The Seven Lessons Jesus Taught from the Cross

I don’t know about you, but if I was facing my last hours on earth, I wouldn’t waste time talking about unimportant things.  I wouldn’t be talking about my latest fashion find or what someone said about someone else.  I wouldn’t be talking about how much or little money I had in the bank or the home improvements I didn’t get done.  I wouldn’t even be talking about politics or sports.  I would be totally focused on letting the people that I loved know how much I cared, and on trying to leave them with any last advice or insights that I thought would help them.  And I think that if I, as an imperfect, broken human, would have my mind on those kinds of thoughts, how much more would Jesus be thinking those things?  If I am honest with myself, even though I know that Jesus is my Lord and Savior and I will go to heaven because I gave my heart to Him, I would also still be scared.  What will it really be like?  Will Jesus be pleased and say “well done” or will He show me all of the opportunities I missed?  Or worst, what if I really didn’t have enough faith and trust in Him?  What if I don’t make it to heaven?  Irrational human fears, but oh so real!!  Even as He was dying, I think Jesus had us on His mind.  I think His words on the cross were His legacy of love and wisdom to those He cares so deeply about – me and you.  Let’s see what He wanted to let us know.

“Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”

Luke 23:34

The first saying I want to look at is in Luke 23:34: “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.” Much of what happened around the crucifixion was in direct fulfillment of prophesy, showing beyond reasonable doubt that Jesus was who He said He was – the Messiah and Son of God.  This saying fulfills a prophesy in Isaiah 53:12, “He made intercession for transgressors.”  But besides fulfilling prophesy, Jesus is teaching us a life lesson on how to deal with those who hurt us.  He is being mocked, scorned, physically tortured – suffering to a degree that we can’t really conceive.  Yet in the middle of it all, He is asking God to forgive those who are putting Him through it.  He is living out His earlier command in the Sermon on the Mount about loving those who hate you and praying for those who treat you badly.  But I think it goes even deeper than that.  If we look at the context of the verse, it mentions two groups of people as Jesus says this:  the ones who were actively involved in crucifying Him and the two thieves that were crucified with Him.  In first reading, it is not exactly clear which group He is talking about, but I think He was talking to both groups. Not only was He modeling how we should forgive, He was pointing out the human sin condition.  None of us really knows how bad our sins are – we don’t really grasp what we do when we rebel against God’s holy laws.  We don’t know how deeply we offend the heart of God.  We don’t stop and think about us being the reason Jesus had to be on that cross in the first place.  Yet Jesus freely offered Himself to die for our sin so that we have the opportunity to be forgiven by the Father through Him.  Jesus is not saying that anything that happened to Him on that day was okay and He wasn’t giving blanket forgiveness to everyone there.  He was commenting on our sinful condition and pointing to the cure, as well as showing His great love for us even in our sin.

“Today you will be with me in paradise.” 

Luke 23:43

That leads us to the next saying in Luke 23:43: “Today you will be with me in paradise.”  This is directly spoken to one of the thieves who has stood up for Jesus against the other thief and has humbly asked Jesus to remember Him.  That statement shows that this thief has recognized that Jesus is the Son of God and that, while Jesus is about to die, He will live again.  This thief also recognized that Jesus is the only way to heaven.  The thief has recognized he is sinful and Jesus is not.  He listened to Jesus talking earlier about forgiveness and found the way to claim that for himself – faith in Jesus alone.  Notice that even though Jesus prayed that everyone be forgiven, He didn’t tell everyone that they would be with Him in paradise.  He only told this one thief – the one who chose to claim the forgiveness being offered.  And this is also a reminder that there in nothing we can possibly do that will earn us a place in heaven.  There are no necessary “works”.  Jesus promised heaven to a man nailed on a cross who was totally unable to do anything and was going to die soon, without ever being able to do a good work.  It is never about works – it is totally about faith.  Finally, Jesus relieves that man’s fears about where he is going.  Those who have faith in Jesus are going to paradise.  Jesus could have chosen a lot of words to describe heaven but He chose paradise.  That means it will be really, really good!

“Woman, here is your son.”

John 19:26

John 19:26-27 says a couple of things that Jesus combined together: “Woman, here is your son” and “Here is your mother”.  I believe that the first one of those is a direct reference back to the first promise God gave Adam and Eve after the Fall in Genesis 3:15.  In that verse, God told Eve that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent.  Jesus is saying, “Here I am – the seed (or son) of the woman and I am about to do some crushing.”  Jesus was telling His believers that even though everything looked unimaginably dark as He hung up on that cross, it was really the greatest victory in the world getting ready to happen.  Jesus was about to say “Checkmate” in the war against Satan.  But in the second saying, Jesus is caring for His family.  He is asking His disciple John to take care of His mom after He was gone.  Jesus was teaching us that even though He is with us, we need to be there for each other.  Even though the eternal battle was decided at the cross, we as humans would be facing pain and hardship until Jesus returned, and we needed to help each other through it.

“I am thirsty.”

John 19:28

John 19:28 is a little harder to figure out.  It is where Jesus says, “I am thirsty.”  Thankfully, the verse itself tells us something about what Jesus was doing here.  Just before Jesus says this, the verse says He said it “so that Scripture would be fulfilled”.  Jesus is again pointing out to everyone that He is the Messiah.  The prophecy about Jesus thirsting actually comes from Psalm 22:15 where David says, “My mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death.”  Psalm 22 is a prophetic psalm that includes much of what happens to Jesus and what He says during the crucifixion.  And this was written centuries before Jesus lived.  It should have been obviously clear to the Pharisees, who knew the Old Testament so well, who Jesus was, and they were stubbornly blind.  Yet Jesus is still trying to reach them, almost as if He is saying, “Can’t you recognize me yet?”  Jesus never gives up on trying to reach us!  Also, this phrase makes me think of how we all thirst to be filled with something, and the only thing that can ever totally fill us is the living water Jesus offers. 

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Matthew 27:45

Matthew 27:45 and Mark 15:34 both record Jesus as saying, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  When the Bible says something twice, that means it is something to really pay attention to.  And this statement certainly earns that honor!  First of all, it is a powerful moment when we realize that God actually left Jesus – that Jesus was literally forsaken and abandoned on the cross.  This was a necessary part of Jesus becoming the sacrifice for our sins.  Our sins earn us eternal separation from God – we all deserve to be forsaken.  But Jesus took that on Himself, in His darkest and most painful moment, to make a way for us to avoid that.  And even though He was Jesus – God the Son, the pain of that momentary separation from God caused Him to cry out in agony.  Imagine how it will make those feel who end up eternally separated from God?  Fortunately, Jesus made a way for us to bypass that, and all it takes is faith in Him and consciously submitting our hearts and lives to Him.  And the real beauty is that when we do that, Jesus promises He will never forsake or leave us! (Hebrews 13:5, but also throughout the Bible).  And I think He models something important for us about prayer here, too.  He says it is okay to cry out to God when we are hurting and feel like He isn’t there.  It is okay to ask “why” once in a while when things seem hopeless and beyond our ability to cope.  It is okay to ask God to let us know He hasn’t abandoned us. 

“It is finished.”

John 19:30

John 19:30 is where Jesus is declaring, “I won!”.  He says, “It is finished”.  He came for a specific purpose – to crush Satan and give us a way to be free.  To take the sin and shame and guilt and judgment off of us and put it on Himself.  He came to fulfill every prophecy about Himself and to fulfill every requirement of the law.  And He did it all perfectly.  Yet the lesson for us is an important one.  If Jesus finished it all, why do we think we have to keep carrying on the work of our own salvation?  Why do we keep trying so hard to be perfect on our own merits?  Why do we work to make ourselves look good and feel better?  Jesus did it all!  Our “work” is just to believe that and accept the free gift of salvation He offers.  Should we do good things and take care of each other and love each other?  You bet!  But not to earn salvation – Jesus already did that.  He meant it when He said it was finished.  It is perhaps the simplest statement of the list in some ways, but the hardest for us to actually follow. It makes us give up our self-sufficiency, and trust Jesus to have really completed what He said He did.  It is the true definition of faith – absolute letting go and trusting. 

“Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit.”

Luke 23:46

Then finally, in Luke 23:46, Jesus says, “Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit”, and He dies to this world.  The first thing that this teaches me is that Jesus was always totally in control of everything that happened.  Not a single other human can have control of the moment or second their Spirit leaves this world, even if we cause our own deaths.  God can sustain life and God can choose to end life for all of us, but Jesus was in total control of His own death.  He willingly died for us even though He didn’t have to.  He willingly suffered for us even though we didn’t deserve it.  He knew what He was doing.  Jesus never did anything unintentionally, not even dying.  Everything He did and said on the cross was perfectly planned.  We ultimately have almost nothing we can control totally in our lives.  But this statement by Jesus reminds us of one very important thing that we can control.  We can control the final destination of our soul.  We, too, can commend our soul into God’s hands.  And the way we do that is by turning to the cross, falling at the feet of Jesus, and submitting our lives, hearts, and wills to Him.  When we do, we also die to this world and enter into a walk with the God who sees and hears and never leaves.