Into Thy Hands

Psalm 31 is a plea of desperation, followed by a heartfelt testimony and invitation to praise God. In the psalm, David describes painful trials, including threats of death from his enemies, and pleads with God for mercy. But near the beginning of the psalm, before identifying the causes of his distress, he pledges fealty to God:

Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth.

Psalm 31:5

Near the beginning of His ministry, Jesus expressed the same consecration to the will of His Father:

I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.

John 6:38

At the end of His life, He demonstrated that resolve. In the Garden of Gethesmane, He pleaded to be spared the suffering He was about to experience, but He added, “not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). Then, the following day, as He completed His atoning sacrifice on the cross, He quoted from Psalm 31, His final prayer in mortality:

And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.

Luke 23:46

About 150 years earlier, the Book of Mormon prophet Abinadi had prophesied that the Savior’s life would be characterized by His complete submission to His Father:

Thus the flesh becoming subject to the Spirit, or the Son to the Father, being one God, suffereth temptation, and yieldeth not to the temptation, but suffereth himself to be mocked, and scourged, and cast out, and disowned by his people. …

Yea, even so he shall be led, crucified, and slain, the flesh becoming subject even unto death, the will of the Son being swallowed up in the will of the Father.

Mosiah 15:5, 7

Jesus echoed Abinadi’s description when He announced His birth to the prophet Nephi (3 Nephi 1:14). And when He introduced Himself to the Nephites and the Lamanites following His resurrection, He emphasized that submission:

I am the light and the life of the world; and I have drunk out of that bitter cup which the Father hath given me, and have glorified the Father in taking upon me the sins of the world, in the which I have suffered the will of the Father in all things from the beginning.

3 Nephi 11:11

So the Atonement of Jesus Christ is not only the mechanism through which He saves us but also emblematic of the process by which we receive that salvation. King Benjamin taught that we must be “willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon [us], even as a child doth submit to his father” (Mosiah 3:19). Through His Atonement, the Savior empowers that submission and exemplifies it.

Today, I will be grateful for a submissive Savior, who overcame sin and death on my behalf and who showed me the path to eternal life by committing His spirit wholly into the hands of His Father.