Sermons on Luke 23:46

Luke 23:46 Interpretation:

Trusting God: Finding Refuge in Adversity (David Guzik) interprets Luke 23:46 by reading Jesus’ quotation of Psalm 31:5 not as a despairing surrender but as a confident, grateful entrusting rooted in the immediate sequel of the psalm (“you have redeemed me, O Lord”), arguing that the psalmic line shows wholehearted submission born of assurance rather than defeat; Guzik highlights the psalm’s movement from pleading to thanksgiving and uses that literary context to portray Jesus’ final cry as the consummation of trust—an intentional handing-over that aligns with David’s own “I commit my spirit” imagery and with a long Christian tradition of martyrs echoing the phrase at death.

Jesus' Crucifixion: Control, Trust, and Transformative Power (Alistair Begg) reads Luke 23:46 as evidence that Jesus died deliberately and victoriously rather than as a passive victim losing consciousness: Begg emphasizes the anomalous “loud voice” at the end of a crucified person’s life to argue Jesus retained full faculties, determined the moment of departure, and thus “commended” his spirit into the Father’s care as the triumphant close of his finished work on the cross, using the contrast with normal crucifixion physiology to make the theological point that Jesus “laid down” his life with authority.

Trusting God: Embracing Death with Hope and Faith (Open the Bible) interprets Jesus’ words through anthropological and soteriological categories: focusing on the technical meaning of “spirit” (the breath/ruach idea), the preacher treats “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” as Jesus’ expression of what death is (temporary separation of spirit from body) and as a model for believers—a calm, faith-rooted relinquishing of the immortal part of self into the Father’s care that presumes bodily resurrection and secures hope beyond temporal decay.

Entrusting Our Souls: Doing Good Amid Suffering (Desiring God) treats Luke 23:46 primarily as the lexical and theological key to 1 Peter 4:19: the sermon notes that the verb Peter uses for “entrust” is the same verb Jesus uses in Luke 23:46 and draws from that verbal identity the interpretive claim that Jesus’ final act of entrusting himself to the Father becomes the paradigm enabling persecuted Christians to “entrust their souls to a faithful creator while doing good,” so the verse is read as the model and empowering precedent for patient, active faith under suffering.

Trusting God: Jesus' Final Words on the Cross (Village Bible Church - Sugar Grove) reads Luke 23:46 as a deliberate, theologically packed declaration rather than a desperate gasp, arguing that each element of the phrase — the intimate address "Father," the transfer into "your hands," and the verb translated "commit" — functions as a modeled action: Jesus deliberately entrusts his spirit to the Father's safekeeping, completing the seven-fold words from the cross and thereby modeling both how to die and how to live; the preacher draws on the original-language sense of the verb (rendered as “entrust” or “deposit for safekeeping”) to stress that Jesus's final act is not passive surrender but an active fiduciary transfer of his inner life into the Father's care, a ritualized reversal of all the earlier moments when Jesus had been “in the hands” of betrayers, judges, soldiers, and a hostile crowd.

Stop Trying to Control God | Revival Featuring Jon Tyson (Crossroads Church) interprets Luke 23:46 as the climactic act of courageous surrender: Jesus’ shout — “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” — is presented as an emphatic, defiant, yet loving relinquishment (not passive resignation) that models the call for believers to stop controlling outcomes and instead “swing out” into the Father's care; Tyson emphasizes the loudness and bodily reality of the cry (linking it to the physical mechanics of crucifixion) to show that Jesus’ entrustment is energetic, volitional, and contagious — a summons for Christians to trade control for trust.

Trusting God Through Sorrow: A Journey of Faith (SermonIndex.net) treats Luke 23:46 as the theological key that unlocks Psalm 31’s remedy for long-term sorrow: the Psalmist’s “into your hand I commit my spirit” is read as both David’s honest, in-the-mess cry and as the same salvific language Jesus borrows on the cross, so the verse functions as the hinge between human despair and divine rescue — committing one’s spirit to God becomes the operative remedy that ushers believers out of sorrow, brokenness, and isolation into restored communion with God.

Luke 23:46 Theological Themes:

Trusting God: Finding Refuge in Adversity (David Guzik) emphasizes the theological theme that surrender to God at death is compatible with—and grounded in—redeeming action (God’s righteousness/redeeming), so Jesus’ abandoning of his spirit is the faithful result of being redeemed; Guzik stresses that surrender is paired with joy and confidence because the Redeemer has acted, turning what could be a note of defeat into a stamp of victorious trust and continuity with Israelite piety and martyrdom tradition.

Jesus' Crucifixion: Control, Trust, and Transformative Power (Alistair Begg) develops the theme that the cross transforms the meaning of death: Jesus’ free, loud committal of his spirit indicates he is the Victor over death and hell, so the cross is not merely suffering but the decisive atoning accomplishment that changes death’s character for believers—Begg focuses on intentionality, victory, and the finished nature of Christ’s sacrifice as central theological claims tied to Luke 23:46.

Trusting God: Embracing Death with Hope and Faith (Open the Bible) highlights the theological priority of the spirit over the body (creation anthropology) and the assurance of resurrection: the sermon teaches that Jesus’ entrusting of his spirit demonstrates that the essence of human identity is the spirit that persists, and because Jesus died and rose, believers may prioritize spiritual formation and godliness (which “holds promise for the life to come”) over mere corporeal preservation.

Entrusting Our Souls: Doing Good Amid Suffering (Desiring God) isolates a fresh pastoral-theological angle: because Peter deliberately uses the same verb Jesus used in Luke 23:46, the theme is that Christ’s entrustment is the model that frees sufferers from vengeful action and empowers persistent benevolence; the sermon further nuances the theme by arguing Peter’s choice of “Creator” and “faithful” underscores God’s omnipotence and promise-keeping as grounds for active endurance and moral witness.

Trusting God: Jesus' Final Words on the Cross (Village Bible Church - Sugar Grove) emphasizes restoration of fellowship and adoption as central themes: the sermon contrasts Jesus’ earlier cry “My God, my God” (a momentary experience of bearing sin and perceived abandonment) with the later intimate “Father” to argue that the cross effects reunion with the Father, restores fellowship broken by sin, and models the Spirit-of-adoption reality (Abba/“Daddy”) Paul later describes; this sermon nuances the theology of atonement by focusing not only on penalty-payment but on relational restoration as the purpose consummated in the final entrustment.

Stop Trying to Control God | Revival Featuring Jon Tyson (Crossroads Church) frames Luke 23:46 theologically as the paradigm of surrender in the economy of divine love: Jesus’ entrustment is both the demonstration that the Father’s love grounds true surrender and the theological antidote to modern control-fixation; Tyson develops the theological theme that surrender is not passive fatalism but an active, ongoing posture rooted in knowing the Father’s love (hence the repeated Father-language in Jesus’ ministry) and that true obedience is lifelong surrender rather than episodic, calculated compliance.

Trusting God Through Sorrow: A Journey of Faith (SermonIndex.net) develops the theme of “remedy in the midst”: the sermon claims that committing one’s spirit to God functions as an immediate, present remedy (not merely a future hope) for chronic sorrow and sin, and ties that remedy to the double theological benefits of Christ’s work — imputation of sin and imputation of righteousness — so that the believer’s present trusting becomes theologically effective because of Christ’s finished, double-sided work.

Luke 23:46 Historical and Contextual Insights:

Trusting God: Finding Refuge in Adversity (David Guzik) supplies background on Psalm 31’s usage and transmission that matters for understanding Luke 23:46: Guzik traces the psalm’s title (“to the chief musician”), notes its frequent quotation across Scripture (Jonah, Jeremiah, Stephen, Paul), points out differences in verse numbering in translations and the Septuagint’s role in New Testament quotation, and catalogs historical instances (Stephen, Polycarp, John Huss, Luther’s experience) showing how that psalm-line functioned in early and later Christian death utterances—context that frames Jesus’ citation as part of liturgical and confessional memory rather than an isolated cry.

Jesus' Crucifixion: Control, Trust, and Transformative Power (Alistair Begg) gives concrete first-century and crucifixion-related context: Begg explains how crucifixion normally produced a gradual loss of strength and whispering death—soldiers expected that—so Jesus’ loud final cry was historically remarkable; he also explains burial/practice realities (bodies commonly left, skull-strewn execution sites), notes Luke’s use of eyewitness sources, and connects onlookers’ behavior to Old Testament prophetic language (e.g., Psalm 38) to situate the cross within its Jewish and Roman setting.

Trusting God: Embracing Death with Hope and Faith (Open the Bible) offers linguistic and ancient-cultural context about “spirit” and creation: the preacher reminds listeners that the Bible identifies the life-breath (Hebrew ruach/Greek pneuma) as what animates the dust-made body (Genesis), points to Ecclesiastes’ images (“silver cord,” “jar shattered”) as ancient conceptual categories for death, and explains how those culturally rooted metaphors shape Jesus’ declaration—so Jesus committing his spirit is intelligible against the background of biblical anthropology and resurrection hope.

Entrusting Our Souls: Doing Good Amid Suffering (Desiring God) situates Luke 23:46 in the social-historical context of persecuted, marginal Christians under Roman power: the sermon argues Peter’s wording (entrust to a “faithful creator”) must reassure believers who feel weak and insignificant because it points them to a God who is both promise-keeping and sovereign over creation—contextualizing the verb choice as pastorally sensitive to a vulnerable minority community under imperial pressure.

Trusting God: Jesus' Final Words on the Cross (Village Bible Church - Sugar Grove) supplies linguistic and narrative context: the preacher notes that the English phrase is even briefer in the original language and excavates the verbal sense of the Greek (or underlying Semitic phrasing) behind “commit” as “entrust/deposit for safekeeping,” connects the presence of the number seven (seven last words) to biblical completion motifs, and situates the “hands” language in the story-world of Jesus’ trials by contrasting the many human hands that abused him with the secure, restorative hands of the Father.

Stop Trying to Control God | Revival Featuring Jon Tyson (Crossroads Church) brings biomechanical and linguistic context: Tyson cites scholarly observation about crucifixion physiology (that victims typically die of asphyxiation and that to project a loud shout at death required active muscular effort) to argue that Jesus’ loud voice on the cross signifies volitional proclamation rather than helpless gasping, and he draws an etymological link between the Greek word trapeza (table) and New Testament usage to connect the trapeze/table metaphor to communion and Jesus’ letting-go — an historical-linguistic move that ties ritual language to the surrender motif.

Trusting God Through Sorrow: A Journey of Faith (SermonIndex.net) grounds the verse in Psalmic and temple context: Wilkerson reads Luke’s report of the veil tearing at Jesus’ death alongside Psalm 31’s “into your hand I commit my spirit,” arguing the Psalm provides the idiom Jesus repurposes on the cross, and he situates the phrase historically as the end of redemptive action that opens access into the holy place — the sermon also adduces medical/social-scientific observations (e.g., how prolonged sorrow affects body and community standing in ancient and modern contexts) to illuminate why David’s cry and Jesus’ echo matter to suffering people.

Luke 23:46 Cross-References in the Bible:

Trusting God: Finding Refuge in Adversity (David Guzik) collects Psalm 31’s intertextual echoes and shows how Guzik uses them to illumine Luke 23:46: he explains that Psalm 31 is quoted or alluded to in Psalm 71, Jonah 2 (psalm 31:6), multiple Jeremiah passages and Lamentations, Acts 7 (Stephen’s speech, Acts 7:59), and Paul’s use in 1 Corinthians 16:13 via the Septuagint; Guzik treats these references as evidence the psalm-line was liturgically and theologically resonant, and uses Romans 1:17 (via Luther’s reading) to connect “righteousness of God” language to the gospel context that makes committing one’s spirit an act of justified trust rather than despair.

Jesus' Crucifixion: Control, Trust, and Transformative Power (Alistair Begg) groups Luke’s narrative with Old and New Testament echoes to support his reading: Begg cites Psalm 38 (the prophetic motif of friends avoiding the wounded), points to Luke 4 (Jesus’ earlier public declaration of mission) and Mark’s and John’s cross details to show how the crucifixion scene coheres across the Gospels, and uses the centurion’s declaration (parallel in Mark) as an interpretive climax—these cross-references are used to show Luke’s genre of careful eyewitness reporting and to interpret Jesus’ loud entrustment as theologically decisive within the Gospel witness.

Trusting God: Embracing Death with Hope and Faith (Open the Bible) marshals biblical texts to explain death and hope: the sermon references Genesis (creation: God breathing life into dust), Ecclesiastes 12 (silver cord imagery) to visualize death, 1 Corinthians 15 (bodily resurrection promise) to ground the temporary character of bodily death, Galatians 2:20 (life lived in the body by faith) to emphasize spiritual identity, Hebrews (on Jesus’ tasting death for everyone/atonement) and Psalm 23 (God leading through valley of shadow) to frame Jesus’ experience and the believer’s hope, and Revelation’s teaching on the “second death” to explain the distinction Open the Bible draws between Jesus’ experiencing the second death in the darkness and his final entrustment.

Entrusting Our Souls: Doing Good Amid Suffering (Desiring God) groups 1 Peter references to read Luke 23:46 into Peter’s pastoral logic: the sermon notes 1 Peter 4:19 (“entrust your souls to a faithful creator while doing good”) is connected to 1 Peter 2:23 (Christ entrusting himself to the one who judges justly), 1 Peter 3:17 and surrounding material that frame suffering “according to God’s will,” and 1 Peter’s doxological close (“to him be the dominion”)—Desiring God shows how Luke’s verb in 23:46 is the verbal precedent for Peter’s imperative, and how Peter’s theology of suffering, witness, and God’s faithfulness finds its pattern in Jesus’ final act.

Trusting God: Jesus' Final Words on the Cross (Village Bible Church - Sugar Grove) groups multiple Scripture links to interpret Luke 23:46: the sermon cross-references the other Gospel death-notes (Matthew’s “he dismissed his spirit,” Mark’s parallel “…he breathed his last,” and John’s “he delivered up his spirit”) to show complementarity (sovereign giving of life), appeals to Romans 8’s adoption language to explain the “Father/Abba” intimacy that Jesus models and that believers now share, and cites 2 Timothy 1:12 to underscore the Pauline conviction that God can guard what is committed to him — all used to support the claim that Jesus’ final cry is both triumphant trust and a paradigm for Christian entrustment.

Stop Trying to Control God | Revival Featuring Jon Tyson (Crossroads Church) collects Scripture across Jesus’ life to show pattern and function: Tyson traces Father-language from Jesus’ youthful “about my Father’s business” through the Sermon on the Mount and the upper-room discourses (noting how often Jesus references the Father) and especially to Luke 23:46 as the culminating demonstration of that Father-focused life; he also invokes Gethsemane and the Garden surrender as the prelude to the cross and uses the crucifixion-report in Luke 23 (veil torn, loud cry) to insist surrender is decisive and saving — these biblical references are marshaled to connect Jesus’ lifelong filial posture to his final entrustment.

Trusting God Through Sorrow: A Journey of Faith (SermonIndex.net) places Luke 23:46 in Psalmic and Pauline networks: Wilkerson treats Psalm 31:5 (“into your hand I commit my spirit”) as the Old Testament source Jesus intentionally echoes, links Luke’s account (including the torn temple veil at Jesus’ death) to the access now opened to God’s presence, and adduces 1 Corinthians 2:9, Romans 14:23, Philippians 1:6, 1 Peter 1:3–5 and other Pauline/deuteronomic texts to support the claims about stored-up goodness, God’s preservational keeping, and the believer’s confident hope — all used to argue that committing one’s spirit is both biblical practice and theologically grounded in Christ’s finished work.

Luke 23:46 Christian References outside the Bible:

Trusting God: Finding Refuge in Adversity (David Guzik) explicitly appeals to historical Christian interpreters and examples to shape Luke 23:46: Guzik recounts Martin Luther’s conversion-moment reading Romans 1:17 in light of Psalm 31 and treats Luther’s insight about “the righteousness of God” as illuminating why committing one’s spirit is an act of justified trust; he also cites Charles Spurgeon (Treasury of David), Adam Clark, James Montgomery Boice, Chrysostom, and catalogs early and later martyrs (Stephen, Polycarp, John Huss, John and others) who used Psalm 31:5 as dying testimony, using these figures to show continuity in the Christian interpretive and devotional tradition around Jesus’ last words.

Jesus' Crucifixion: Control, Trust, and Transformative Power (Alistair Begg) brings in theologians and preachers to deepen the Luke 23:46 reading: Begg quotes Hugh Martin on the convergence of heaven, earth, and hell at the cross and the endurance of Christ beyond them, cites a Dutch theologian (presented as “the great Dutch Theologian,” likely Klaas Schilder or similar) on Christ’s suffering of the second death and the surrender of the body, and invokes Spurgeon on the voluntary nature of Christ’s death; Begg uses these commentators to buttress his view that Jesus’ loud committal is the spontaneous act of a sovereign, victorious Son.

Trusting God: Embracing Death with Hope and Faith (Open the Bible) cites a nineteenth-century American Christian example to illustrate and encourage the practice of entrusting one’s spirit: the preacher quotes Robert Lewis Dabney’s Civil War sermon “Our Comfort in Dying” to show how preachers historically have pointed dying soldiers to the posture “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,” using Dabney’s pastoral appeal as a concrete model for contemporary faith at death; the sermon uses Dabney’s words to press the pastoral application that believers should come to know the Father in life so they may say Jesus’ words in death.

Trusting God: Jesus' Final Words on the Cross (Village Bible Church - Sugar Grove) explicitly uses a modern theological voice — J. I. Packer — to underline the sermon’s relational emphasis: the preacher quotes or summarizes Packer’s affirmation that the ability to call God “Father” with sincerity and confidence is central to the Christian privilege, employing Packer to bolster the claim that Jesus’ “Father” language signals restored filial communion rather than abandonment.

Stop Trying to Control God | Revival Featuring Jon Tyson (Crossroads Church) cites multiple Christian writers and voices to shape the surrender-theme: Tyson invokes St. Ignatius of Loyola (framing sin as unwillingness to trust God’s desire for our deepest happiness) to theologicalize the will’s resistance, quotes Henry Nouwen’s late-life trapeze metaphor (Nouwen used trapeze practice as spiritual training in trusting), draws on David Bennett on fear and love (to show how fear interferes with love), mentions Dave Ramsey in a secular-adjacent but Christian-shaped example of stewardship language, and names John Altberg as an author/teacher about the trapeze/table connection; Tyson uses these references to frame surrender as both classical spiritual doctrine and contemporary pastoral practice.

Trusting God Through Sorrow: A Journey of Faith (SermonIndex.net) appeals to historic evangelical voices — notably Charles Spurgeon — to illustrate pastoral counsel on sorrow and sin: Wilkerson cites Spurgeon’s moral note (“better to spend your years sighing than your years sinning”) to emphasize the scriptural priority of repentance and trust in God over anxious attempts at self-justification, using classic pastoral insight to support the Psalm-to-Gospel reading of “into your hand I commit my spirit.”

Luke 23:46 Illustrations from Secular Sources:

Jesus' Crucifixion: Control, Trust, and Transformative Power (Alistair Begg) uses vivid everyday analogies to make Luke 23:46 concrete: Begg compares Jesus’ final entrustment to a child falling asleep on a car trip and waking to find a father’s arms carrying him home—this secular, family-scene analogy is deployed to convey the peace, trust, and final security of handing oneself into a parent’s care at journey’s end, making the theological claim about dying “in the Father’s arms” experientially accessible.

Trusting God: Embracing Death with Hope and Faith (Open the Bible) weaves contemporary and personal, non-theological illustrations into the exposition of Luke 23:46: the sermon opens from Memorial Day (a civic observance) to make death’s relevance immediate, uses Solomon’s “silver cord” and shattered jar imagery as culturally-shaped metaphors (ancient but non-doctrinal), and tells personal, secular-feeling anecdotes (a candlelit conversation in a Chinese restaurant during a storm, conversations with pastors about bereavement, and commonplace concerns about body image and fitness) to show how Luke 23:46 reframes ordinary fears about the body, dying, and loss—these secular and quotidian illustrations are used to help listeners grasp the psychological and pastoral import of committing the spirit.

Trusting God: Finding Refuge in Adversity (David Guzik) and "Entrusting Our Souls: Doing Good Amid Suffering" (Desiring God) do not employ notable secular popular-culture or contemporary-life analogies specifically to illustrate Luke 23:46 in the transcripts provided, so no secular-illustration bullet is included for them.

Trusting God: Jesus' Final Words on the Cross (Village Bible Church - Sugar Grove) opens with a sequence of historical last-word anecdotes used to establish the gravity of final utterances and thereby frame Jesus’ words: the preacher recounts Napoleon’s famous reported final invocation naming “France, the army, the head of the army, and Josephine,” invokes Harriet Tubman singing “Swing low, sweet chariot” as an image of being taken home, and quotes D. L. Moody’s dying line “Earth is receding, and heaven is opening, and God is calling me home,” using each historical/cultural last-word moment as a secular-human parallel that highlights how final words function as concentrated testimony — these concrete examples from public history and Christian biography are used to help listeners hear Jesus’ last words as intentionally meaningful and authoritative rather than accidental.

Stop Trying to Control God | Revival Featuring Jon Tyson (Crossroads Church) deploys vivid, extended secular and personal-life analogies — most centrally a detailed trapeze-school story — to illustrate surrender as the live equivalent of Jesus’ entrustment: Tyson describes attending a Brooklyn trapeze school in a circus tent, confronting weight limits and fear, climbing the rigging, experiencing cramping “T‑rex arms,” falling into the safety net the first time, learning to listen for the helper’s cue word “hep,” and finally swinging out, relaxing, and being caught; he explicitly links that bodily, auditory discipline (swinging out, being still in midair, waiting for the catch) to Jesus’ loud, volitional cry on the cross and to the disciple’s need to “let go” and trust the Father — the sermon also weaves in secular cultural references (Wonderfest youth festival, bands White Heart and DC Talk, framed prints and VHS tapes as personal providence anecdotes, and social observations about declining trust in institutions) to situate the surrender-theme in everyday modern experience and to clarify how Luke 23:46 functions as a model for human letting-go in concrete, non-technical terms.