Death-bed sayings are a source of fascination for the living. Books and websites will give you the last words of famous and infamous people on their deathbeds or in their last moments. What people say in their last moments is gripping for many reasons. It is, literally, a person’s final word, and simply for that reason, it carries weight. Last words are sometimes a reflection on the kind of life a person has lived, and whether he reaches the end with contentment, or with anger, or with fear, or with panic. Last words are also a window into whether someone believes he’s about to step into another world or not, and some of the final words of people have recorded them still speaking as they appear to do so.

For all these reasons, the words of Jesus on the cross are equally gripping. But they are gripping for even more reasons. Jesus died the most unusual death: a death unearned and unmerited and yet chosen, a death not for Himself, but for others. They are also gripping, because as we’ll see, it took enormous physical effort to speak when on the cross, so everything Jesus says is deliberate and chosen.

The Gospels record seven times that Jesus spoke from the cross. These seven sayings not only tell the story of those six hours, they give us deep insight into the heart of our Saviour. Nowhere is the heart of someone more clearly seen than when he is in distress, suffering. What Jesus said in those seven sayings not only narrates what He was experiencing, but what He was actually performing and doing. It turns out, what Jesus is doing and experiencing on the Cross was not at all what those who put Him on the cross thought they were doing.

Of course, by the time Jesus arrived at the cross at 9am that Friday morning, His physical state was already at least serious and possibly critical. The night before, His anguish in Gethsemane led to a state known as hematidrosis, haemorrhaging into the sweat glands. He was taken to two Jewish trials between 1am and 4am, first to Annas then to Caiaphas. Once found guilty of blasphemy, He was blindfolded and beaten in the face with fists.

He was taken to Pilate, early in the morning, who, not finding any fault with Jesus, tried to send Him off to Herod. Herod found no basis for legal charges and sent him back to Pilate. Finally Pilate relented. A legal preliminary to every Roman execution was a flogging. This meant Jesus was stripped of His clothing, His hands were tied to an upright post, and then either one soldier who alternated positions, or two soldiers flogged His back and legs. The instrument was a short whip with several leather thongs or strips to which small iron balls or sharp pieces of sheep bones were tied at various intervals. The iron balls would cause deep contusions, and the sheep bones would cut into the skin and underlying tissue and muscle. How severe the scourging was depended on the attitude of the Romans in charge. It appears Jesus was scourged particularly severely, because He was weakened to the point where He could not carry the cross beam of His cross, and because Pilate showed Jesus to the people hoping they would regard His scourging as sufficient.

After the scourging, the Roman soldiers themselves beat him with a wooden staff, and pressed a crown of thorns into his scalp. Moreover, when Herod’s purple robe was placed back on Jesus bleeding back, and then torn off again, it undoubtedly open all those wounds again.

It was customary for the crucified man to carry his own cross, while being led to the site by a complete Roman military guard, headed by a centurion; one soldier carrying the titulus: a sign with the condemned man’s name and crime. In the case of Jesus, His titulus read in three languages: Jesus of Nazareth: The King of the Jews. The titulus would be attached to the cross once the men got there.

The entire cross itself would be too heavy for a man to carry, probably over 136 kg or 300lb. The crossbar itself, the patibulum, was about 34 to 57 kilograms, a serious weight, enough for a healthy man to carry, but not for one in Jesus’ condition. It was usually tied to the arms as the man carried it up.

When they finally arrived at the site just outside the city walls, there would have been the upright wooden stipes that the patibulum would be fastened upon. There were actually several different kinds of cross in use. The first kind, used by the Persians was simply a tree that the victim was tied to or impaled upon. The Romans used a cross in the shape of an X, a cross in the shape of a T, and a cross in traditional cross shape we associate with it. Tradition has the cross-shape we known, though the T-shape was most preferred in Judea of the time.

At this point, Jesus would have been stripped of his robe, thrown to the ground, and placed on the patibulum that Simon had been carrying. Before beginning the crucifixion, by law the Romans had to offer the man a bitter drink of wine mixed with myrrh as a mild pain-killer. Matthew 27:34 tells us that they gave it to Jesus, but once He had tasted it, He refused to drink it. Jesus was not going to face the cross in any way dulled to what He was doing.

At this point, the soldiers began the truly gruesome work. Taking two tapered iron spikes, about 18 centimetres long, about a square centimetre across, and with the arms outstretched but not taught, they nailed the wrists to the wood. The hands cannot support the weight of the body, but the wrists can, and the ancients regarded the hands and the wrists as the same part of the body. The spikes would pass through the radius and the carpal, or between the two rows of carpal bones. Sometimes it would crush bone, but it would sever a nerve, sending excruciating bolts of pain through the arms, and probably producing a permanent clawlike grasp.

At this point, the man nailed to the patibulum was lifted up and the patibulum attached to the stipes using ladders and ropes if necessary.

Although they could tie the legs, or nail them to the sides, the Romans preferred to nail through the feet, which meant the knees were bent quite prominently, and the legs rotated laterally, and then a spike was driven through the metatarsal space, where the toe bones begin to separate around the middle of the arch of your foot.

It is at this point that Jesus said his first words.

I. The Word of Forgiveness

And when they had come to the place called Calvary, there they crucified Him, and the criminals, one on the right hand and the other on the left.

Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” (Lk. 23:33-34)

In the middle of this agony, the first words out of the mouth of Jesus are intercession and mercy. Jesus knows that these people have no idea who it is they are crucifying, and what it means that they are crucifying Him. This is God’s Son, the Chosen One, and the only Innocent who has ever lived. This is the Prince, the King of Kings. What are they doing? They are murdering Him. They have falsely accused Him, unjustly condemned Him, illegally beaten Him, and now are brazenly murdering Him. This is not a crime among many; this is the crime of all crimes. Murder is evil. Murder of an innocent like a child is even more evil. Murder of an Innocent who is your rightful King is worst of all. They are storing up massive retribution against themselves.

So who is the “they” Jesus is praying for? It’s the Romans who are most directly crucifying Him, including Pilate. It’s the Jews, the Sanhedrin who condemned Him, and the crowd that called for His execution. They need forgiveness, even though they are not asking for it.

But I think there are others Jesus is praying for. We sang these words in “Ah Holy Jesus”

Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee?
Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee!
‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee;
I crucified thee.

Everyone who has ever sinned brought about the death of Jesus. And when, in our moments of sinning, did we understand that it would put nails in the hands and feet of the Son? Alas, when we sin, we do not know what we are doing. Jesus prays for sinners, for God’s forbearing patience with us. Of all the things Jesus could say to a world busy crucifying Him, the first is the word of forgiveness.

We come to the second word.

Depending on how badly the victim had been scourged, crucifixion could last anywhere from a few hours to a few days. But during the hours of agony, the man on the cross would also be tormented by insects landing on the open wounds, and entering eyes and nose, with no way to stop them. The movement on the cross so as to breathe meant the man would be scratching those open wounds against the rough, splintered wood of the cross behind him.

During those first three hours, the two men crucified on either side of him, decided to join in on the mocking of Jesus. Matthew 27:44 says so. Whether they thought it might help them out, or whether it was out of sheer spite, they started mocking His claim to be a Saviour. But then the Gospel of Luke tells us that something changed in one of the thieves.

Then one of the criminals who were hanged blasphemed Him, saying, “If You are the Christ, save Yourself and us.”

But the other, answering, rebuked him, saying, “Do you not even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation?

“And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this Man has done nothing wrong.”

Then he said to Jesus, “Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.”

II. The Word of Salvation

And Jesus said to him, “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.” (Lk. 23:43)

Whatever caused that other thief to change, whether it was hearing the first saying of Jesus, or hearing the taunts from others, or seeing the response of Jesus, something in him finally led him to feel the weight of his own sin, and feel the profound contrast with the innocence and holiness of Jesus. Confessing Jesus as Messiah and King, he asks Jesus to have mercy on Him on His day of vindication.

The second word that Jesus gives is a promise of salvation. The man has repented of his sin. He has believed Jesus is Saviour and King. He has asked for mercy. Jesus does not tell him it is too late. He does not tell him that his insults an hour ago means there is no mercy for him. Jesus assures him that this very day, the man will be with Jesus in Paradise, in the presence of God. No soul sleep for thousands of years. No promises of some distant future after resurrection. No, the man’s spirit will be consciously aware and awake and with Jesus that very day.

Here on the cross, Jesus dispenses the very benefits He is busy paying for: forgiveness and salvation. The man’s own blasphemies are being paid for by Jesus in those moments.

Every single person who turns from being the one criminal: rejecting and raging, to becoming the other, repenting and receiving, will hear the same words of salvation: you will be with me in paradise.

As Jesus hung there, we have little idea of how hard it was for Jesus to speak, and how each utterance was done with enormous effort, and therefore carefully chosen. The weight of the body, pulling down on the outstretched arms and shoulders put the intercostal muscles in the inhalation state. In other words, you didn’t struggle to breathe in, you struggled to breathe out. Your lungs were permanently opened and in the inhale position; you had to physically push the air out. This would soon produce hypercarbia – too much carbon dioxide in the blood – with accompanying cramps and spasms in the muscles. To breathe out, you’d need to push up on the feet, bend the elbows, but that meant fiery pain from the nails in the feet, and in the wrists, as well as scraping your wounded back against the wood behind you. It was actually this effort to breathe that was the ultimate cause of death for men on the cross – exhaustion asphyxia. Crucifixion was essentially death by torture and suffocation: choosing between maddening pain so as to breathe or the panic and alarm of suffocating.

But with all this pain, Jesus sees his mother by the cross, and speaks his third word.

III. The Word of Kindness

Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.

When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His mother, “Woman, behold your son!”

Then He said to the disciple, “Behold your mother!” And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home. (Jn. 19:26-27)

When Jesus says to Mary, “Behold your son”, He is not referring to Himself on the cross. He is referring to the apostle John standing next to her. That’s how John speaks about himself in his Gospel: the disciple whom Jesus loved. Jesus says to Mary, “Look, John is now your adopted son!” To John, He says, “Look, Mary is now your adopted mother!”

What is Jesus doing? In the culture of ancient Israel, if a husband died, and the widow did not remarry, it became the responsibility of her eldest son to take care of her. At some point before Jesus began His ministry, His adopted father Joseph had died. Apparently, all through His ministry, Jesus had been making sure His mother Mary was taken care of. But now it comes to the end, and He can no longer fulfill that responsibility. What does Jesus do? Does He cry bitter tears that He is dying before His mother does? Does He ask her for sympathy? No, there on the cross, Jesus is sorting out the affairs of His household, making sure Mary will be financially provided for. He turns to His closest friend, the disciple He trusts the most, and entrusts His mother to his care. And verse 27 says, And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home.

In His time of agony, where every breath is an effort, and everything said must be forced out with searing pain, Jesus speaks kindness to His mother. These are the dying words of Jesus, but thus far He has spoken a word of forgiveness, a word of salvation, and a word of kindness.

We come to the midpoint of Jesus’s sayings. The fourth saying of Jesus is recorded by Matthew and Mark. Both Matthew and Mark tell us that at midday, after three hours on the cross, a great darkness came over the land. From 12pm to 3pm, this strange darkness hovered over everything. It wasn’t an eclipse, because Passover happens when there is a full moon, and an eclipse cannot happen with a full moon, only a new moon. Besides, eclipses can last a maximum of 7 minutes, not three hours. But some kind of darkness came over the land. In fact, two pagan writers, Thallus and Phlegon, seem to refer to this strange darkness that came for three hours on a day when it was full moon.

After three hours, we come to Jesus’ fourth word.

IV. The Word of Anguish

And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46)

After three hours of this darkness, at 3pm, at the very moment when the Passover Lambs are being killed in Jerusalem, Jesus cries out in His native tongue, Aramaic, and quotes Psalm 22:1: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?”

What does Jesus mean by this? The first three sayings are gracious words of forgiveness, salvation, and kindness, and the last three sayings are words rooted in victory and assurance, but this middle, fourth saying represents the climax of what the cross was all about.

I don’t think we can ever fully understand what is happening here. Because here we have the God-man, who is bearing the wrath of God.

God, who cannot be divided in His essence, is here forsaking God. God is pouring the sins of the world upon His Son.

5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. (Isa 53:5)

Here for those hours, Jesus was not looking up to Abba, Father, but to Judge. The Father was not looking down on the beloved Son, but on the Cursed One. And as Jesus descended deeper and deeper into that bottomless pit of sin, He felt the guilt and weight of being, as Martin Luther put it, the Greatest Sinner of all.

And if all the fiery punishment of Hell, could be gathered up and concentrated onto one spot of Earth, and if its combined heat for burning for centuries and centuries could be added up and poured out at once, that’s what Jesus experienced for three hours. God’s outrage, God’s determination to rid His creation of this horrible infection, God’s anger at the hard, unrepentant nature of sinners.

I want to suggest to you that no human or angel could have survived the wrath of God for three hours. Only the God-man could survive that.

And here is God’s statement on how irrational and chaotic evil is, for here is God punishing God for what God did not do. This is chaos, paradoxical, but it was the only way to save sinners from their evil. And after three hours, Jesus the God-Man, can only cry out ,”My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Not only punished, but separated. Hell is a place of separation from God, where perhaps you recede further and further from the source of Life and Light, never going out of existence, but perhaps eternally shrivelling and shrinking in life, till you are so distant and so small from God, that you may as well not exist.

Those three hours of darkness were all the horrors of death poured into One. For those three hours, Jesus dropped into the abyss of the wages of sin, with the light of God receding to a pinprick, while the blackness of death choked Him. He is abandoned. John Donne, the poet and preacher said, “When all is done, the hell of hells, the torment of torments, is the everlasting absence of God…to fall out of the hands of the living God is a horror beyond our expression, beyond our imagination.”

He is banished from the fellowship of His Father.

When this is over, the fifth word from Jesus is simple word where He prepares for the sixth word.

V. The Word of Need

After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, “I thirst!” (Jn. 19:28)

Notice how John connects what Jesus knows about things being accomplished and fulfilled with the fifth saying Jesus says. Now that doesn’t seem to make sense. What does Jesus knowing that He had accomplished everything and wanting to fulfill all prophecy have to do with saying He is thirsty?

Well, it doesn’t, directly speaking. It has to do with what Jesus’s sixth saying will be. But Jesus sixth saying was so important, that Jesus could not risk it being unheard or misheard because of a dry, almost moisture-less throat. Crucifixion would have brought severe dehydration. First, through the loss of blood of the scourging beforehand. Second, the forced exhalation because of the unnatural chest position would have exacerbated it. It’s likely that Jesus had almost no saliva in his mouth, and nothing to lubricate the vocal cords. Whatever He tries to say now will come out as a hoarse whisper. But Jesus does not want to whisper something; He wants to shout an announcement.

The announcement has to do with knowing all things are now accomplished, and that the Scripture is now fulfilled. But to make the announcement, Jesus speaks a simple word of need. He is fully human as well as fully God. And here we see His humanity: needy, dependent, vulnerable, experiencing weakness. He cannot simply swallow or chew and make this happen. His arms are nailed and He cannot meet His own need and drink something. He speaks this word of need, asking for help so that He can make the announcement.

Now a vessel full of sour wine was sitting there; and they filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on hyssop, and put it to His mouth. (Jn. 19:29)

So now comes the sixth word.

VI. The Word of Victory

So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” (Jn. 19:30)

After Jesus’ mouth and tongue and throat is ready, Jesus makes this announcement. But the interesting thing is that while John’s Gospel tells us what He said, and the other three Gospels tell us how He said it.

And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, (Matt. 27:50)

And Jesus cried out with a loud voice, (Mk. 15:37)

And when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, (Lk. 23:46)

The other Gospel writers say that Jesus’ loudest word was this one. But it wasn’t a meaningless cry of pain, an exclamation of inarticulate noise. It wasn’t a groan or a shriek. Jesus shouted out the words that John records for us.

What were those words? In the Greek, it is one word: tetelestai. “It has been finished” “It is completed”. It can also mean “It has been fully paid.” What was Jesus announcing? He was announcing that what He came to do had just been done.

His mission from the Father was not to merely teach, or do miracles, or be an example. The real mission was to die on the cross. His crucifixion had not defeated or thwarted the goal God had set out for Him. Far from it: He had now won. He had accomplished the main goal: paying the full penalty for sins. They were paid in full, past, present and future, the entire sin debt. Whereas Satan and the forces of darkness thought they were winning as they killed Jesus, here in this moment, Jesus sent a shockwave through the entire satanic army: because Jesus shouted in victory. They had no idea that by putting Jesus on the cross, they were actually fulfilling God’s plan. Paul said this was t which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. (1 Cor. 2:7-8)

In fact, so clear was this victory shout, that it resulted in the conversion of the centurion who had been in charge of the crucifixion.

So when the centurion, who stood opposite Him, saw that He cried out like this and breathed His last, he said, “Truly this Man was the Son of God!” (Mk. 15:39)

The centurion saw a man shouting in victory, a man who had actually manoeuvred events so as to be on the cross, a man who had won it all by being a victim. The centurion realised this man had not been defeated; this man had just conquered everything.

In those first three hours, Jesus spoke words of forgiveness, salvation, and kindness. Then the terrifying three hours of darkness, and at its end, the fourth word of anguish.

But God had not permanently forsaken Jesus. The work had been done, the debt had been paid, so Jesus asked out of need for His mouth to be wet, to make the grand announcement, the word of victory. It is done, the debt paid, the task complete, the battle ended, the victory won.

There was only one more thing to say.

VII. The Word of Assurance

And when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, He said, “Father,`into Your hands I commit My spirit.'” Having said this, He breathed His last. (Lk. 23:46)

Immediately after the victory announcement, there is nothing more to be done. Jesus had told His disciples that His life was His to give or take back; it was His decision when to yield up His spirit.

“Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again.

“No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. (Jn. 10:17-18)

Jesus had full control over when He would die. John 19:30 says, And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit. (Jn. 19:30). The verb gave is active, not passive. Matthew 27:50 uses the same language; “[He] yielded up His spirit. (Matt. 27:50) But the moment before Jesus yielded up His spirit, He speaks this word of assurance: “Father into your hands I commit my spirit.”

Although He is fully God, as a human, He is facing what we face. He is about to cross over into that dark valley called death. He is going to enter that place where none come back to tell us what is there. And He has just been in three hours of darkness, where He cried out that God had forsaken Him. How can He now say, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit”? It is because He knows He is innocent of the sins He has been paying for. He has been the sin bearer, but He is not the sin-committer. He has substituted for sinners, but He has not become guilty. So now that it is finished, now that it has been paid in full, Jesus expects to enter His Father’s presence immediately, just as He promised that repentant criminal.

Jesus has complete assurance, complete confidence that He is going to be received into glory. No doubts, worries, uncertainties: just total resignation into the hands of the Father. Complete, joyful, serenity that He will enter glory, to the cheering masses of Heaven, welcoming the conquering Lamb home.

The seven sayings tell the whole story of the gospel. Jesus offers you a word of forgiveness. He knows you don’t fully know what it is you’ve been doing when sinning, and offers you forgiveness.

He offers you a word of salvation that you can be with Him in paradise, and offers you a word of kindness, promising to bring you into His family. How? Because of that fourth word, the word of anguish, where He took your punishment, and experienced your abandonment, and indeed, your thirst that you would experience. Because of that, He can say of your sins, “It is finished”, of your punishment “paid in full”. Through that, you can have the very same word of assurance, looking up into heaven for the rest of your life, addressing God as “Father”, and when you come to die, entrusting your spirit into his hands.

What must you do? Behold the man upon the cross: your sin upon His shoulders.

Like the centurion, you must come to agree that this man on the cross is the Son of God. Like the thief next to Him, you must admit your wrongs, but confess that Jesus is the Saviour and coming king, and look to Him for mercy. Say to Him this day, “Remember me, have mercy on me, accept me, when you come into Your Kingdom.”