What did Jesus say on the cross?

There are seven utterances on the Cross, somewhat in the following order: — 1 "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34). 2 "Verily I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43). 3 Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani (Matt. 27:46). 4 "Woman, behold thy Son!" (John 19:26). 5 "I thirst" (John 19:28). 6 "It is finished" (John 19:30). 7 "Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit" (Luke 23:46).

While upon the cross, the Lord Jesus spoke seven times, the last words being, "It is finished." He had committed the care of His mother to John; He had asked His Father to forgive those who crucified Him; He had assured the repentant thief of being with Him that day in Paradise; he had cried in the deep, deep anguish of His soul, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"; He had cried "I thirst" that the Scripture might be fulfilled; He had committed His Spirit into His Father's hands; and, according to Matthew and Mark, had cried with a loud voice the words quoted by John, "It is finished" (John 19:30).

The End. — The Lord had interceded for His murderers (Luke 23:34). He had assured the penitent thief of being with Him that day in Paradise, granting more than the man had asked (43). He had commended His mother to the care of John the son of Zebedee (John 19:26-27). The awful cry, recorded by Matthew (27:46) and by Mark (15:34), had been heard proceeding from His lips. The three hours of darkness were, we presume, now passed. All, too, that He had to suffer at the hands of His creatures, short of actual death, He had patiently endured. So writes John: "Jesus, knowing that all things are now finished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, says, I thirst" (19:28). It is questioned, whether the clause "that the Scripture might be fulfilled" is to be connected with "all things are now finished," or with "I thirst." Many names may be cited for the one and for the other. We would rather connect it with "I thirst." All that the Lord had to suffer of indignity from man and the forsaking of God was over. But a scripture had spoken of giving Him to drink vinegar, or sour wine (Ps. 69:21). Was that to be left unfulfilled? No. So thirsty, the common effect of crucifixion, the Lord said, "I thirst." Really a man, the natural feelings of a man He experienced. And provision had been made to meet such a want. A vessel with the sour wine, the drink of common soldiers, was there. A sponge was at hand, and a stalk of hyssop was in readiness. To His utterance attention was given, and one of the soldiers proceeded to administer to the want. Just when crucified He had been offered wine mingled with myrrh to deaden the pain. He refused that. Then Luke informs us (23:36), that the soldiers in mockery offered Him of their sour wine to drink. But now it was not in mockery, but to relieve His thirst, that one ran, we elsewhere read, dipped the sponge in the wine, and gave Him to drink. He received it, and said, "It is finished." No Scripture now remained unfulfilled of all that had been written of Him ere He should die; hence His word, but one word in the Greek, "It is finished." And He bowed His head, and gave up His spirit.

For there were seven sayings of the Lord on the cross. Three of them are recorded only by John (John 19:26, 28, 30); one, that awful cry, is preserved by Matthew in common with Mark (Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34); and three are found only in Luke, one of them being the first, and another the last of the Lord's words when crucified. And both the first and the last (Luke 23:34, 46) are addressed to His Father, the former just when He had been crucified, the other after those terrible three hours of supernatural darkness had passed, and when about to breathe out His life. The term "Father" in both speaks to us. In the first He was interceding for His murderers. But it was the Son who interceded: "Father, forgive them: for they know not what they do." And may we not say that He had the joy of announcing the answer to His prayer, when He told the disciples on the day of His resurrection, that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, and let us mark the especial grace "beginning at Jerusalem"? In the last utterance, "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit," the term "Father" assures us that in full cloudless communion with His Father, and not as one still forsaken by His God, He was giving up the ghost. Should we not have lost, if these sayings of Christ had by error or carelessness dropped out of the early copies of Luke's Gospel?*

Yes, He was pleasing the Father in those solemn hours on Calvary's cross. Why, then, those words, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" There is only one explanation. Christ was there meeting God in all His holy nature and its righteous requirements in the judgment of SIN. Then was "He who knew no sin made sin" (see 2 Corinthians 5:21); then He took up as His own the guilt that belonged alone to others, for He not only "did no sin" (1 Peter 2:22), but in Him is no sin (1 John 3:5). Then indeed He bore the whole weight of God's wrath against sin, suffering as only an infinite Being could suffer, yet as man and for man; and, thank God, at the end of those three hours of darkness over the whole earth (or land), He could say "It is finished," and deliver up His spirit to the Father. Can you wonder that the very earth was convulsed at such a moment? There is much of the soul experience of Christ at that awful time, to be found in the 22nd Psalm, in the 1st verse of which we read the very words, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Can you not now see that the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are needed to give us a complete picture of the cross? They show us how the One who hung there was perfect through all — praying for His very murderers (Luke 23:34), caring for His mother (John 19:27), blessing a dying robber (Luke 23:43), but, beyond all, perfectly meeting God's righteous demands (involving as it did the hiding of God's face from Him when bearing sins), and laying a righteous basis on which the vilest sinner, who will but repent and believe in Him, may be fully and freely forgiven, and live for ever in blessedness with Himself in glory.

We learn from the Gospels of seven utterances made by our Lord during His crucifixion. Three of them were spoken during the earlier hours, and four during the later period. the only one of the seven found in more than one Gospel is the cry of Christ's abandonment by His God, recorded by both Matthew and Mark. It is evident from this double testimony of the Holy Spirit that this cry demands our reverent attention and prayerful meditation, especially.

First, the Lord, when they bound Him to the tree of cursing, prayed, 'Father, (He did not say 'My God'), forgive them, for they know not what they do' (Luke 22:34). Again, while the sun still shone brightly in the heavens, Jesus saw Mary His mother and the beloved disciple. he said to her, 'Woman, behold thy son,' and to him, 'Behold thy mother' (John 19:26,27). His sympathies were not dulled by His sorrows and His sufferings. Further we can hear His gracious and assured promise to the believing robber sharing the horrors of crucifixion at His side, 'Verily I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with Me in paradise' (Luke 23:43). though poorer than the poorest of the poor, the Lord could still give. Cast out of His inheritance, stripped even of His garments, He seemed to possess nothing, yet He bestows upon this converted criminal the right of entrance to paradise itself. What joy there was in heaven over the one sinner who had repented!

In Matthew, Christ is the Victim; there is neither comforter nor consolation, but the sleep of His own, and betrayal with kisses in Gethsemane; and upon the cross: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Mark gives very much the same facts in this respect. In John, we shall soon see, it is not a question of sufferings, either in Gethsemane, or upon the cross; it is the Son of God who gives Himself. In Luke we have more human anguish in Gethsemane, but none upon the cross. We will speak further on of what is related in John's Gospel. In Matthew's Gospel it is simple: it is the Lamb led to the slaughter, the Lamb that opened not His mouth, except to own Himself such, and forsaken of God for us. In Luke, I see the Son of man, and each circumstance answers to the character of the Gospel. Thus, as Man, His genealogy goes up to Adam; He is the Man who is always praying; in Gethsemane, in sight of the terrible cup that He had to drink, He is the Man realising beforehand that which He would have to suffer, as being made sin. He was in an agony (which is in Luke alone) but that only served to shew His perfection; He prayed the more earnestly; He was as a man with God; He went through all the anguish in His soul. Upon the cross, no sufferings at all. All the rest (that which we see in the other Gospels) remains true, but it is seen from another side; it is in another aspect that the precious Saviour is presented. The sufferings are past; He asks forgiveness for the Jews; He promises paradise to the thief; then, when all is finished, He gives up His spirit to His Father. It is grace and peace in His soul, when He has realised all. The forsaking of God had taken place, but this is not the side of the history that Luke presents.

But beyond all that strikes me as characteristic in these chapters is that other utterance of the Lord on the cross — "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit." This is peculiar, and shows us that the Lord's mind, while passing through His last hours, is not given to us in the same path in the different Gospels. In Matthew and Mark, we have the cry of conscious desertion: "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" — the cry of the smitten and bruised Lamb. In John He passes on without reference to God or the Father at all, but simply, as with His own hand, seals the accomplished work in the words, "It is finished!" But here it is between these paths that His soul is kept. It is not the sense of desertion, and its due attendant, appeal to God; nor is it the sense of divine, personal authority; but it is communion with the Father, the utterance of a soul that depended on Him, and was sure of His support and acceptance. And this is quite according to our Gospel. It is that central path, so to speak, which the mind of the Lord has been taking all through it. It is God as absent from Him that He feels in Matthew and Mark; the Father as with Him that He knows here; Himself that He is divinely conscious of in John. All these Thoughts had their wondrous and holy course through the soul of the Lord in these hours. Perfect in every exercise of heart, though various; and none could trace them thus, by the pen of one evangelist after another, but the Spirit that awakened them. "When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then Thou knewest my path."

Where is the author's authority for this statement? In Luke 23:46 I read: — "And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit," and in the 34th verse, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Well, you may say, "What of that?" Just this, that our author has misquoted the statements in Luke's Gospel, which, if rightly taken, are so beautiful, and quite consistent with the other Gospels.

There is deep and solemn reason for the difference in the utterances of the Lord on the cross. Oh, that Samuel Laing had possessed the wondrous key to the right understanding of it! None but a pardoned sinner can rightly apprehend. I can only pray that I may be enabled so to present the case that you may be constrained to say, like the centurion and others, "Truly this was the Son of God." Let us turn then to the accounts of those solemn hours. It appears evident from Luke 34:34 that the words "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," were spoken about the third hour, when, as we learn from Mark's Gospel (Mark 15:25) "they crucified him," while it was about the ninth hour (Matt. 27:46), that "Jesus cried with a loud voice … My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Then in the 50th verse of the same chapter we are told that "Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost." Turning now again to Luke we read, "And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit, and having said this, he gave up the ghost" (23:46). Clearly then, this second utterance addressed to the "Father" was spoken just at the close, as the first was at the beginning, of the blessed Lord's hours of suffering on the cross: What the second loud cry was I believe we get in John's Gospel (chapter 19:30), viz., "It is finished," these words being spoken after He had received the vinegar (i.e., about the ninth hour, see Matthew and Mark) just before He committed His spirit to the Father in the words recorded in Luke 23:46.

"After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst." I know not a more sweet and wonderful proof of how completely He was divinely superior to all circumstances. He had before Him with perfect distinctness all the truth of God. Here was a scripture which He remembers as unaccomplished. It was a word in Psalm 69. It was enough. "I thirst." What absorption in His Father's will! "Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a sponge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished." (Verses 29, 30) Where could such a word as this be but in John? Who could say, "It is finished," except Jesus in John? Matthew and Mark both give our Lord saying, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" This could not be in John. Luke gives us, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit," because there the perfect man never abandons His perfect reliance on God. God must, in the judgment of our sins, forsake Him, but He would never forsake God. The atonement would not have been what it is unless God had thus forsaken Him. But in Luke it is the sign of absolute trust in His Father, and not God's abandonment. In John He says, "It is finished," because He is the Son, by whom all worlds were made. Who but He could say it? Who but John could mention that He delivered up (παρέδωκε) His spirit? In every point of difference the fullest possible proof of divine glory and wisdom appears in these gospels. Put to death no doubt He was but at the same time it was His own voluntary will; and who could have this about death itself but a divine person? In a mere man it would be sin; in Him it was perfection. Then come the soldiers, breaking the legs of the others crucified with Him; but finding Jesus dead already, one pierces His side, "and forthwith came thereout blood and water. And he that saw it bare record."