Jesus said very little, and what he said is traditionally represented as his “seven last words.” Two of these “words” of Jesus were quotations from the Psalms. Earlier, Jesus used Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” to express his anguish.
Later he borrowed from Psalm 31, which comes to us from Luke as “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”
On an obvious level, Jesus was putting his post-mortem future in the hands of his Heavenly Father. It was as if he was saying, “Whatever happens to me after I die is your responsibility, Father.”
But when we look carefully at the Psalm Jesus quoted, we see more than what first meets our eyes.
Psalm 31 begins with a cry for divine help:
In you, O LORD, I seek refuge;
do not let me ever be put to shame;
in your righteousness deliver me (Psalm 31:1).
But then this psalm mixes asking for God’s deliverance with a confession of God’s strength and faithfulness:
Into your hand, I commit my spirit;
you have redeemed me, O LORD, faithful God (Psalm 31:5).
By the end, Psalm 31 offers praise for God’s salvation:
Blessed be the LORD,
for he has wondrously shown his steadfast love to me
when I was beset as a city under siege (Psalm 31:21).
By quoting a portion of Psalm 31, Jesus entrusted his future to his Father and implied that he would be delivered and exonerated. Jesus surely knew the whole truth of Psalm 31; so, he understood that God would not deliver him from death by crucifixion. But beyond this horrific death lay something marvelous. “Into your hand, I commit my spirit” points back to the familiar suffering of David in Psalm 31 and forward to the resurrection of Jesus.
Thus, the final word of Jesus from the cross foreshadows Easter’s coming victory and joy.
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