The Seven Sayings of the Saviour on the Cross

Pink, master of the Old Testament and lover of the NT, takes each of the 7 sayings and explores seven aspects of each of the sayings. Wonderfully enlightening as he always is with his timeless commentaries. Use this as a devotional leading up to Resurrection Sunday...you will experience the Cross in ways you never imagined. All of Pink's works and thoughts are Scriptually based.

The hinge point of creation is presented to us in Christ's death and resurrection. I must confess that I knew that..but I didn't really understand all it's implications.

A.W. Pink has a remarkable ability to bring forth truth and understanding that lies incredibly rich in the understanding of the seven sayings of Jesus on the Cross.

If you would like to understand the lessons from Christ on the cross then you must read and understand this text.

I am nearly done with this book and I must confess that Pink has done an incredible job in pointing us to Christ.

Buy this book!

This is a must read for any student of the Bible. Pastor Pink's insights into Jesus on the cross are unique and fully referenced to the rest of the Bible. I couldn't put the book down. It was very readable and unlike many of his works, short and compact.

Dr. Arthur W. Pink (1886-1952) served as a pastor in Colorado, California, Kentucky and South Carolina. His ministry brought him throughout the United States, Australia and Great Britain. He is well-known for his love of the Bible and his explanation of its teachings.

1. The word of FORGIVENESS
“Then Jesus said, 'Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they do'” (Luke 23:34).

The first of the seven sayings of our Lord presents us with His prayer for His enemies. Although His nailed hands and feet cannot carry Him to anyone in need of His healing touch, He can still pray!

This was in fulfillment of a prophecy in Isaiah 53:12, that the Savior would make “intercession for the transgressors.” Isaiah Chapter 53 tells us at least ten things about Christ's suffering.
He would be despised and rejected of men (verse 3).
He would be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief (v. 3).
He would be wounded, bruised and chastised (v. 5).
He would be led, unresistingly, to slaughter (v. 7).
He would be silent, like a sheep, before His shearers (v. 7).
He would suffer not only from the hand of man but from the Lord as well (v. 10).
He would pour out His soul to death (v. 12).
He would be buried in a rich man's tomb (v. 9).
He would be numbered with the transgressors (crucified between two thieves) (v. 12).
He would make intercession for the transgressors (v. 12).

Jesus said His enemies “do not know what they do'” (Luke 23:34). Even though they committed a sin of ignorance, under the Levitical laws they were still guilty for their behavior.
“Now if a person sins and does any of the things which the Lord has commanded not to be done, though he was unaware, still he is guilty and shall bear his punishment He is then to bring to a priest a ram without defect for a guilt offering. So the priest shall make atonement for him” (Leviticus 5:17,18). Christ asked His Father to forgive his enemies based on the atonement that Christ Himself was making on the cross, “as of a Lamb unblemished and spotless” (1 Peter 1:19).

2. The word of SALVATION
“And he said unto Jesus, 'Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom.'
And Jesus said unto him, 'Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with Me in paradise'” (Luke 23:42-43).

It was no accident that the Lord of Glory was crucified between two thieves. Every detail of His crucifixion had been “predestined to occur” by the very hand and purpose of God Himself (Acts 4:27,28). “This Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death (Acts 2:23). Seven hundred years before Pontius Pilate gave orders for Jesus to be crucified, God declared through His prophet Isaiah that His Son would be “numbered with the transgressors” (Isa 53:12).

Why did God order it that His beloved Son, the holy One, should be crucified between two criminals? Could it show us how much God despised our sin by placing His Son, our sin-bearer, in a position of shame? Could it be that God vividly represents the two choices we have regarding His salvation, by having one thief accept Jesus and one thief reject Him?

The thief who accepted Christ did so when it appeared that Christ had lost all power to save Himself. The chief priests, scribes and elders cried out, “He saved others; He cannot save Himself” (Matt 27:41,42). How can we explain the fact that this dying thief took a suffering, bleeding, crucified man for his God! It cannot be accounted for apart from divine intervention. His faith in Christ was a miracle of grace! God sovereignly chose to save this thief under the most unfavorable circumstances so we would not magnify human instrumentality above divine agency, to teach us that “Salvation is from the Lord” (Jonah 2:9).

It is mistaken to think that the thief who accepted Christ was better than the thief who rejected Him. At one point, they BOTH mocked Jesus while on their crosses. “The robbers who had been crucified with Him were also insulting Him with the same words” (Matt 27:44).

But this thief had a change of heart. The unrepentant thief abused Jesus by saying, “'Are You not the Christ? Save Yourself and us!' But the other answered, and rebuking him said, 'Do you not even fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?'” (Luke 23:39,40)

What the repentant thief had learned while hanging on his cross next to Jesus, and while contemplating the sign above Jesus' head, “This is Jesus the King of the Jews” (Matt 27:29).
1) By saying, “Do you not fear God?” he believed in a future judgment before God.
2) By saying, “We are receiving that which we deserve for our deeds” (Luke 23:41), he believed he was a sinner.
3) By saying, “This Man has done nothing wrong,” (Luke 23:41), he believed in the sinless Christ.
4) By saying, “Lord, remember me,” (Luke 23:42), he was acknowledging Jesus as Lord.
5) By saying, “Lord, remember me,” he was asking Jesus to save him.
6) By saying, “Lord, remember me when You come in Your kingdom,” he was acknowledging the kingdom of Christ.

Jesus replies to the repentant thief, “Today you shall be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). The thief went straight from the cross to paradise! There is no unconsciousness in the grave, but WITH CHRIST IN PARADISE is what awaits every believer at death. Jesus was not content to just tell the thief he would be in paradise, but that he would be WITH CHRIST. To be “absent from the body” is to be “home with the Lord” (2 Cor 5:8). He told His apostles, “I will come again and RECEIVE YOU TO MYSELF” (John 14:3).

3.The word of AFFECTION
“Standing by the cross of Jesus were His mother, and His mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdelene. When Jesus then saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, 'Woman, behold your son!' Then He said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!' From that hour the disciple took her into his own household” (John 19:25-27).

Mary's agony was predicted years before when she and Joseph dedicated Jesus in the temple. Old and devout Simeon turned to Mary and said, “Behold, this Child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and for a sign to be opposed – and a sword will pierce even your own soul” (Lk 2:34,35).

What sorrow it must have caused Mary when there was no room at the inn and she had to lay her newborn baby in a feeding trough! What anguish she felt when she learned that King Herod wanted to kill her Son! What trouble it was for her and Joseph to have to flee to Egypt and live in a foreign land for several years! How her soul must have been pierced when she saw Jesus despised and rejected among men! What grief she had when she beheld Him hated and persecuted by His own nation! Who can estimate her agony at the cross? If Christ was the Man of Sorrows, was she not the woman of sorrows?

And yet, Mary was “standing nearby.” Her sorrow was not hysterical, weak, or uncontrollable. The crowds are mocking, the thieves are taunting, the priests are jeering, the soldiers are callous and indifferent, while Mary is silently standing in her grief – not swooning, or sinking to the ground, or turning away, or fleeing from such a sight! She stands. In all the annuls of history, there is no parallel. What transcendent courage! What marvelous fortitude!

Scriptures exhort us to “not despise your mother when she is old” (Prov 23:22). The fifth commandment says, “Honor your father and your mother” (Ex 20:12). Jesus does this magnificently when He entrusts the care of His mother to John, His disciple. It is assumed that she is a widow, since the last mention of Joseph was when Jesus was twelve (Luke 2:51). So Joseph died sometime in the eighteen years between Jesus at age twelve and then thirty, when He began His public ministry.

How appropriate that Jesus chose John, “the disciple whom He loved,” to care for Mary. Years later, on the island of Patmos where John was exiled, Jesus would reveal Himself to John in the glorious apocalypse. How much better could John be equipped for this than by being with the mother of Jesus who knew Him more intimate than anyone else!

How different Mary of Scripture is from the Mary of superstition. She was no proud Madonna, but a sinner like us, declaring to Elizabeth, “My soul exalts the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God MY Savior” (Lk 1:46,47). The Word of God presents Mary not as the queen of angels decked with diadem but as one who acknowledged her own need of a Savior.

4. The word of ANGUISH
“About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, 'Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani?' that is, 'My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?'” (Matt 27:46)

On the cross the Lord Jesus was receiving the wages of sin that were due His people.
He had no sin of His own (2 Cor 5:21) but was bearing our sins in His own body (1 Pet 2:24).
He was taking our place of punishment, “the just for the unjust” (1 Pet 3:18).
Our sin separates us from the all-holy God. “Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and you sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear” (Isaiah 59:2).

God is so holy that He told Moses, “No man can see Me and live!” (Ex 33:20).
When Abraham stood before Him, he cried out, “I am but dust and ashes” (Gen 18:27).
Job said, “I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6).
Isaiah saw a vision of the Lord and said, “Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips...for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (Isa 6:5).
When Daniel saw a man whose “face had the appearance of lightening,” no strength was left in him (Dan 10:8).
Habakkuk said that God was “too pure to approve evil” and that He could not “look on iniquity” (1:13).
God the all-holy Father turned His face away from the sins Christ was bearing in His body for us. Jesus experienced separation from His Father for the three hours He hung on the cross in our place. He was left alone in darkness with our sin.

The night before He died, Jesus agonized over this separation from His Father in the Garden of Gethsemane. He prayed if it was possible for the Father to “let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will” (Mt 26:39). Jesus' agony was so great that he sweat drops of blood.
This was the Old Testament cup of the Father's wrath and anger toward sin (Isa 51:17; Jer 25:15).
Jesus told Peter in Gethsemane, “The cup which the Father has given Me, shall I not drink it?” (Jn 18:12).

Yet Jesus' cry was one of distress but not one of distrust. He continued to cling to His Father, calling Him “MY God, MY God.” As Psalm 22 predicted the details of Christ's crucifixion, “In You our fathers trusted; they trusted and You delivered them. To You they cried out and were delivered; in You they trusted and were not disappointed...God has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; nor had He hidden His face from Him; but when He cried to Him for help, He heard” (22:4-5,24).

5. The word of SUFFERING
“Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, “I thirst” (John 19:28).

This fulfilled a Messianic prediction in Psalm 69:21.
Jesus had already sunk in “deep mire” (v.2),
been hated “without a cause” (v.4),
had borne reproach and shame (v.7),
had “become a stranger to His brethren” (v.8),
had become a “proverb” to His revilers (v.11) and “the song of the drunkards” (v.12),
had cried to God in His distress (v.17-20).
Now, He thirsted (v.21).

The sufferings of Christ do not completely answer the question, Why does God who is almighty and loving allow suffering and evil in this world. But they do reassure us that God is not unaware or uncaring of our anguish, for Jesus Himself bore our griefs and carried our sorrows (Isa 53:4).
“For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Heb 4:15).

Is your body wracked with pain? So was His. Are you misunderstood, misjudged, misrepresented? So was He. Have those dearest to you turned away from you? They did to Him. Are you in darkness? So was He for three hours. “Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest” (Heb 2:17).

6. The word of VICTORY
“When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, 'It is finished'” (Jn 18:30).

WHAT was finished?

Jesus had spoken about the work He had come to do.
At the age of twelve, He told his parents, “Did you not know that I had to be about My Father's business?” (Lk 2:49)
“My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work” (Jn 4:34).
“I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do” (Jn 17:4).
“For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Lk 19:10).
“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim 1:15).
“You know that He appeared in order to take away sins” (1 Jn 3:5).

The Greek word “teleo” is translated “It is finished,” “made an end of,” “paid,” “performed,” and “accomplished.”
What was made an end of? Our sins and their guilt.
What was paid? Spiritual death, the price of our redemption.
What was performed? The requirements of the law.
What was accomplished? The work that the Father had given Jesus to do.
What was finished? The atonement for the sins of mankind.

Here we see the end of our sins. “The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isa 53:6). If God laid all my sins on Christ, then they are no longer on me.

For Christians, Satan is a vanquished foe. He was defeated by Christ at the cross, “that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb 2:14).
Satan, then, should be treated by believers as a defeated enemy. “Resist the devil and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).

7. The word of CONTENTMENT
“And Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, 'Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.' Having said this, He breathed His last” (Luke 23:46).

This was also a fulfillment of Psalm 31:1-5 which reflects King David's complete trust in God.
“In You, O Lord, I have taken refuge...Be to me a rock of strength, a stronghold to save me...For You are my strength. Into Your hand I commit my spirit, You have ransomed me, O Lord, God of truth.”

With these words, we Jesus back in communion with His Father, the Father who had turned away from the sins He was carrying in His body (1 Pet 2:24). Jesus will never again suffer again at the hands of “godless men” (Acts 2:23). Three days later the Father raised Him from the dead. Forty days after that the Father exalted Him high above all principalities and powers and every name that is named, and seated Him at the Fathers' own right hand, waiting until His enemies are made a footstool for His feet (Rev 3:21; Ps 110:1; Heb 10:12,13). The Father will send Christ back to rule over the earth in power and glory. Instead of wicked men crying, “Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him” (John 19:15), He will say “Depart from Me accursed ones, into the eternal fire which had been prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt 25:41).

The meaning of the Greek language is that Jesus “dismissed His spirit,” as a king authoritatively dismisses his servant. Here is the One who voluntarily gave up His life. “No has taken it from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative” (John 10:18). Appearing to be completely helpless in His agony, He is in total control at every moment, even dismissing His spirit upon death.

He commits His spirit into His Father's hand, which is the place of eternal security. “My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand” (John 10:29).

What a wonderful prayer for every believer at the moment of their death,
“Father, into Your hand I commit my spirit.”

I breathed a sigh of satisfaction when I finished the last sentence of this book. Pink is eloquent and powerful, even decades after his death.

In no overstatement, this book is truly great.

Pink mentions that it was the goal of ancient Greeks to say much in little: "to give a sea of matter in a drop of language." Nearly all of these 139 pages gave oceans of matter.

The Book is divided into seven chapters (based on each of Christ's final words on the cross) with seven points under each. Pink adds his own perceptive observances often, while supporting them with frequent Scripture.

I found myself frequently writing "Well said," "So true," and "Interesting perspective" in the margins. Pink's words are sometimes comforting, sometimes challenging, sometimes chilling... but always thoughtful and theologically sound.

My only criticism--and it is a minuscule one--is that once or twice (to meet his seven-point format) he stretches a single point into two. Still, Pink has a way of presenting the same material in a fresh way.

Pink's own dying words were: "The Scriptures explain themselves." Clearly, he was a man who knew and loved those very Scriptures. His words will ring true for decades yet to come.

Worth the read.

I picked this book up after hearing a sermon series on the same topic by James Montgomery Boice. The depth of Pink's exposition is enlightening. Memorably, he points out that Jesus' slow death on the cross and ultimate demise was not as a result of asphyxiation or loss of blood, but as a result of His own surrender of His spirit. Death is the penalty for sin, and as a sinless human and God, Jesus' sacrificial death was his own. That insight and many others have stayed with me for years and have formed my deeper understanding and love for our savior. I recommend it as a teaching tool, substance for a sermon series or enjoyment and edification.

Excellent work; another splendid example of the depth of understanding that Arthur Pink had. I would recommend it all levels of student who wishes to understand the cross and its true message.

What a gem, and beginning scripture notes on how to pray God's word and promises back to Him....

It was ok

Wonderful book.