings. It is in this way that an infidel or universalist reasons against the doctrine of eternal punishment.
But I do not think that this expression illustrates truly God’s bruising of Christ. It does not say, “The Father was pleased to bruise His Son.” And Jesus did not say, “My Father, My Father, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” He said, “My God.” And is it not remarkable that this is the only time mentioned in the gospels where He addresses Him as “God”? Always before it was “Father.” This is not without instruction. When you say, “Father,” there is the thought and feeling of relationship. When Jesus uttered the cry on the cross, it was not this. At the cross He took the place of a victim—a sacrifice for sin—to meet the claims of God. And in John 3:14 Jesus says, “Even so must the Son of Man be lifted up”; while when it is a question of God’s love to the world it is said, “He gave His only begotten Son” (v. 16). In the three hours of darkness on the cross, Jesus was forsaken of God, and that on account of sins, not His own sins, but ours, which had been laid on Him in order that at once God’s majesty and holiness in dealing with sin, and His great love to the world, might be displayed in consistency with His own character.
God’s Delight in His Son
I trust I need hardly say that I believe God was infinitely delighted with His own Son when, as a man, He hung upon the cross, because it was there more than anywhere else that the sweet savor of His perfect obedience was displayed. But the cross was the awful expression of God’s judgment against sin, and that was the reason of the untimely “darkness,” and His forsaking of Christ. Sin was so horrible in God’s sight that, even when it was laid sacrificially on Christ, He had to withdraw the light of His face, and command the sword to awake. As in the flood in Noah’s day, “All the fountains of the great deep” were broken open, “and the windows [floodgates] of heaven were opened”; so one may say, at the cross there were waves from beneath and waves from above, meeting and rolling in upon the holy soul of our blessed Savior. The floods of the ungodly were there, and all God’s waves and billows, in judgment against sin, were there also.
But it was just here that the perfection of Jesus was displayed, and the moral value of His sacrifice. In His sacrifice, the sweet savor of what He was in His own personal perfection, ascended as a cloud of incense to God. This we see in type in Leviticus 16:12-13. Here, there was first the killing of the bullock; then the burning of the incense; and then the sprinkling of the blood. Now, the burning incense and the sprinkled blood both express what was presented to God in the death of Jesus. The incense expresses the personal glory and moral perfections displayed in His death, and the blood, the value of His death for the putting away of sin. Both of these in the type are connected with death.
The Blood and the Incense
As I have said, the first thing was the killing of the bullock. There must be death. Without it there could be no atonement. But the burning incense, and the blood sprinkled on the mercy seat, tell what was presented to God in that death. There must be that which answered to His glory, and which could meet the claims of His glorious majesty. In the type, the incense was burnt on the censer of the high priest with fire from the altar before the Lord. Out of this burning, a cloud arose and covered the mercy seat. It was a cloud of glory rising up and meeting the cloud of glory between the cherubim—glory answering to glory. And then the blood was sprinkled on and before the mercy seat by the high priest under the cover of this cloud of glory which rose out of the fire.
Does not this burning incense, then, typify the sweet savor and personal glory of Jesus ascending up to God in connection with His death on the cross? The holy fire—the fire of God’s judgment— fell upon Him there. The effect of the testing of that fire was the bringing out of the intrinsic glory and moral worth of the Person of Jesus—the bursting forth, as it were, of an incense cloud of glory, answering to the glory and majesty of Him who was there dealing with sin according to the necessity of His own nature and holiness.
A. H. Rule (adapted)
Forsaken of God
We never find such a thought in scripture as the Father’s wrath being on the Son of His love. The great force to me of Psalm 22 is this: that the Son of Man did not forsake, or forget to vindicate God’s [Elohim’s] glory, just when God, on account of His taking upon Him our judgment—made sin for us—forsook Him. The scene was in no sense one of enjoying anything, as far as the Lord Jesus was concerned, but not to forsake God, when God for our sin’s sake had to forsake Him, proved that He was God and that the everlasting springs were in Himself. He knew who He was, and knew that none but Himself, as Man, could go through what He had undertaken to pass through. He was still “the only-begotten, which is in the bosom of the Father.” Therefore it could not be said that “the face of the Father, as the Father, was hidden from His own Son.”
G. V. Wigram
Christ on the Cross
Everything in the beginning of Psalm 22 is letting down, and at the end there is everything lifting up. It is full of suffering and joy, but the former chiefly. The Person standing before us here is distinctly the Lord Jesus. There is a difference between this psalm and what we have in Isaiah 53, and in the gospels. In Isaiah we have the blessed Lord as a Lamb set before us, but it is taken up with the special object of showing the different feelings of the persons who had to do with Him. Some were cleaving to Him, others turning away from Him. In the gospels we have the historical fact of His sufferings, and in each there is something distinctive connected with the narrative. In Matthew the Lord is connected with Israel as the seed of Abraham, and there is the quotation from this Psalm, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” when He was on the cross. In Mark the Lord Jesus is set forth as the Servant, and the same words are quoted. Luke takes Him up as the Son of Man, and this is not quoted. There is peculiar repose in John and there we have the Lord more in His divine character. Finding the quotation from this psalm in Matthew and in Mark and not in the other gospels, seems to give a clue to the character of Christ’s sufferings as the heir of promise, and as the faithful servant in the hour of suffering.
In the psalm it is the sufferings themselves that are shown; you see there the inward feelings, the deep tide of woe that rolled in on His soul. The heading of the psalm has a meaning—”The hind of the morning.” The hinds go forth in their timidity in the morning—the harbingers of light, but disappearing as soon as day breaks. If anywhere in the Old Testament light breaks out, we have it in this psalm. In the gospels we have everything that was done to insult our blessed Lord, but that was not the bitterest part of His sufferings. All that He suffered from men would only leave the question of sin untouched as regards God and one’s own conscience. Sin has been committed before the infinite God; whoever has been guilty of it is obnoxious to Him and demands His wrath. Wherever there has been sin there must be judgment. If I look into Scripture I find the character of God is perfect holiness. If He who is perfectly holy has to do with the sinner, what must be the consequence? Into however small a compass I bring my sin, it has been done against an infinite God. Where do we see what sin is? Is it in the ungodly High Priest, who blasphemed the Son of God? Was it in the Gentile monarch, who sanctioned the crucifixion? No; it was when God’s judgment was poured on Him for man’s sin. He stood as the sin-bearer, and it is there only we get the true measure of sin.
He Was “Made Sin for Us”
When there He was “made sin for us,” He had not one single ray of light from God to strengthen Him. He represented sin before God, and the sustainment He had always had from God now ceased to flow. “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” These words have quite a different meaning in Christ’s mouth to what they have in any other. Have not you often used this language when God was really drawing you by His own love, but you were afraid to trust Him? Are not you ashamed to think of it? But it was very different in Christ’s experience.
The word “Eloi” in the quotation is expressive of nearness—”My God.” It is not Hebrew, but Syriac. This expression coming forth to Him who was always so near has deep force in it, and the only moment in which He could be forsaken of God was this, when He was taking our sins upon Him. He was always in the full sunshine of God’s favor, for He was holy. Christ could have been no victim if He had not been holy and separate from sinners. Nothing shows the perfect purity and holiness of the Lord like this psalm. True indeed there was a deep agony of soul when He said, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? why art Thou so far from helping Me, and from the words of My roaring?” But almost immediately afterward He vindicates God: “But Thou art holy.”
The Divine Source
What a state poor Job was in while waiting for God! But such is the contrast of Christ here. It is as though He had said, “I have taken this place of bearing sins before God, and I ought to know what the award is.” There was a spring in Himself that enabled Him to say, “Though Thou forsakest Me, I will not forsake Thee.” Thus the essential purity and divine perfection of what He was stood out in all that depth of humiliation. What a contrast we should exhibit in such circumstances! If we have nothing from God, we have nothing. Though there is the well of water in us springing up to everlasting life, we are dependent upon the divine source to cause it to spring up, and we are utterly and entirely dependent on God. Not so Christ. Though He stooped down as the servant, He was not limited to that. (vv. 5-7.)
He links Himself with Israel (vs. 6): “I am a worm;” that is, “I am in the place of a sin-offering. I am a worm and no man; unworthy of the slightest notice or regard. Thou oughtest to turn away from Me. Thy holiness requires it.”
You must have some measure with regard to sin. What is your measure? From the buddings of it in the garden of Eden to the last heading up of it in the man of sin (the antichrist) there is no divine measure of sin but on the cross. If we think of sin anywhere else but here, we get a human measure according to the circumstances.
If merely a human being had been here as Christ was, and forsaken of God, the well of water would have come to an end, and he would have been ready to call on the rocks to cover him; but in all this agony, when all the full tale of judgment was poured out on Christ, it left His perfection untouched, and only made the brightness more visible.
The contrast might be illustrated by the difference between a newborn babe left out in the open air all night, and a strong man in the same exposure. What would be certain death to the one would be overcome by the other. There was no comparison between the first Adam and Christ. The first Adam was no person to do with God. How could he? What was he to settle with God about sin? He could not, but Christ could; and He has settled it, and there is no fear now of God saying to a poor sinner who believes, “No; you must go and taste the sufferings which He bore on the cross.” It was God’s Lamb who suffered there, and it was to carry out the idea of mercy in the divine mind that He came: “Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God.” When we look at this force of the first verse, what sort of sanction does it cast upon sin in a disciple? Do you talk of a little sin? See what Christ suffered for it. Nothing will make the disciple, the servant, so anxious to be free from sin as seeing what the judgment of it was upon the cross. There is no such thing as little sin to the child of God who has this measure. Everything in yourselves, in your family circles, everything around you, ought to be brought into judgment, the sentence of death passed upon it: “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:24).
Cease to Do Evil, Learn to Do Well
The great thing in the present day is to learn that grand principle—“Cease to do evil; learn to do well” (Isa. 1:16-17). Not only sins in general, but sin, has been judged in the cross of Christ, and if God is to show forth His holiness most efficiently, it is in the forgiveness of the poor sinner through this judgment which has been passed upon Christ rather than in the final condemnation of the sinner. Our hearts little understand what He bore in that hour. There is not room in our minds for more than a certain quantity of sorrow, but what another would not have felt, He gathered up and felt perfectly.
It is an important question for us, as to how far death, as to anything that is noxious, is put away from our minds. Is a grave, a sick-bed, a terrible thing to you? or do you feel it better to depart to be with Christ? A remarkable test as to this point was experienced in France in the time of the Revolution (1789). A poor woman was dying in a part of the town which was already cannonaded, and to be thrown down next day. The question was, Who would go to her? One said, “I will go.” It was put before him what it would involve; probably loss of life. But he said, “I died 1,800 years ago.” He went, and was preserved (2 Corinthians 1:9).
G. V. Wigram
I Thirst
The last four of the seven utterances the Lord Jesus says from the cross seem to follow in quick succession. We learn this about His cry of forsakenness and expression of thirst from comparing the gospels of Matthew and Mark with the record of John. Matthew writes that when some of those who stood there heard the cry of forsakenness they said, “This man calls for Elias. And immediately one of them running and getting a sponge, having filled it with vinegar and fixed it on a reed, gave Him to drink” (Matt. 27:47-48 JND).
Mark’s account is very similar, but neither record refers to the Lord’s words: “I thirst.” This is left to John who then goes on to confirm: “There was a vessel therefore full of vinegar, and having filled a sponge with vinegar, and putting hyssop round it, they put it up to His mouth” (John 19:29 JND). It thus appears that the Lord must have expressed His thirst very soon after His cry of forsakenness and this shows us that the two are intimately connected. One is to do with Him as the man who suffers at the hand of God as the trespass and sin offering. The other is in keeping with John’s presentation of Him as the Son of God, for He says it knowing that all things are now finished, and with the purpose that Scripture might be fulfilled, and as the burnt offering.
My Strength is Dried up
It is true that the words “I thirst” speak of extreme physical thirst. The spirit of the Lord Jesus in the Psalms anticipates this: “My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and My tongue cleaveth to My palate” (Psa. 22:15 JND). Thirst is one of the terrible physical sufferings that belong to crucifixion, and man’s response is to offer a vessel “full of vinegar.” The Lord’s experience of thirst is therefore another moving glimpse in John’s gospel of feelings connected with His manhood. But the meaning of what He says about His thirst is first a spiritual one. It is the yearning the Holy Spirit leads the psalmist to describe when he writes: “My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God (Psa. 42:2 JnD). This is intensely personal to the Lord Jesus (this utterance is the only one of the seven that refers to Himself alone). It is imbued with a desire that is exclusively for God.
Till then tears are His bread day and night. The ungodly say to Him all the day, “Where is Thy God?” He pours out His soul within Him. He is delivered up by the multitude when His desire is to lead them into God’s presence and blessing. And, oh, how His soul is cast down! But despite it all His confidence is in God, and He remembers Him from the land of the Jordan which means “descender” and speaks of death, from the Hermons which suggest seclusion, even aloneness, and from Mizar or “smallness”. No doubt the remnant who flee to these geographical locations in the time of Jacob’s trouble will experience something of the same moral condition. However, they will wait for their God in safety in the clefts of the rock and the covert of the precipice. In contrast the Lord Jesus is exposed to all the horror of the three hours of darkness. Trouble is near, and there is none to help.
The Scapegoat
He is the scapegoat bearing upon Him all our iniquities to a land apart from men. He is a worm, and no man and “all Thy breakers and Thy billows are gone over Me.” It is His desire for God and His dedication to His will expressed in the words “I thirst” that give His part in all that happens here in its beautiful burnt offering aspect (Psa. 42:1-7, Song of Sol. 2:14, Psa. 22:6, 11, Lev. 16:21-22, 1:7-9 JND).
But the part men take is so different. Towards the end of Psalm 42 There is a repetition of the reproachful words: “Where is Thy God?” This reflects what happened at the cross. In the first three hours the Lord Jesus hung there, the chief priests mocking, with the scribes and elders, said, “He trusted upon God; let Him save Him now if He will have Him. For He said, ‘I am Son of God’” (Matt. 27:41-43 JnD).
His Cry Is to God
They say, “This man calls for Elias.” They cannot believe there is any connection between Him and God. He is a crucified and, therefore, a cursed man. In their view He can only be crying to God’s long-promised representative, Elijah, to deliver Him. This shows the extent to which they hold Him in contempt, for it is unmistakable that His cry is to God. Perhaps they are startled by the loudness of it. In their experience of crucifixions no one who has hung on a cross for so long has cried out with such strength. There seems to be a feeling that this is so special that it may actually presage Elijah’s intervention. One (no doubt one who heard the words “I thirst”) fetches the vinegar and the rest allow it to be given to Him in view of this visitation. So at best it is a gift borne of callous curiosity, and really amounts to derision and reproach upon reproach for Him. His spirit in the Psalms says “for Thy sake I have borne reproach ... the reproaches of them that reproach Thee have fallen upon Me. And I wept, My soul was fasting: that also was to My reproach ... .Thou knowest My reproach, and My shame ... reproach hath broken My heart, and I am overwhelmed” (Psa. 69:7, 9-10, 19-20 JND).
The vinegar of those days was a thin sour wine more likely to set the teeth on edge than quench thirst (Prov. 10:26 JND). Some six hours earlier, when He came to Golgotha, the soldiers “gave to Him to drink vinegar mingled with gall” but having tasted it He would not drink (Matt. 27:34), no doubt because the gall (or myrrh in Mark) was a kind of primitive drug and He would enter into all that God allowed and laid upon Him. Subsequently they “made game of Him, coming up offering Him vinegar, and saying, ‘If Thou be the King of the Jews, save Thyself’” (Luke 23:36-37 JND). But He does not save Himself in the least degree. He is doing the will of the One who sent Him. Men cannot assuage His thirst but their actions, introduced by His words, serve to fulfill the poignant commentary of His Spirit in the Psalms: “Yea, they gave Me also gall for My food, and in My thirst they gave Me vinegar to drink” (Psa. 69:21 JnD).
He Freely Gave Water to Drink
In His life He had delighted to give men and women to drink freely of His grace, and still does today. “Whosoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst forever, but the water which I shall give him shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into life eternal” (John 4:14 JND). “If any one thirst, let him come to Me and drink. He that believes on Me, as the scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water (John 7:37 JND), and “And let him that is athirst come; he that will, let him take the water of life freely” (Rev. 22:17 JND).
May it be our desire and resolution, as those who have received of His fullness, to return to Ephesian first love for Him, and never be like that Laodicean lukewarmness He will spue out of His mouth after the assembly has been raptured. It should surely move us that when He departed His life here His last remembrance of the behavior of men towards Him was the bitter taste of the drink of vinegar they gave Him when He said, “I thirst.” We have only a very limited conception of what this meant to His holy and gracious sensibilities, but we can be assured that He delights to receive refreshment now in the form of love from overflowing hearts. Let us then render our drink offerings of worship and dedication to Him while we wait for Him to take us to be with Himself in His Father’s house above.
E. L. Ferguson
The Humanity of Christ
No one takes His [Christ’s] life from Him; He gives it up, but at the moment willed of God. He is abandoned in fact to the effect of man’s iniquity, because He came to accomplish the will of God; He suffers Himself to be crucified and slain. Only the moment in which He yields up, His spirit is in His hands. He works no miracle to hinder the effect of the cruel means of death which man employed, in order to guard His humanity from their effect; He leaves it to their effect. His divinity is not employed to secure Himself from it, to secure Himself from death; but it is employed to add to it all His moral value, all His perfection to His obedience. He works no miracle not to die, but He works a miracle in dying. He acts according to His divine rights in dying, but not in guarding Himself from death; for He surrenders His soul to His Father as soon as all is finished.
The difference then of His humanity is not in that it was not really and fully that of Mary, but in that it was so by an act of divine power, so as to be such without sin; and, moreover, that in place of being separated from God in His soul, like every sinful man, God was in Him who was of God. He could say “I thirst,” “My soul is troubled,” “it is melted like wax in the midst of My bowels;” but He could also say “the Son of Man who is in heaven,” and “before Abraham was, I am.” The innocence of Adam was not God manifest in flesh; it was not man subjected, as to the circumstances in which His humanity was found, to all the consequences of sin.
Fallen Man – Perfect Man
On the other hand, the humanity of man fallen was under the power of sin, of a will opposed to God, of lusts which are at enmity with Him. Christ came to do God’s will: in Him was no sin. It was humanity in Christ where God was, and not humanity separate from God in itself. It was not humanity in the circumstances where God had set man when he was created, the circumstances where sin had set him, and in these circumstances without sin; not such as sin rendered man in their midst, but such as the divine power rendered Him in all His ways in the midst of those circumstances, such as the Holy Spirit translated Himself in humanity. It was not man where no evil was, like Adam innocent, but man in the midst of evil; it was not man bad in the midst of evil like Adam fallen, but man perfect, perfect according to God, in the midst of evil, God manifest in flesh; real, proper humanity, but His soul always having the thoughts that God produces in man, and in absolute communion with God, save when He suffered on the cross, where He must, as to the suffering of His soul, be forsaken of God; more perfect then, as to the extent of the perfection and the degree of obedience, than anywhere else, because He accomplished the will of God in the face of His wrath, instead of doing it in the joy of His communion; and therefore He asked that this cup should pass, which He never did elsewhere. He could not find His meat in the wrath of God.
Our precious Savior was quite as really man as I, as regards the simple and abstract idea of humanity, but without sin, born miraculously by divine power; and, moreover, He was God manifest in flesh.
J. N. Darby
He Glorified God in His Life and His Death
The Lord Jesus had glorified the Father all His life, but now it was a question of glorifying God in His death, for God is the Judge of sin. It was not a question with the Father as such, but with God as God touching sin. He who had glorified the Father in a life of obedience glorified God in the death in which that very obedience was consummated, and not merely this: Evil was laid on Him in whom all was good, and they met. What a meeting!
Yes, God was there, not the Approver of what was good only, but the Judge of all evil laid upon that blessed head. It was God forsaking the faithful, obedient Servant; yet it was His God: This would— could—never be given up, for, on the contrary, He even then firmly holds to it. “My God, My God,” yet He has to add now, “Why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
It was the Son of the Father, but as Son of Man necessarily that He so cried out, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” Then, and then only, did God desert His one unswerving Servant, the Man Christ Jesus.
Nevertheless we bow before the mystery of mysteries in His Person—God manifest in flesh. Had He not been man, of what avail for us? Had He not been God, all must have failed to give to His suffering for sins the infinite worth of Himself. This is atonement. And atonement has two parts in its character and range. It is expiation before God; it is also substitution for sins.
W. Kelly
Father, Into Thy Hands
John makes no mention of the three hours of darkness, nor of the forsaking with the bitter cry that it called forth, which had been predicted in the first verse of Psalm 22. Those things did not particularly illustrate the deity of Jesus, upon which the Spirit of God had led John to lay such emphasis. What did illustrate it was the triumphant cry with which His earthly life closed. Psalm 22 ends with the words, “He hath done,” and of this the New Testament equivalent is, “It is finished.” He had come into the world in the full knowledge of all that had been entrusted to Him of the Father: He was now leaving it in the full knowledge that all had been fulfilled; not one thing was lacking. The prophet had predicted that Jehovah should “make His soul an offering for sin,” (Isa. 53:10) and this was accomplished. As a consequence faith can now take up the language of Isaiah 53:5, and make it its own; just as the repentant remnant of Israel will adopt it in a coming day.
In this also our Lord was unique. There have been servants of God who like Paul have been able to speak with confidence of having finished their course, but none would have dared to affirm that they had put the finishing touch to the work in their hands; they have rather handed on the work to those who should succeed them. His work was exclusively His own, He carried it to its perfect completion. He could appraise His own work, and announce it as finished. All others have humbly to submit their labor to the divine scrutiny and verdict in the day to come.
Full Command of His Spirit
Both Matthew and Mark tell us that after crying with a loud voice, Jesus expired. It would appear that Luke and John each give us a part of that last utterance. If so, it must have been, “It is finished; Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.” The first part helps to emphasize His deity, so John records it: the second emphasizes His perfect humanity, in its dependence upon God, so Luke records it. True also to the character of his gospel, John chronicles the very act of His death in a special way—”He delivered up His spirit” (John 19:30 JND). The wise man of the Old Testament has told us, “There is no man that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither hath he power in the day of death” (Eccl. 8:8), but here is One who had that power. He is able at one moment to lift up His voice with unimpaired strength, and the next moment to deliver up His spirit, and thus fulfill His own words recorded in chapter 10. True, there He spoke of the laying down of His “life” or “soul,” saying, “No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again” (John 10:18). But the two statements are entirely in agreement, for we all know that when the human spirit quits the body a man’s life on earth ceases. When God calls his spirit, go he must. Here is One who has full command over His spirit; He delivered it up to His Father, and thus He laid down His life.
Resurrection Power
Then, having laid it down, He took it again in resurrection, as we find in the next chapter: the rest of our chapter is filled with the various activities of men, some of them His foes and some His friends, but all working together to the end that the determinate counsel of God should be fulfilled, just as He had spoken in His Word.
First on the scene were the Jews, the men who were His most implacable foes. They were great sticklers for the ceremonial side of things, and the Passover Sabbath being an high day, it was of peculiar sanctity in their eyes. They could not enter the judgment hall lest they defile themselves, as we saw in the last chapter. Now we see that the idea of the dead bodies of men they esteemed evil doers remaining exposed in the sight of men and heaven over that day was abhorrent to their ritualistic souls. They were right of course, for it had been so ordered in Deuteronomy 21:23, but that was the type of enactment which they loved to observe, while overlooking more important matters. Thus from them came the request that death might be hastened by the breaking of the legs, so indirectly they played their part in bringing to fulfillment another of the many predictions which were focused on that great day when Jesus died.
We might have supposed that life with the Lord would have been prolonged far beyond the others, but in fact it was the opposite, just because He deliberately laid His life down. Had He not done so, man’s act in crucifying Him would have had no power against Him. It is significant also that John does not designate the two men as thieves or malefactors; they were “two other” (ver. 18). No need to mention their particularly bad character to heighten the contrast. The greatness of the divine Son is such that it is sufficient to say that they were two other men.
Pilate’s order to the soldiers, at the instance of the Jews, had two effects. First, while the two others had their legs broken to hasten their end, not a bone of our Lord was broken, and thus Scripture was fulfilled. The reference must be to Psalm 34:20, and to the instructions given as to the Passover lamb in Exodus 12, and repeated in Numbers. 9. With this agree the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 5, when he says, “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us” (1 Cor. 5:7).
F. B. Hole
It is Finished — Gives Assurance
How many professing Christians do we meet who have no real enjoyment of the certainty of their salvation, and peace with God! This uncertainty marks the condition of such widely different classes: the multitude devoted to ritualistic practices; then the great crowd who merely attend this place, or that, for fashion’s sake; then others constantly occupied with their feelings; others well-read and familiar with dry doctrines. Yet all alike are sadly uncertain as to their personal interest in Christ. We would press this question home to the readers heart: Are you right with God? Do not, for a moment, suppose that no one can have this assurance before the day of judgment. We only need to read the epistles to see that this assurance was the enjoyed privilege of all who believed God.
No, the gospel of God is not concerning sacraments and ceremonies, or doings and feelings, but concerning His Son. And thus the Apostle preached in Thessalonica: “Opening and alleging, that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ” (Acts 17:3). Now concerning those who believed, the Apostle says: “Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God. For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance” (1 Thess. 1:4-5). Was there anything peculiar in the way in which they believed this preaching? There was. The Apostle says, “For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe” (1 Thess. 2:13).
No Other Means
There was no other means by which God could be righteous in forgiving sins, but through the atoning death of Christ. Here in this gospel Christ is set before you. He must needs suffer. He has suffered. It is finished.
And now more than this: man is so utterly lost and ruined in sin, that there must be a new creation—a last Adam—Christ risen from among the dead, the beginning of the creation of God. He must needs have not only made reconciliation for sins by His suffering and death; but there was the need of His resurrection from the dead. He has been both delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification. And, believing God, we are justified, that is, accounted righteous. What gives assurance is this, that this salvation is wholly of God. It is the righteousness of God in justifying us by the death and resurrection of Christ. It was so with these young believers. They believed God; that Jesus must needs suffer, must die for their sins, the Just for the unjust. This precious Christ in resurrection they had received— “Jesus whom I preach unto you, is Christ.”
Much Assurance
Is it not evident that, receiving all this as the word of God, not as the word of man, they must have much assurance? Is it not also equally evident that, if you have not the same assurance of your salvation, and that wholly of God, you have not received the truth of the gospel as of God?
You do not yet consider your case so bad that you must lay aside every fond hope of improvement by Ritualism, by your doings or feelings, and accept the testimony of God, to the absolute need of the death of Jesus. “Through Jesus is preached to you the forgiveness of sins; and by Him all that believe are justified from all things.” Perhaps we say, “It must not be through Jesus alone. It must be partly through myself, my prayers, my tears, my fastings, my feelings, my doings.” Ah, this was not the gospel of God preached at Thessalonica. No, it was Christ; Christ once dead, now alive again. They were also “turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God; and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.”
Doing and Feeling
Now is not the effect of dependence on our doings and feelings the exact opposite of all this? Instead of being turned to God from idols, men are fast turning from God to idols. Others, trusting in feelings, instead of Christ. And others will ever pray, “In the day of judgment, good Lord, deliver us.” What a fatal mistake! If not washed now in the blood of the Lamb, it will be forever too late then. “There remaineth no more sacrifice for sins” (Heb. 10:26).
Yes, the effect is truly wonderful when the heart is opened to receive the word of God. Most certain is it, if He imputes our sins to us, we are forever lost. Do not say, then, I do not know what to do to be right with God. All was done long ago. It is finished; Jesus has said it. God has accepted the atoning sacrifice. Jesus says, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation [or judgment]; but is passed from death unto life” (John 5:24).
Is there anything so important, or so blessed as to believe God? To know Him, whom to know is life eternal? Remember, it is all done. He who has said, “It is finished” shows His hands and His side, and says, “Peace unto you.” What peace! Peace made by His blood, peace with God; rest in God for evermore. To Him be all praise!
Things New and Old, Vol. 22 (adapted)
I Have Been Making a Savior of My Good Works
It was in a large room in the southwest of London that I first saw, in front of a crowded audience, an aged woman, between ninety and one hundred years of age. She lived at a considerable distance from the room, and was seen one day sitting outside her little house, enjoying the warm sun and refreshing air of an early spring afternoon.
The young person who saw her sitting outside her cottage invited her to come to some special gospel meetings, which were then being held in the iron room. My aged friend told her that she was too old and too feeble to walk so far, when my young friend, though possessed but of very limited means, immediately offered to pay the expenses of a cab fare there and back again, which she did the next and two following Lord’s-day evenings.
I did not speak to her myself until the third time of her coming to the meetings. I had been preaching that evening from the last words of Jesus on the cross before He died, which were, “IT IS FINISHED.” She remained behind with some others after the preaching was over, to have personal conversation with me about her soul. I found her in deep distress about her many years of sin, though she had led a very moral life. She told me that she had been a nurse, but that whenever she had an opportunity she went to “church,” that she was kind to her neighbors, paid her debts, did not owe anybody anything, read her Bible, and said her prayers. “But,” she added, “God has undeceived me, and shown me I have been all wrong all these years, and that instead of accepting JESUS for my Savior, I have been making a Savior of my good works. Oh, pray for me!”
Jesus said, “It is Finished”
Seeing that she was looking from herself and her doings to me and my prayers, I replied, “No; I shall not pray for you, nor ask you to pray for yourself. Jesus said, ‘It is finished,’ and His finished work is so perfect that it does not need the weight of either your prayers or mine. You must therefore trust His finished work for salvation, or neglect it, and be damned forever.”
God at once caused her to see the force and truth of what I had just spoken, and removed her last false prop from under her. With all the simplicity of a little, helpless child, she trusted the Person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and cried out with a loud voice, “Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name.”
She lived some four or five years after this, and was frequently visited by aged and experienced, and by young, earnest Christians, and by myself, and none of us ever doubted, but had many proofs of the genuineness and reality of the work of God in her soul. What hath God wrought! To Him be all the praise!
And now, should any of you reading this be making a Savior of your good works, be warned by it to look away at once to Him who did all the work of the sinner’s salvation on the cross. Are you, like some of old, saying, “What shall we do that we might work the works of God”?
Then listen, and bow to the answer, “Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent” (John 6:28-29). “Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness” (Rom. 4:4-5).
If ever you are saved at all, it must be without works, so that God may be able to say of you, “By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast “ (Eph. 2:8, 9). Works will flow fast enough after we are really saved by grace and know it. But all the way home to glory we shall be led adoringly and gladly to say, “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior; that being justified by His grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:5-7).
Gospel Light, Vol. 1
Seven Sayings of Christ on the Cross
“FATHER, forgive, they know not what they do,”
The words of Christ on Calvary’s cross for you—
He died the ruined and the lost to save,
And rose again triumphant o’er the grave.
“Today, shalt be with Me,”—thy soul set free,
His answer to the prayer “Remember Me,”
A sinner saved at the eleventh hour,
Snatched as a brand from the infernal power.
He saw His much loved mother weeping there,
And gave her to the faithful, tender care
Of that disciple whom He loved so well,
“Behold thy mother,”—who that love can tell?
The word of God was ever in His heart,
And from its teachings He would not depart,
And to fulfill that word we hear Him say,
“I thirst,” but not a drop that thirst to stay.
And then, amid the darkness of that day,
Creation trembled—He was heard to say,
“My God, My God, hast Thou forsaken Me,”
In all the sorrows of dark Calvary?
At last He cried, “ ‘tis finished”—all was done—
He, for His people, had the victory won,
The claims of God forever satisfied;
All glory to the One who bled and died!
And just before He bowed His holy head,
With a “loud cry” the mighty Conqueror said,
“Father, to Thee My spirit I confide,”
Laid down His life, and thus for us He died.
Edwin B. Hartt