Seven Last Words
Jesus hung on the cross for three hours Good Friday before he breathed his last. In that time there were seven “sayings” of Jesus, Seven Last Words, recorded in the different gospels. To contemplate his last thoughts is to enter into his mind and heart for the world he created and loves.
1
His word created oceans and rivers, Niagara Falls and rain. He simply spoke and everything came into being from nothing. Now, the unthinkable: the inventor of water has parched lips and a throat so dry it is almost closed. "I thirst,” he managed to speak so that someone nearby could hear him. On the cross Jesus reached for just a drop of liquid, one bit of relief. This was one of seven “sayings” of Jesus on the cross. The Creator of every molecule in the universe just needs a drink of water. I don’t doubt that he was really thirst; he wasn’t just pretending to be fully human. But why?
Jesus thirst so that we don’t have to. He told the woman at the well, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give will never thirst again; it will become in them springs welling up to eternal life” (Jn 4). “I thirst” describes the human heart before it drinks from God, and the condition of men and women who have drunk but want more than yesterday’s sip. “As a deer pants for flowing springs, so my soul longs for you, O God” (Ps 42). Apart from the water of God, our souls are an Arizona summer or the valley of dry bones (Ezek 37). “God . . . without you, I am but dust like the preacher declared on Ash Wednesday.” No one can survive without water.
Jesus died so that we can live. He wept for us to have joy. He became sin so that we can be forgiven. He was separated from his Father so that we can be brought close to God. And here, he thirst so that our parched souls can swell with the water that wells up to everlasting life.
John in Revelation describes heaven in this way: “They shall hunger no more, either thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Rev 7). Jesus truly thirst because he was truly man. He thirst so that we don’t have to. “For I will satisfy the weary soul, and every languishing soul I will replenish” (Jer 31).
2
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” This is one of the seven last words Jesus spoke from the cross. Forgive who? The priests, of course, who loved their fancy clerical garments and ritual prancing around altars too much to notice that the Messiah of which they spoke with staged clerical voices was hanging before their eyes. The self-righteous priests completely missed the real thing, those pompous peddlers of self-importance. They desperately needed God’s forgiveness that day. They didn't know it, but they did.
And, Pontius Pilate, please forgive him and the government who waffled under the pressure rather than stand courageous for justice for the only one there that day who was innocent. This Roman governor could have stopped the madness but he didn't. He killed a man who was so perfectly moral that he lived and fulfilled the righteous demands of the law for others. Who died so that others can live. Pontious Pilate desperately needed the Father's forgiveness.
And most of all, please forgive the crowd who yelled, ‘crucify him!' It wasn’t the Jews who killed Jesus, or the Roman officials, or the fickle demoralized disciples. Our sins killed Jesus. Ours. He’s there because this is the only way that sinful people can have peace with holy God. “He bore the sins of many and made intercession for the transgressors” (Isa 53). He became a curse for us (Gal 3) and took the punishment for our sins so completely that "he became sin” so that we can be credited with the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5).
This week as we consider Jesus on the cross, the turning point of all of human history, all we have to offer him is our sins. We can’t clean ourselves to be presentable; God knows that we tried! He speaks grace into the darkness of our unfaithfulness. His own needs were enormous at that moment, but he’s concerned about our sins. Yours and mine. The parched ground of our hard souls needs a word of forgiveness, this word of undeserved love.
3
No one would be disappointed if he was a little bit concerned about himself at this point, about his thirst and pain, about the cosmic enormity of what he was doing on the cross. Surprisingly, one of Jesus’ seven last words from the cross was to make housing arrangements for his mom. He looked down on Mary, and then on his friend John, and said, “Dear woman, behold your son; Behold your mother.”
He redefined “family” that day. Because of the cross we have a new spiritual family made of bonds that go deeper than blood and biology. Jesus entrusted his mother, not to his own brothers, but to his friend John, and John to Mary. Earlier in the gospels Jesus stretched out his hand to his disciples and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matthew 12:49).
Beneath the cross of Christ true Christian community was born, not just for Mary and John, but for all Christians. Church is so much more than a building that we occupy once a week. As Jesus left his home in heaven to walk into the mess and sin of our human condition, so now we will find him working in the congregation of messed up people. It is a curiosity, but right there in the mess is where he chose for the pure Word of God to be preached and for the Sacraments to be duly ministered (Article 19). The poor in spirit are the blessed ones, and his mercy is dispensed to the ungrateful and the wicked. The community at the foot of the cross is based on vulnerabilities and brokenness, not appearances of moral performance. We each need God’s mercy the same. God loves people like us; he is our bond.
The test of this new family is the grace we experience and the grace we extend to others in the light of the cross of Christ. And the example right in front of us is so clear: grace so large that he forgets to think of himself - mercy so real that he loses himself caring for others in ways that heals and restores them - and forgiveness so powerful that he loves in spite of imperfect love in return (John describes himself as the ‘disciple whom Jesus loved’). Jesus forgot the pain of nails in his hands and feet, at least for the time it took him to arrange and care for the people he loved. When we encounter the rare person who wants to hear our story so badly that they forget their own for the time - who is full of questions about our life, our struggles and challenges because they really care - who stops the voice inside them that’s tempted to bring the conversation back around to themselves - we know we have met someone who has met the One who loved so perfectly that he forgot himself, at least for the time, in order to care and love others.
4
Why should Jesus remember this guy? The criminal, the thief on the cross? As far as we know this scoundrel never did a decent good thing in his lifetime, and he certainly would not have a chance to show charity to anyone afterwards. If you ask me, it would be a very different world if people got what they deserve: make bad people suffer and reward good people for doing good. But here’s the catch: according to the Bible’s standards, we all in the bad people group. We deserve punishment and death, even the best among us, and no one has done enough to deserve God’s approval (neither the daylong laborer nor the slug who worked for an hour!).
Of all the people in the world that day, it was the robber who was gifted with heaven: “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Not a hospice nurse or a life-saving fire fighter, Mother Teressa or Billy Graham. Both robbers crucified on either side of Jesus hurled insults (Mk 15:32). Both. But then something happened in one to cause him to realize: “we are receiving the the due reward for our deeds, but not the guy next to me.” He turned to Jesus and said, “remember me when you came into your kingdom” (Lk 23:42).
Of course it’s not fair. There were people there that day who WERE faithful by conventional moral standards: who said their prayers, served on vestries, memorized Bible passages in Sunday school, and meticulously tithed on every nickel. There were those who worked a full day’s hard labor while this thief may not have given a single thought to God before now. Yet the Bible tells us that God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked (Lk 6:35) and he came to seek and to save the lost (Mk 10:45). It’s hard to imagine someone more pitifully wicked and lost than the one criminal, and if God’s heart on the cross was for such a man, surely his love, forgiveness and grace extends to other sinners like us.
Could it be that in history's darkest event there is enormous hope? That the spiritual eyes of an insult-hurling scoundrel can be opened in his last moments on earth to see Jesus the Messiah? That, weaving through all the other stuff of those three hours, this unlikely man could get it! - “He’s here for sins - for my sins - to restore broken people like me back to God - maybe it’s not too late.” God was nailed to a cross for him so that in a few hours he will be presented to the Father clothed with the garments of salvation, the robe of righteousness (Isaiah 61). This is based completely in God’s goodness. We are saved by grace through faith alone, and this is a gift from God (Eph 2:8). “You who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Eph 2:13).
It all seems quite unfair, I know. But when we see our own human condition we will rejoice that “there is kindness in his justice which is more than liberty.” The dirty, rotten scoundrel gave God his sins, and God gave this unnamed man his own righteousness. This is how God treats sinners. “Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
5
Jesus was “forsaken” by another member of the Trinity? “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This was one of seven recorded sayings of Jesus from the cross, but how can it be? A disruption in the Godhead?
Lots of people were crucified in those days. In 73 BC, for example, the gladiator Spartacus led an unsuccessful revolt against the Roman Empire that resulted in 6,000 rebellious slaves being crucified on the Appian Way, one every 100 yards for 350 miles! But what Jesus did was completely unlike anything that ever happened before or since. St. Paul wrote that Jesus became sin and a curse on the cross so that we can become the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5:21; Gal 3:14). The Cross of Christ constitutes what was called the “wonderful exchange” by Martin Luther, what John Calvin called “the fortunate exchange,” and what W. H. Auden called “the great exchange.” Jesus of Nazareth exchanged his righteousness for our sins. God gave himself in the person of his Son to suffer as our substitute the death and punishment due to sinful humanity. Christ’s death averted God’s wrath from sinful people in one final and conclusive act - he was “pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, and upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace” (Isa 53:5).
The Father didn’t separate himself from the Son; the Son became separated by becoming sin. The identification with human sin at that moment must have felt to Jesus like he was deserted. The depth of sin’s damage is so deep and pervasive that someone had to pay for it if there would ever to be forgiveness and reconciliation with God. Some say this punishment must be paid by each penitent in this life or in purgatory, but the Bible tells us that all sin, shame, and guilt was laid on Jesus, and his sacrifice is complete and sufficient for forgiveness and salvation. “My God, why have you forsaken me” is God’s word declaring the completeness of God’s atoning sacrifice for human sin. He is the sacrificer and the sacrifice who took the punishment we deserve, and made peace for us with a holy and righteous God. It’s the only way there could be peace.
Jesus was separated for a time from his Father so that we would be brought near by the blood of Lamb. There are other ways the Bible explains the death of our Lord besides the substitutionary atonement. For example, Jesus’ death won victory over the devil and all his powers (Col 2:15); his was the perfect example of sacrificial love (1 Pet 2:21-23); his death brought a decisive end to our old life of sin opening the possibility of a new life of grace (Rom 6:6). But underlying everything else that is said about the atonement, Jesus is the Lamb of God who suffered the death and the wrath of God by dying the death we deserve to die.
All of this, of course, was foretold by the Old Testament prophets. The Lamb would be killed to adequately cover human sin when our self-righteous attempts failed (Gen 3:21); God himself would provide this sacrifice (Gen 22:8); his shed blood would save God’s people from death (Ex 12:13); he would be acceptable because he would be the perfect offering without blemish (Lev 22:19); the Lamb is a person who would be crushed for our transgressions and numbered with the transgressors (Isa 53:5,10); and he was identified once-and-for-all in a thunderous proclamation by John the Baptist who pointed to Jesus and said, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (Jn 1:29). Jesus is the one who, from the beginning of time, was destined to die for our salvation and for the redemption of the world he created.
“My God” is a word of indescribable anguish that reflects the sinfulness of sin, and then the greatness of grace. That day Jesus paid the price for us to have forgiveness and peace. We give him our sins and he gives us his righteous. It’s not fair, I know. He doesn’t give us what we deserve; he graciously gives us what we don’t deserve. That’s why we call it the great exchange! As J. I. Packer wrote, “This is the best part of the best news that the world has ever heard.”
6
Jeremy called early morning, “It’s time.” I understood immediately that Benjamin was dead. Benjamin was six months old when he died. He was born with a chromosome abnormality and everyone knew that his time was short. I quickly pulled on my clothes and drove to their home. They had cried all their tears over the six months waiting, and now they were gently passing sweet, wrapped Benjamin between mom and dad. They let me, their pastor, hold him too even though I failed them over and over by not having answers to their questions about "why?" We prayed and gave thanks for the blessing Benjamin was to their family and to our church family. Jeremy said to me, “I can’t bear having one of the awful black cars take him from us. Will you drive me to the funeral home so that I can personally give him up?” Jeremy sat in the passenger seat of my car while Sue lay Benjamin's little body in his lap. We barely spoke a word as I drove, but occasionally I glanced over at a father looking down into the face of his dead son. He didn’t want someone to take Benjamin away; he wanted to give him up…
Jesus’ life was not taken from him; he gave it up. It was his choice to die. This was why he came. And now the time had come for him to leave. “Into your hands I commit my spirit” is a word of satisfaction and surrender, but not defeat. He voluntarily gave himself into the hands of sinners, and he voluntarily gave his spirit into the loving hands of his Heavenly Father. “For this reason the father loves me, because I lay down my life... no one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own accord” (John 10:17-18).
Are you surprised that he calls God “Father?” Between the time he stated, “My God, why have you forsaken me” when the light of God was hidden from the sin-bearer, and this word from the cross, curiously there seems to have been a mending of relationship. He was called “God,” but now he is “Father.” The price has been paid and God’s righteousness was now credited to our account. The cross settled what was owed. And now Jesus is granted his original status as Son to his Father, “into your hands.”
Jesus was surrendered, in life and in death. He didn’t give up, instead he gave himself up, and now to wait three days before death’s dark prison is burst wide open. So that where he is, there we will one day be. Where Benjamin will one day have a joyful reunion with mom and dad and all those who prayed for him. Where I will meet our miscarried child and miscarried grandchildren, my mom and dad, and Allen Purdom, Newt Hayes, and Greg Devejian in the place where there are no more tears, suffering, or pain. Our home from eternity to eternity.
7
This is the last of the ‘last words’ in the last of the four gospels written. There were seven recorded sayings of Jesus on the cross before he died, but this was aptly the last. “IT IS FINISHED.” It is one word in Greek (tetelestai) spoken in the perfect tense: “It is finished now and will remain finished in the future.”
Once when Jesus was a boy and his family was visiting the Temple in Jerusalem for a Jewish feast, he was left behind. When they finally found him he said to Mary and Joseph, “Don’t you know that I must be about my Father’s business?” Jesus came on mission and over and over again he said, “My hour has not yet come.” That is, until now. In his High Priestly Prayer just before his crucifixion he announced, “My hour has come” (Jn 17:1). Jesus didn’t primarily come to leave us a deposit of helpful advice for Christian living or even to heal some sick people; he came to die as our substitute the death we deserve to die. All of human history led up to this moment and this word.
All that he came to do is now accomplished. Every Old Testament prophesy concerning the Messiah is fulfilled. What is needed to reconcile sinful men and women to a wholly righteous God is completed on the cross of Christ. All that the Law demands to bridge God with his creation is finished in every detail. Jesus finishing his Father’s business by making a way for us to have peace with God. Nothing can be added to the finality of Jesus’ death for eternity. Isn’t this why one apostle said that he glories in nothing - nothing! - but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ?
Those who heard this word that day might have remembered God’s word on the seventh day of creation, “It is finished” (Gen 2:2). And they might remember his word when they later read John’s Revelation about the construction of the New Heaven and the New Earth, “It is finished!” (21:6). From the beginning of creation to the creation of the New Jerusalem, Jesus the Alpha and the Omega - the beginning and the end - has done everything needed for our salvation, sanctification and glorification. God’s purpose in creation and all of human history hinges on this one last word spoken by the only person in history who was fully God and fully man.
On the cross Jesus redefined religion. It is no longer an endless searching for something in our future that is illusive and slippery - a grasping for some piece of God, some peace, some relief from guilt, some experience that is not yet ours. He accomplished our full redemption and set us free to explore it and live into it by faith - like a child with a big wrapped present on Easter morning. Nothing is missing, all has been accomplished, the full price has been paid, and those who were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. What's left for me to do is to rest in his completed work. Rest is what Jesus offers my weary and heavy burdened soul. Because it is finished.