Lighthouse scribes

This morning as I thought of Easter season in my childhood church, I recalled that on a Good Friday like this, we would hold a solemn service, commemorating the death of Jesus for our sins. For some reason, this brought memories of secondary school Christian Religious Studies lessons when we were taught about ‘the seven last statements Jesus made’. This was the thought that nudged me to today’s study. I wanted to revisit his last moments before crucifixion.

You see, it’s so easy to see Jesus as the all-powerful God that he is and forget that he was truly human and he agonised and bore the deepest, heaviest and meanest form of pain and shame that all the humans that have ever lived combined could not bear. The Bible describes His pain, starting from Gethsemane, but in this post I will focus on His last statements.


1. Mark 15:34 NLT
[34] Then at three o’clock Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”

Many Bible translations will have Ps 22:1, written just beside this verse, and if you do a deep dive, you’ll find that much of the happenings at Easter were written in the Psalms.

Did the Father truly abandon His only begotten Son?

Yes. Jesus wasn’t playing with words.

Why did He abandon Him? 

For you and I.

Jesus is God, perfect in all His ways. He wasn’t forsaken because of something he did. This was the plan all along: that only he could make us sons of God by being the sacrificial lamb to take away our sins. Isaiah wrote it precisely. He says,

Isaiah 53:4-5, 10 AMP

[4] ¶But [in fact] He has borne our griefs, and He has carried our sorrows and pains; yet we [ignorantly] assumed that He was stricken, struck down by God, and degraded and humiliated [by Him]. [5] But He was wounded for our transgressions; He was crushed for our wickedness [our sin, our injustice, our wrongdoing]; the punishment [required] for our well-being fell on Him, and by His stripes (wounds) we are healed.

[10] ¶Yet the Lord was willing to crush Him, causing Him to suffer; if He would give Himself as a guilt offering [an atonement for sin], He shall see His [spiritual] offspring, He shall prolong His days, and the will (good pleasure) of the Lord shall succeed and prosper in His hand.

Look at His agony.

If you’ve ever experienced a painful childbirth, you know that it didn’t stop you from having another child. You knew you’d experience pain again, but it didn’t stop you from wondering or even asking the midwives why you were in so much pain. Your questions and behaviour were an expression of your pain, not a search for answers.

Remember, Jesus is God, and aside from fulfilling prophecy, he always knew what the cross would mean. He wasn’t surprised by his experiences.

John 18:4 AMP
[4] Then Jesus, knowing all that was about to happen to Him, went to them and asked, “Whom do you want?”

Maybe you can’t relate to a childbirth experience, and that’s fine because it doesn’t come close to showing us his agony, but the scriptures do. I can’t imagine what it would be like if I were punished for everything I did wrong; how much more for one person to bear the punishment of an innumerable number of people? But I’m grateful that Jesus’ experience isn’t just a story in history. I’m grateful because I am not just a human made in God’s image but a spiritual offspring, adopted into the family of God.

2. Luke 23:34a AMP
[34] And Jesus was saying, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Leading to this statement was the hurried trial of Jesus. Herod, Pilate, the soldiers, the leading priests, and the people, following a show of mockery, sentenced Jesus to death by crucifixion. As they nailed him to the cross, he said,

Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.”

Jesus came for exactly this: that men may receive God’s forgiveness and be restored into God’s family. There’s another reality that we must always remember, and it is that there’s a second coming of Jesus. The next time will be to judge us.

3. John 19:26-27 NLT
[26] When Jesus saw his mother standing there beside the disciple he loved, he said to her, “Dear woman, here is your son.” [27] And he said to this disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from then on this disciple took her into his home.

Relationships of blood and spirit.

Spiritual relationships are more valuable than blood relationships. How beautiful it is when our blood relationships are also spiritual relationships. We know that Jesus had at least two brothers, James and Jude (who wrote the books in the Bible). We also know that there was a time they did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah. He left his mother in the care of John the beloved. Jesus cared for the wellbeing of his mother and placed great value on spiritual relationships.

4. Luke 23:43 NLT
[43] And Jesus replied, “I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

Reading from verses 39 to 43 reminds me of the record in Matthew 9, when Jesus forgave the paralysed man of his sins. The religious teachers had been upset at Jesus’ claim to be God because only God can forgive sins.

When Jesus told the criminal that he would be with him in paradise, Jesus was also making it clear to those who heard that He is God. Men can only receive forgiveness of sins from him.


5. John 19:28 NLT
[28] Jesus knew that his mission was now finished, and to fulfil Scripture, he said, “I am thirsty.”

In response they (I’d assume the soldiers) gave him sour wine, which he drank. I couldn’t stop asking myself, ‘Why sour wine?’ So, I searched the Bible app for other mentions of sour wine and found Ruth 2:14. In Ruth 2, Boaz met Ruth for the first time, and besides telling her to glean from his fields, he also told her to drink from the water jars his men had filled whenever she was thirsty. A few verses down, at mealtime, Boaz offered Ruth a meal and sour wine. It wasn’t a drink to quench her thirst, but one to refresh her or energise her to continue her work, which she went back to after the meal. It’s interesting because in Mark’s account of the crucifixion, the same people had previously offered Jesus wine mixed with myrrh, an ‘anaesthetic’. While I wonder what they were getting at and ask myself if they were taunting him. I am also sobered by the fact that my Lord would not dull his pain or reduce his anguish. He felt every pain, spiritual and physical, that our sins laid upon Him.

It makes me think again about the value of my life; it’s the blood of Jesus, and shedding that blood was excruciating.

While Jesus was physically thirsty and said it out loud. Scriptures tell us that he said so to fulfil prophecy. At the cross, Jesus went through every kind of pain and difficulty for us.

6. John 19:30a NLT
[30] When Jesus had tasted it, he said, “It is finished!”

Someone once said that if Jesus was on the cross, how were his words recorded? Like, how did people even hear the things he said? Well, they were loud enough for even those who crucified him to act on. Soon after he said he was thirsty, the soldiers decided to give him sour wine; he took it and uttered the quoted verse.

What was finished?
His purpose on earth as a mortal and the works of His Father all culminated at the cross, where He died for our sins.

Life is about living God’s purpose. In the last 2 to 3 years of my life, nothing has shaped my life and prayers more than the truth that life is about God’s will, God’s story, and God’s purpose. Indeed we were created to bring him pleasure. Sometimes, this will bring pain, but nothing is more rewarding than knowing that we have lived for our maker’s purpose and finished the good works our Father has appointed to us.

7. Luke 23:46 NLT
[46] Then Jesus shouted, “Father, I entrust my spirit into your hands!” And with those words, he breathed his last.

The giver of life gave up his own life.

John 10:18 NLT
[18] No one can take my life from me. I sacrifice it voluntarily. For I have the authority to lay it down when I want to and also to take it up again. For this is what my Father has commanded.”

That Jesus succumbed to the evil plot of evil men did not mean that they had final authority over him. The devil did not, either. He gave his life voluntarily, and when he was done, he entrusted his spirit to his Father. His father didn’t abandon him forever. We see at the end that Jesus knew His Father was there and that separation at the beginning was for a moment.

If you are a Christian and have reflected on these scriptures, do they make you, like Paul, say,

That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

If you have not received the love and sacrifice of Jesus and you’re wondering what it is about, there was a man once who, at the dead of night, asked the question, ‘What must I do to be saved?’
The answer is still the same: ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.’

May His sacrifice mean everything to us, always.

Love,

Osi