Commitment and Redemption

Jesus is truly extraordinary.  He is a man of authority, power, and divine wisdom.  At His word the blind were made to see, lepers cleansed, and the lame walked.  Jesus knew who He was, why He had been sent by the Father, and what awaited Him on Calvary.  Yet He set his face like a flint and faced struggles and pain, for the joy that was set before Him.  While every other person would have been blinded by their own pain, Jesus saw clearly the eternal victory of not only His resurrection, but the salvation of all who trust in Him. 

I was struck with a statement Jesus made from the cross in Luke 23:46:  "And when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, He said, "Father, 'into Your hands I commit My spirit.' " Having said this, He breathed His last."  The heartbeat of the Son of God stopped on that darkest of days.  It seemed death had conquered the One sent to destroy the works of the devil.  The disfigured body of Jesus might have been buried in tomb hewn out of rock, His body wrapped in linen.  But the story was not over.  The Pharisees and Sadducees may have been giving high-fives to each other like the penguins in the Madagascar movies, but their celebrations were cut short with Jesus rising from the dead.  David the sweet psalmist, king, and prophet, wrote something centuries before which Jesus alluded to in His last words.  Christ's crucifixion had been finished, but Jesus was not finished!

Consider the words of Psalm 31:1-5:  "In You, O LORD, I put my trust; let me never be ashamed; deliver me in Your righteousness. ² Bow down Your ear to me, deliver me speedily; be my rock of refuge, a fortress of defense to save me. ³ For You are my rock and my fortress; therefore, for Your name's sake, lead me and guide me. ⁴ Pull me out of the net which they have secretly laid for me, for You are my strength. ⁵ Into Your hand I commit my spirit; You have redeemed me, O LORD God of truth."  Death for people on earth is a period at the end of a sentence.  Death in the physical realm is as we say in Australia, a "full stop."  But did you notice in verse five the statement Christ quoted from the cross ended with a semicolon?  There was no full stop between committing His spirit to the Father and Christ's redemption.  The price for sin had been paid, for atonement had been made for all who repent and trust Him.  As a lamb without blemish, Jesus was an acceptable sacrifice for sin.  Jesus had been delivered from His body, and would rise again in a glorified body days later in everlasting, immortal glory.

For a Christian, death of the body is not a "full stop."  Our bodies will cease to function, but those redeemed by the blood of the Lamb of God will be raised up even as He was.  We will someday ascend to where He is, even at the right hand of the Father.  When Jesus fed the 5,000, He instructed His disciples to gather up all the fragments of bread and fish "that nothing be lost" (John 6:12).  Jesus cares for men more than bread, and implores we who are alive and remain to seek to gather those who are lost and perishing.  Bread has a limited shelf-life, and we only have a short while remaining on earth.  Let's follow the example of Jesus and keep our hand to the plow, for night is coming when none can work.