The Seven Sayings of the Saviour on the Cross-51

3. Here we see Christ’s perfect yieldedness to God.

How blessedly he evidenced this all the way through! When his mother sought him in Jerusalem as a boy of twelve, he said, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?" When an hungered in the wilderness after a forty-days fast and the devil urged him to make bread out of stones, he lived by every word of God. When the mighty works which he had performed and the message he had delivered failed to move his auditors, he submitted to the one who had sent him, saying, "I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes" (Matthew 11:25). When the sisters of Lazarus sent to the Saviour to acquaint him with the sickness of their brother, instead of hurriedly going to Bethany, he abode two days still in the place where he was, saying, "This sickness is not unto death but for the glory of God". It was not natural affection which moved him to action, but the glory of God! His meat was to do the will of the one who sent him. In all things he submitted himself to the Father. See him in the morning, "rising up a great while before day" (Mark 1:35), in order that he might be in the presence of the Father. See him anticipating every great crisis and preparing himself for it by pouring out his heart in supplication. See him spending the very last hour before his arrest on his face before God. How fitly might he say, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for lam meek and lowly in heart." And as he had lived, so he died - yielding himself into the hands of the Father. This was the last act of the dying Saviour. And how exquisitely beautiful. How thoroughly in keeping with the whole of his life! It manifested his perfect confidence in the Father. It revealed the blessed intimacy there was between them. It exhibited his absolute dependency upon God.

Truly, in all things he has left us an example. The Saviour committed his spirit into the hands of his Father in death, because it had been in the Father’s hands all through his life! Is this true of you, my reader? Have you as a sinner committed your spirit into the hands of God? If so, it is in safekeeping. Can you say with the apostle, "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day" (2 Tim. 1:12)? And have you as a Christian fully yielded yourself to God? Have you heeded that word, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service" (Rom. 12:1)? Are you living for the glory of him who loved you and gave himself for you? Are you walking in daily dependence upon him, knowing that without him you can do nothing (John 15:5), but learning that you can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth you (Phil. 4:13)! If your whole life is yielded up to God, and death should overtake you before the Saviour returns to receive his people unto himself, it will then be easy and natural for you to say, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." Balaam said, "Let me die the death of the righteous" (Num. 23:10). Ah, but to die the death of the righteous, you must live the life of the righteous, and that consists in absolute submission to and dependency upon God.