Christ’s final proclamation from the Cross is extremely significant.  Just prior, Jesus exclaimed loudly with a triumphant voice, “It is finished!”  Those words indicated that the end of His life drew near, while the beginning of a new life was available to all who would look to Him for salvation and transformation. Yet, when He spoke this final statement is was also significant “And Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.’ Having said this, He breathed His last” (Luke 23:46).


The most complex death in the history of mankind has been examined right before our eyes.  We see a group of zealous, yet wicked men lead people towards crucifying a perfect savior.  We see Jesus beaten, mocked, and rejected, yet Isaiah 53:10 says, “Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief.” In one sense it looks like Jesus was murdered by wicked men, on the other it seemed like His Father sent Him to the Cross.  Then you recall the words of Jesus when He claims that no one could take His life, but that He willingly laid it down. (John 10:17-18) This perplexing examination of Jesus’ death and last words are a triumphal display from God to remind us that He has always had a plan to redeem humanity and our sin problem.  

As a matter of fact, it should also remind us that Jesus was always in total control.  

Though He laid His life down for His friends, he always maintained His sovereign will, even until the very end.  In Jesus’ humanity, He suffered an agonizing and brutal death.  However, in Jesus’ deity, everything we see in the final days and hours happened just as He said it would.  As “He bowed His head and gave up His spirit” (John 19:30), Jesus took His final breath in submission.  He calmly, yet magnificently displayed His humble, yet sovereign nature to the very end.  Though He quietly left this earth, He shook the earth in what He accomplished.  Wicked pharisees were not in control.  Roman soldiers were not the victors. Satan DID NOT WIN!  

1 Corinthians 15, 54-56 says, “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?  The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

As few looked on Jesus, a man of no comely appearance (Isaiah 53:2) as He hung lifeless on the Cross, the greatest moment in the history of mankind had taken place before their eyes.  In just a few short days, Jesus would shatter death and the grave.  His quiet moment of death will demolish sin, death, the grave, and be proclaimed loudly through a resurrection that brings life to all who look to Him.

1.  Have you ever thought about the complexity of Jesus’ death?  Take a few moments and ponder that the God of the universe allowed wicked men to brutally beat and kill Jesus to fulfill His plan perfectly.

2. Jesus died quietly and humbly, yet He arose in splendor a few days later.  What is your favorite benefit of knowing the resurrection story?

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We sincerely hope you have enjoyed reading The Easter Experience, and that our reflections on the Seven Statements of Jesus on the cross have been a blessing to you. Our sincere prayer is that they have deepened your understanding of Christ’s death on the cross and the ramifications of it that are still felt today.

But if you’re a Bible scholar, and look at Jesus’ statements in chronological order, you’ll notice that we skipped one…and that was on purpose.

We invite you to visit our Easter Experience page one more time, tonight between the hours of 6pm to midnight for a very special event, our first ever Good Friday service.

No, we’re not meeting at one of our campuses, but we are asking you to gather as a family, or as a journey group in your home and participate in an intimate time of worship online, complete with music, the Lord’s Supper and a special message from Brandon on the statement “It is finished.”

Please join us this evening for this special event here on this page starting at 6PM

John’s narrative of the crucifixion, like everything else, stylistically in his book, takes a different tone than the Synoptic Gospels and, being an eyewitness, he adds some statements not found in the other books. John, standing at the foot of the cross saw firsthand the agony his Lord suffered, as the wrath of God and the sin of the world bore down on him.

Jesus had been on the cross for close to 6 hours at this time. Dehydrated, unable to catch a breath without pushing up from the nails in his feet, causing immense pain…in agony. He uses his request for something to moisten his parched lips to point the bystanders, and us, to a pivotal event in the Old Testament.

After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.” A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. (John 19:28-29)

Throughout his book, John loves details, but why note the type of branch used? What is the significance of a stick used to hold a sponge full of vinegar?

Remember the story of the Passover in the 12th chapter of Exodus? The children of Israel, called by God to leave Egypt under the leadership of Moses, prepared for the Angel of Death to visit the land this way:

Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go and select lambs for yourselves according to your clans, and kill the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning. For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you.

So John, very aware of his Jewish history, is saying “Israel, here is your true passover lamb.” He echoes the words of John the Baptist, “Behold the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.” A spotless lamb sacrificed to temporarily save people from death in Egypt points directly to God’s spotless lamb sacrificed to save his people eternally at Calvary. 

A hyssop branch is used to avoid death in the first Passover and used in the defeat of death in the final one.

1. How about you? What do you thirst for this week? Is it more of God, more time in His word, more time talking with him as you go about your routines in life? Or do you thirst for the things this world offers us? Temporary pleasures, fleeting things that dull our senses to the things above; things that, in the end, keep us from having the abundant life God wants for us.

2. The woman at the well in John, Chapter 4, came to draw water for her daily sustenance, and ended up with a living water from the source of all life, Jesus. Will you join me in taking a moment to pray that we all look past the day to day, focus on the eternal and see things, and, more importantly, see people from a heavenly perspective this week?

In Luke 1, we see the story of the angel Gabriel visiting Mary in Nazareth to tell her that she would give birth to the Messiah, the one God would send to save His people from their sins. 

“And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

After the angel explains everything, how she would conceive the child miraculously through the Holy Spirit, Mary answers, “I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”

Some thirty three years later, at Golgotha, outside Jerusalem, standing at the foot of the cross, her son being crucified before her eyes, the full weight of her answer is realized. 

Jesus’ third statement on the cross, “Woman, behold your son. Son, behold your mother,” spoken to Mary and the disciple John, commits his beloved disciple to his mother’s care, and his mom to that disciple’s care. In some of his last moments on earth, in unfathomable agony, Jesus is concerned, not with his own condition, but with his mission and the welfare of those he is leaving behind.

Matthew Henry notes that Jesus calls her ‘woman,’ not mother, not out of any disrespect to her, but because calling her ‘mother’ would have only added to her already overwhelming grief. He directs her to look at John as her son: "Behold him as thy son, who stands there by you, and be as a mother to him.”

Henry goes on to say, “This was an honor put upon John, and a testimony both to his prudence and to his fidelity. If He who knows all things had not known that John loved Him, He would not have made him Mary’s guardian. It is a great honor to be employed for Christ and to be entrusted with any of His interest in the world.”

We as believers, have also been entrusted with a great honor from the Lord…the responsibility of sharing our faith with a lost and unbelieving world. It is not too late to invite someone to join you this Sunday for one of our Easter services. A simple text or phone call could be all the encouragement that someone needs to be shown the love of God, the care of His people and hear His saving word preached in simple terms, maybe for the first time ever. 

Won’t you share the joy of your salvation with a friend today?

1. Do you see yourself as entrusted by the Lord with a unique story of redemption? Or does the ‘eternal gravity’ of spiritual conversations keep you silent? Remember that we don’t ‘save’ people. Our job is to plant seeds, God is the gardener who makes spiritual conversion and growth happen. (Matthew 13:1-9; John 15:1-11)

2. Who is the Lord leading you to have a faith conversation with today?

One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” (Luke 23:39-42)

Today we look at the Jesus’ reply, the second statement he made while on the cross, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (verse 43)

The compassionate side of me loves this sentence. For one, it shows that a simple acknowledgment that Jesus is the Son of God got this man into heaven. After arguing with his cohort over Jesus’ innocence, he says to Jesus, “remember me when you come into your Kingdom,” acknowledging that Jesus is holy and who he said he was. Jesus, though in great agony, responds with compassion, and offers the man eternal life, despite his sins.

But the part of me that still thinks i have to ‘do something’ to be in God’s good will looks at the thief on the cross, the pattern of sin that had defined his life up until this point and says ‘it shouldn’t be that easy.’ Those of us who grew up in church, and led relatively moral lives (at least on the outside) sort of despise the fact that this guy ‘slid in under the wire’ and that his ‘deathbed confessional’ was enough to get him into heaven. But that’s the God we serve. His rules. His way. 

Those of us who are irritated at the ease with which this man ‘slips in’ are, much like the Pharisees, saying ‘we keep (part of) the Law, so God should love us more.’ We fail to see that any sin, any failure, any leaven in the bread is an abomination to a holy God.

Isaiah 64:6 says “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.”

Our ‘good enough’ is good for nothing—it is only through the sacrifice of his Son that we can be reconciled. So, let’s celebrate the thief on the cross today, church…his realization that Jesus is who he said he is and that faith alone through God’s grace alone is what allows all of us into Paradise.

1. Do you struggle with a ‘works-based’ salvation? Does your human mind find the idea ‘too simplistic’ that it’s by grace through faith alone that someone can be saved, and still feel that you have to ‘do something’ to earn your salvation?
   (Romans 10:9 and Ephesians 2:9 both put that idea to rest.)
   
   
2. Is there someone in your life, who, much like the thief on the cross, has been written off by society, or worse, by the Christian community? How can you share with him the Good News that Jesus died for both the righteous and the unrighteous?
   (1 Peter 3:18)