Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit! (Luke 23:46)
"Why
hast Thou forsaken Me?" I am so glad that the story
of the Cross does not end there. The cry, the awful cry,
is "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken
Me?", but the last words from the Cross are not
such. "Father, into Thy hands I commend My
spirit" (Luke 23:46). He is back on the ground of
perfect fellowship with the Father and absolute trust.
The victory is gained, the work is done, the enemy is
defeated, and the ground is secured. Whatever Satan says, as
he does in our deep hours of spiritual experience, about
the Lord having given us up, departed from us - all that
sort of thing; whatever he says, it is not true. It may
be that you do not feel the full weight of that; but if
ever you come, as perhaps some of you have come, to a
time, such as many of the most faithful and devoted and
greatly-used servants of God have known, when the dark
forces spread themselves over, gather around in their
hordes, and seek to come between you and your Lord and
then begin their whisperings - 'The Lord has given you
up, handed you over', or something to that effect - when
you come to that place, then I trust you will know that
this word is no light word, no unimportant word: for the
last depths of Calvary were fathomed in the moment when
our Lord cried that bitter cry and gained the answer and
came out victorious and into rest. "Father, into Thy
hands I commend My spirit." That was not for
Himself, that was for us - for you, for me...
Never, never is it necessary for
anyone to know that desolation of God-forsakenness while
they put their trust, their faith, upon His taking up
this age-long issue as Man for man - the issue of
"the light of Thy countenance". So let
us rejoice that we have an open heaven secured for us by
our blessed Lord. We have but stated the truth, the fact,
of this thing. There is much more bound up with it, which
the Lord may show us as we go on, as to what kind of man
it is who enjoys that opened heaven, but that is with the
Lord. Let us thank Him for the fact that we may have the
heaven opened to us. He has done it. But to a Nathanael
He will say, "Ye shall see the heaven opened".
God grant that we may all be in that blessed position.