Luke 23:46 And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus… I. WHAT IS IMPLIED IN A BELIEVER'S COMMENDING OR COMMITTING HIS SOUL INTO THE HAND OF GOD AT DEATH? 1. That the soul outlives the body. 2. That the soul's true rest is in God. 3. The great value believers have for their souls. He thinks but little of his body comparatively. 4. These words imply the deep sense that dying believers have of the great change that is coming upon them by death; when all visible and sensible things are shrinking away from them and failing. They feel the world and the best comforts in it failing; every creature and creature-comfort failing: For at death we are said to fail (Luke 16:9). Hereupon the soul clasps the closer about its God, cleaves more close than ever to Him: "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit." 5. It implies the atonement of God, and His full reconciliation to believers, by the blood of the great Sacrifice; else they durst never commit their souls into His hands: "For it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Hebrews 12:29). 6. It implies both the efficacy and excellency of faith, in supporting and relieving the soul at a time when nothing else is able to do it. II. WHAT WARRANT OR ENCOURAGEMENT HAVE GRACIOUS SOULS TO COMMIT THEMSELVES, AT DEATH, INTO THE HANDS OF GOD? I answer, much every way; all things encourage and warrant its so doing: for — 1. This God, to whom the believer commits himself at death, is its Creator; the Father of its being: He created and inspired it, and so it hath relation of a creature to a Creator; yea, of a creature now in distress, to a faithful Creator (1 Peter 4:19). 2. As the gracious soul is His creature, so it is His redeemed creature; one that He hath bought, and that with a great price, even with the precious blood of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:18). This greatly encourages the departing soul to commit itself into the hands of God; so you find (Psalm 31:5). 3. The gracious soul may confidently and securely commit itself into the hands of God when it parts with its body at death; not only because it is His creature, His redeemed creature, but because it is His renewed creature also. All natural excellency and beauty goes away at death (Job 4. ult.), but grace ascends with the soul; it is a sanctified, when a separate soul; and can God shut the door of glory upon such a soul, that by grace is made meet for the inheritance? Oh, it cannot be! 4. As the gracious soul is a renewed soul, so it is also a sealed soul; God hath sealed it in this world for that glory, into which it is now to enter at death. Surely, if God have sealed, He will not refuse you; if He have given His earnest, He will not shut you out; God's earnest is not given in jest. 5. Moreover, every gracious soul may confidently cast itself into the arms of its God, when it goes hence, with "Father, into Thy hands I commit my spirit." Forasmuch as every gracious soul is a soul in covenant with God, and God stands obliged, by His covenant and promise to such, not to cast them out, when they come unto Him. As soon as ever thou became His, by regeneration, that promise became thine (Hebrews 13:5). 6. But this is not all; the gracious soul sustains many intimate and dear relations to that God into whose hands it commends itself at death. It is His spouse, and the consideration of such a day of espousals may well encourage it to cast itself into the bosom of Christ, its head and husband. It is a member of His body, flesh and bones (Ephesians 5:30). It is His child, and He its everlasting Father (Isaiah 9:6). It is His friend. "Henceforth," saith Christ, "I call you not servants, but friends" (John 15:15). What confidence may these, and all other the dear relations Christ owns to the renewed soul, beget, in such an hour as this is! 7. The unchangeableness of God's love to His people gives confidence they shall in no wise be cast out. They know Christ is the same to them at last as He was at first the same in the pangs of death as He was in the comforts of life. Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them to the end (John 13:1). He doth not love as the world loves, only in prosperity; but they are as dear to Him when their beauty and strength are gone, as when they were in the greatest flourishing. If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's (Romans 14:8).Deduction 1. Are dying believers, only, warranted and encouraged thus to commend their souls into the hands of God? What a sad strait, then, must all dying unbelievers be in about their souls? Such souls will fall into the hands of God, but that's their misery, not their privilege. They are not put by faith into the bands of mercy, but fall by sin into the hands of justice. 2. Will God graciously accept, and faithfully keep what the saints commit to Him at death? How careful then should they be to keep what God commits to them, to be kept for Him while they live. 3. If believers may safely commit their souls into the hands of God, how confidently may they commit all lesser interests, and lower concernments into the same hand. 4. Is this the privilege of believers, that they can commit their souls to God in a dying hour? Then how precious, how useful grace is faith to the people of God, both living and dying? 5. Do the souls of dying believers commend themselves into the hands of God? Then let not the surviving relations of such sorrow as men that have no hope (J. Flavel.) Parallel Verses KJV: And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost. |
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