God’s Word for You
Mark 15:37 He breathed his last
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Monday, March 25, 2024
37 Then Jesus cried out loudly and breathed his last.
Luke and John give us the content of what Jesus cried out with a loud voice. John reports that Jesus said, “It is finished” (John 19:30), and Luke reports that Jesus said loudly, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46). Mark’s emphasis is on the fact of the death of Jesus Christ. He says, “he breathed his last.” This is a single word in Greek, ekpneo (ἐκπνέω), literally “expire” or “breathe out.” It is a euphemism for the body letting go of the spirit. The separation of the body and soul is the Bible’s definition of death. “The dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:7). It is also described the other way around when Jesus brought the girl back to life, and “her spirit returned” to her body (Luke 8:55).
The Christian may struggle with the fact of Jesus’ death. How could God die? We are ready and happy to accept, in our limited way, that he created the universe along with the Father and the Spirit, that he has all of the attributes of God, that he is holy, sinless, gracious and more. And we are happy to believe in his miracles and in the prophetic things that he spoke. But we come up against his death on Good Friday and struggle even with Johann Rist’s hymn verse, “O sorrow dread! Our God is dead!” The unbeliever, of course, has the problem tipped on its head. The unbeliever has no trouble believing that Christ died (without rising, of course, despite the evidence of the eyewitnesses), but that he could not have done any of the other things.
The death of Jesus Christ, who is also truly and fully God, is a mystery. His body and soul are joined permanently: “In Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” (Colossians 2:9). Or as John put it so simply, “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14). On account of this, the words we use for one nature are used for both: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a Son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means, ‘God with us’” (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23). The two natures of Christ, which are one in his united flesh and spirit, share their natures. So the mystery remains: How could this sharing continue with the body of the Son of God in the grave, and the spirit of the Son of God in heaven? The answer to this is beyond our understanding, but no more or less so than any of the other divine mysteries that are nevertheless truths of God’s holy word and work (Job 11:7; 1 Corinthians 15:51; Philippians 4:7; 1 Timothy 3:16, and the others).
What has Christ’s death done for us?
1, Christ obediently fulfilled all of the Father’s demands of mankind: perfect, sinless obedience, love, the keeping of the law, not one single omission of good; not one single stumble into sin. This work was completed with his death, which ended his perfect life of obedience and which covers us with his righteousness by faith (Philippians 3:9; 2 Peter 1:1).
2, In his priestly office Jesus prays for us (Romans 8:34) but he also offered himself willingly as the sacrifice for our sins (Hebrews 10:12). This office was always intended for the Son of God as a permanent office, not one he obtained as if by accident or by chance. “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: You are a priest forever” (Psalm 110:4; Hebrews 5:6).
3, The object(s) of his work (he took up his priestly office for their sake) are not the good angels, for they are holy and righteous and do not need atonement. Nor are they the evil angels, who are shut off from all hope of salvation (2 Peter 2:4). Rather, the objects of his work are all the people of mankind. “For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants” (Hebrews 2:16). And again: “By the grace of God Jesus tasted death for all men” (Hebrews 2:9).
4, Christ won eternal glory for himself by this act (Romans 16:27; 2 Peter 3:18).
5, Christ achieved the perfect reconciliation of sinful man with God. “God reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting man’s sins against them” (2 Corinthians 5:18-19).
6, Christ achieved deliverance from bondage to the devil; “salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us” (Luke 1:71).
7, Christ achieved deliverance from sin, both regarding sin’s guilt (Colossians 1:14) and our bondage to the service of sin, “to rescue us from the present evil age” (Galatians 1:4).
8, Christ achieved deliverance from inherited sin, “to redeem us from all wickedness” (Titus 2:14); for we awaited the redemption of our bodies (Romans 8:23).
9, Christ’s death means the complete satisfaction of everything that was required of sinners. He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows (Isaiah 53:4) to the very end of his life.
10, We acknowledge that this payment was made, not to the devil or to any other mere creature or inanimate concept, but to God himself, the Holy Trinity. For God is the one offended by our sins, and payment was made to him. “For God was reconciling the world to himself” (1 Corinthians 5:19), and we are “reconciled to God through the death of his Son” (Romans 5:10).
11, All of this was concluded and came to its final conclusion through the shedding of Christ’s blood, for “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22). “For the life of the creature is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11), and since “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), it follows that the penalty for sin would not merely be the death of Christ—such as by accident or by sickness—but by the violent shedding of his blood as a criminal, yet innocent, for Christ was declared to be innocent of his charges by the highest authority in Judea, Pontius Pilate (John 18:38 and two other times).
Therefore in this death of Jesus Christ, we have the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God’s grace (Ephesians 1:7). For his blood that was shed is human blood, but also the blood of the Son of God. Therefore its value is infinite, covering over all of our sins for all eternity. In the death of Christ, we are brought back into the friendship and companionship of God, and the image of God (holy and righteous) is restored in us. In Christ, we have forgiveness, pardon and peace.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.