The Prayer Life of Jesus – Entrusting His Spirit on the Cross
The Prayer Life of Jesus – Entrusting His Spirit to the Father on the Cross.
“Tremendous power is released through the passionate, heartfelt prayer of a righteous man!” (James 5:16).
The Lord Jesus always was and still continues to be the ultimate prayer warrior. He prayed to the Father even before He was born (Hebrews 10:5-7), and He kept praying until the moment of His ascension (Luke 24:50-53). But He didn’t stop praying when His work on earth was done, for He continues to intercede for us at the right hand of the Father as we read this! (Hebrews 7:25). His ministry was largely a prayer ministry in the sense of prayer being the foundation for everything He did. He prayed for saints and sinners, privately and publicly, with His face to the ground and His head up facing the heavens. He prayed in grief and He prayed in gratitude, while exhausted and while full of energy. Jesus prayed with His dying breath and He prayed after He rose from the dead. He prayed before major decisions and during dramatic miracles. He prayed spontaneously and He prayed in words prepared thousands of years before Him. He prayed short, one-sentence prayers (John 12:28), and He prayed in at least one long prayer that seemed to encompass just about everything (John 17). Jesus developed a lifestyle of prayer that was common to observant Jews, but nonetheless uncommon in its intimacy with the Father.
Jewish Lifestyle. Being born and raised in an observant and orthodox Jewish household, Jesus was immersed from Day One on earth in prayer, in the centrality of prayer to one’s life and faith. Observant Jews practiced formal prayers frequently during the day, and spontaneous prayers throughout each day. They would pray the Sh’ma twice a day, the primary statement of faith for all biblical Jews, starting with its first line, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your might…” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). Then there’s the Amidah, a series of 18 sacred benedictions that each Jewish father would recite at home twice a day, or perhaps each rabbi in the local synagogue. The Psalms were memorized and on the lips of all believing Jews, as were other classic prayers from the Hebrew Bible, most notably Aaron’s Priestly Blessing in Numbers 6:24-26, “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn His face towards you and give you peace.” But by no means were the Jews content with all those formal prayers each day. The rabbis taught each Jew to offer up sincere blessings for just about everything in the course of each day, as many as a hundred blessings, giving God praise and thanks for every common blessing enjoyed. There were blessings for practically every conceivable grace and event, from successfully going to the bathroom, to waking up each morning, to the blessing of being able to retire at the end of the day. These formal prayers and the more informal blessings developed a habit of prayer in each earnest Jewish believer, and made sure that God was seen as the main reference point all day for everyone in the faith. The Jewish prayers were constant reminders of God’s grace and goodness, and made sure that each Jewish home and synagogue were cultures of prayer. Jesus was shaped and directed and nurtured in this Jewish prayer life, and since He was a faithful Jew, prayer was certainly second nature to Him throughout His time on earth.
“Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit!” (Luke 23:46; also refer to Psalm 31:5).
Commit (Greek, “paratithemi”): To place alongside; to present; to deposit for protection; to give for safekeeping; to entrust; to commend or hand over.
With these dying words, the Son places His trust in the Father for protection. Jesus finds overwhelming comfort in being able to confidently place his human spirit into the Father’s strong hands. He is sharing with the Father that He will soon be returning to the Father’s side in the throne room. This is Christ’s testimony of faith in the Father, that the Father is safeguarding the human side of Jesus in heaven until His glorification. These profound words of trust in the Father have been translated in different ways… Into Your hands I commend my spirit; I place my life in Your hands, Father; Father, I give you my very life; I surrender my spirit, Father, into Your hands.
These last words of Jesus on the Cross according to Luke differ from Matthew’s report of Jesus finally crying out, “My Father! My Father! Why have you deserted me!” (Matt. 27:46). A Christian tradition in the early church is that Jesus recited on the Cross all the passages in Psalms between those two verses, from Psalm 22:1 through Psalms 31:5. Jesus, being an observant and faithful Jew, most likely had every intention on the Cross of bringing to the minds of those nearby the verses in Psalm 31:1-5: “In You, O Lord, do I take refuge; let me never be put to shame; in your righteousness deliver me! Incline your ear to me, and rescue me speedily! Be a rock of refuge for me, and a strong fortress to save Me! For You are my rock and my fortress; for Your name’s sake You lead me and guide me; You take me out of the net they have hidden for me, or You are my refuge. Into your hand I commit my spirit; You have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.” By quoting this messianic psalm of David, Jesus is claiming to be the fulfillment of that ancient passage, as well as declaring His complete trust in God for His impending vindication through His Resurrection.
Thoughts on the Death of God.
What if we didn’t know the end of the story? What if we didn’t yet know about the empty tomb? Yes, it’s true that Jesus predicted His rising from the dead on a number of occasions with His Twelve. But tell that to the traumatized disciples, who just lost their best friend. Tell that to His mother, who grieves over her precious son. A sword has pierced her heart, indeed. The Son of God gave up His spirit. He relinquished it. No one could take it away from Him, He had to agree to let it go, He waved the white flag of surrender. “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have the authority to lay it down, and I have the authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.” (John 10:17-18). He deliberately became lifeless. He died on purpose. His heart stopped beating. His organs broke down for lack of oxygen and blood supply. The Son of God literally became breathless, the One who gives breath to all created persons. An early church tradition maintains that Jesus looked like an old man when His dead body was taken down from the Cross. He had aged in His suffering and with the burden He was carrying.
The Indignity of it all. The death of the Son of God is nonsensical. Illogical. It doesn’t make sense. Life and death don’t mix. Death and Jesus don’t fit. It is somehow sacrilegious. Death is the ultimate indignity for the Giver of life. As the final result of sin, the death of Christ is the conclusion of sin’s victory over God. Death is an extreme impurity experienced by the only Pure One. Death defiles the world, making a dead person unclean and mortally defeated. Was Jesus unclean when He died? After all, death is this world’s vile pollutant. For the time being, the Son of God was defeated by sin’s final consequence.
But consider what the Orthodox Church says about Christ’s death:
(1) There is an Orthodox hymn in which Death is personified, and is at first puzzled by what it is experiencing during Christ’s crucifixion. The confusion turns to panic as Death realizes its own efforts to kill the Christ has resulted in its own destruction. “Christ’s torment, suffering and death is actually crucifying death. Christ’s own death turns out to be the annihilation of death.”
(2) “Sin which polluted God’s creation reached its frightful climax at the Cross. There, sin and evil, destruction and death, came into their own.”
(3) “Jesus accepted death because He assumed the whole tragedy of our life onto Himself. He chose to pour His life into death, in order to destroy it, and in order to break the hold of evil. His death is the final and ultimate revelation of His perfect obedience and love. He accepted the ultimate horror of death. His death is total fulfillment. The Author of life was at work transforming death into life.”
(4.) “His soul was the first human soul not to be taken to Hades at death; instead it was freely given into the hands of God. Christ frees all of humanity from death’s grip. His death reconciles mankind to God, not by satisfying the Father’s need for blood-justice as some might teach, but by causing every aspect of our corrupt human nature to be transformed, for whatever divinity touches is healed. Christ accepts human nature in order to sanctify human nature; He accepts our weakness in order to make us strong; He takes on our sin in order to free us from sin; He suffers in order to transfigure suffering; and He enters death in order to destroy it.”
(5.) “Christ accepts death on the Cross neither to receive the Father’s punishment on our behalf, nor to satisfy the Father’s need for blood-justice, as if God would demand such things, but so that by entering death as the divine Son of God, He can destroy this last enemy, which is death itself.”
After assuming the most fundamental of human weaknesses, thirst, Jesus groaned, “It is finished.” (John 19:30). As He entrusted His human spirit to the Father that He would return to Him in glory, He surrendered, His mission accomplished, His earthly task completed, His purpose fulfilled. The divine business of God’s plan of salvation is now complete. In the Greek, “finished” means “accomplished, fulfilled, paid in full.” Christ’s death finished the work of creation. His death paid in full the penalty of our sins. His death accomplished the miracle of redemption and eternal forgiveness.
“And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit.” (John 19:30). An early church leader, St. Chrysostom, stated that Christ’s head did not fall as a result of His death. Instead, Jesus was Lord even of His own death, as Jesus bowed His head first, and then willingly surrendered His spirit to the Father.