"I Thirst": The Fifth Word From the Cross

“I Thirst”: our Lord’s Fifth Word from the Cross

Our Lord's fifth word from the Cross marks a transition. Something has finished. Something different is beginning.

The passage of time is always significant in the Scripture. His coming into the world had been in the fullness of time—when everything was made ready. Jesus, Himself, spoke of His time during His messianic ministry—that it was not yet.

The apostles were always couching sermons and teaching in the frame of “In the past . . ., but now . . .” Consider the wonderful beginning to the Letter to the Hebrews: long ago, in the past, God spoke to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, but in these last days, He has spoken to us in His Son . . .

In what were the last days of the Jewish kingdom we have been spoken to by God in His Son. He is the exact representation of God’s nature, and He upholds all things by the Word of His power. He ascended to this position after He had made purification for our sins.

Our desire is to reflect carefully upon the seven words God has spoken to us in His Son, while He was upon the Cross, while He was making purification for our sins.

We have said that each word is weighty and filled with deliberate meaning. Each utterance is an official pronouncement.

In order to grasp something of the significance of these words, we need to see each word in terms of the passage of time as it occurred on that dread Friday.

Yes, there is a passage of time at Golgotha that is meaningful and significant. Too often we view the crucifixion of our Lord as an undifferentiated single event.

Yet the gospel accounts are quite deliberate. They are careful to point out the hours and the passage of time. We read of the third hour, when the crucifixion began; the sixth hour when darkness fell upon the land; and the ninth hour which was when the darkness ended. The third hour was nine o’clock in the morning; the sixth hour was midday; and the ninth hour was three o’clock in the afternoon. The fact that the Gospels are so careful and deliberate to record these details tells us that these times and the passage of time is very significant during the crucifixion.

Thus we may say that at Golgotha on that fateful Friday there are really two blocks of time, three hours each. These two periods, were sharply divided—literally as different as night and day. Daylight attended the hours of nine in the morning until twelve midday. It was during these hours that Christ carried out His last official duties toward mankind generally, His people in particular, and, finally, toward His mother.

The last three hours—from midday to three in the afternoon—are hours of stygian darkness that convey all the watchers to the very edges of Hell itself. But our Saviour does not just draw near to the horrors of Hell. He enters Hell in those hours. But not just Hell itself. He is cast into the fartherest reaches of the pit of destruction, to its deepest most desperate extremities as the guilt of all the sins of all His people for all time are laid to His account.

The spectacle is so terrible that no man can look upon it and survive. We have been told that it is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the Living God (Hebrews 10:31). Moreover, the Apostle says that our God is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29). In those hours of darkness, our Lord was both terrified and consumed. He had fallen into in the hands of God in the sense spoken of in Hebrews; the wrath of God was upon Him, was being poured out upon Him; days of vengeance had come to Him and fallen upon Him. We believe no living man could have witnessed this and remained in sound mind.

Towards the end of those three most terrible hours that the creation has ever witnessed our Saviour cries out, “My God, My God why hast Thou forsaken Me?” We have spoken of how that cry conveyed the depths of His suffering—the despite of desolation, of being cut off from God and His blessing—only to face the opposite—His wrath and curse.

But we have also spoken of the wonderful victory implicit in that cry. He does not hold back or cease from loving His Father, from actively seeking Him, from clinging to Him, from trusting Him, from addressing Him as, “My God.” May we say this carefully and reverently—He does not hold back in those dreadful hours from loving His Father, while His Father execrated Him, cursed Him, and hated Him for our sakes.

How vast and deep must the love of God be for us! How supreme is the Saviour’s love for each one! We can begin to understand something of what Paul means when he prays that we might begin to know the unknowable: that we may be rooted and grounded in the love of Christ and that we may be able to comprehend the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ, which surpasses all knowledge! (Ephesians 3: 18,19)

In the final hours before the Cross, we find our Saviour’s characterisation of the extent of His love for us typically understated—and therefore all the more powerful and compelling. He had instructed His disciples to love one another. Then He gave a measure for love: “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13) Then He added, “you are my friends, if you do what I command you.”

In those hours of darkness when He was hidden from us we understand something of the manner of His laying down His life for us—what it really meant to Him and what it cost Him. We have thought about what it meant to go to the extremities of Hell, to experience utter dereliction, and to be broken. So we come to understand something of how great His love is for us. He went to Hell for His friends, so that they may not have to go. Not only is it amazing that our Lord calls us His friends, but His love and passion for us went far beyond anything that we have ever been able to do for others!

During the days of the Old Covenant a mark of singular honour was bestowed upon Abraham, our father. He was called the Friend of God. Now the Messiah extends that honour to all His beloved people. “You are my friends . . . ” And He has proved it at Golgotha. Friend of God, am I. No-one can take that title of honour from me. None can remove it from you. Not death, not life, not angels, not principalities, not things present, not things to come . . . not any created thing shall be able to remove that title of honour bestowed upon you. His friendship proved and won not just by His dying for you, in your place, but the manner of that death. A death so terrible that no man could look upon it and live.

Towards the end of those three hours of impenetrable darkness, our Saviour “shows His quality.” He expresses His anguish to His still beloved Father. His suffering has not for one moment become mingled with unbelief. He is utterly broken, but He seeks God in love, need, and complete dependence.

And by the ninth hour it passes! We know this because John is careful to tell us: “after this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished . . .” (John 19:28). It was at this time that Jesus delivered the fifth word from the Cross. The word is “I thirst”. This word is followed by the final two utterances, “It is finished” and “Father into Thy hands I commit my spirit.” The Gospels tell us that these three utterances were all delivered at around the ninth hour—in other words, close together. They were all spoken after all things had already been accomplished. Thus, we learn that the Cry of Dereliction is also a sign of triumph, of ultimate proof through suffering of the merits, glory, the faith, and holy worthiness of our Saviour. He has triumphed over Hell; He has continued to love God; He has remained spotless and sinless throughout the extremities of bearing sin for us.

At the time of the ninth hour, at the end of the darkness, with the Cry of Dereliction all things had been accomplished. It is over!

However, we find John’s record of the fifth word a little puzzling. In the first place, we should ask, To whom was it addressed? We believe it was a prayer to His Father. While the prayer was heard, and answered, through the instrumentality of man (which is so often the case in our prayers) we believe that at this hour of the Cross, our Lord had ceased dealing directly with His people. He was, rather, totally focussed upon His work as High Priest presenting the only atoning sacrifice that has ever been accepted by God. Therefore, it is to God He cries, “I thirst.” It is a prayer of need.

This prayer confirms the holiness of the Son of Man. He does not cease for a moment, even though He had just returned from the most terrible torment inflicted upon Him by His Father, to relate to God as His beloved Father, Whom He loves and trusts utterly, and upon Whom He completely depends.

Secondly, the prayer, “I thirst” does not seem to fit with the Gospel commentary with which it is introduced. We read again: “After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished, in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, ‘I thirst.’” Our question is, How does this word relate to the accomplishment of all things and the fulfilment of the Scripture?—for it is very clear that John relates them.

We need to understand that while the battle has been won and our Saviour has triumphed He still has some last tasks to perform. He has to pronounce formally and officially that the battle is over, complete and finished. We will say more of this next time.

Secondly, He, as the forerunner of all His people, must also, like them, taste the first death. He has just tasted the second death, eternal death, and triumphed over it. He has been resurrected from it, as it were. Now He must taste the first death. His body must die, that He might be the first born from the dead of all of us so that He might have the pre-eminence.

This is the reason, we believe, that from the human perspective Christ died so quickly—though He had suffered an eternity of punishment. We know that crucifixion was normally a long, lingering death—often lasting days. But once He had emerged from Hell, having accomplished all things, having suffered an eternity for us, nothing further was left to do, except for His body to die.

But it is important that we all understand—we, the angels, and all other creatures, that this death of His body is not a mere giving up, an acquiescence. Rather He will lay down His life by His own volition and choice. He had been granted the authority to do that by the Father. In this fifth word from the Cross Jesus is gathering Himself for these last tasks so that the Scripture might be fulfilled and He might do all His duty. He is gathering His strength so that He might consign Himself to death.

Think again of these words: “I lay down My life for the sheep. For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. No-one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from my Father.” (John 10:15—18)

You cannot read these words without being impressed by their emphatic, insistent tone. The Father loves the Son because He determined, He chose, He willed to lay down His life for the sheep. He is not a victim in the sense of having terrible things happen to Him, beyond His control, that He did not deserve. Sometimes Christians have missed this. They have tended to sentimentalise the Cross. “Poor Jesus. He did not deserve this. I shouldn’t have let it happen. I am to blame.” Thus, they guilt-manipulate themselves over the Cross, and they never experience its liberating power.

This is not the teaching of Scripture. Jesus is not a weak victim. He insists that He be sacrificed. He has been granted authority over this. He demands it. He controls it. He chooses it. His heavenly Father gives Him that right and privilege.

Only in this light does the Cross transform from a thing of terrible dread to something of great glory. For the Cross becomes a thing of insistent, demanding love. Long before you and I ever lived, our Saviour demanded, insisted on the right to die for us. Dare we say this: He counted it His great privilege to die for us, His friends—such is the extent, the depth, the height, the breadth of His love for you and me. Only in this light does the Cross become something truly liberating—something in which we can truly boast, and about which we can become proud—for it manifests the love of God and His Christ for us in a way that nothing else does. That which is so great that it is said to pass knowledge becomes both seen and known at Golgotha.

Now many of us spend our days in mourning and great poverty of spirit. We know our sinfulness and moral depravity. We can get so burdened by our daily self-experience. This ought not to be. Beyond all our wretchedness, greater than all our sin, is this fact—that the love of Christ for you is so deep that He would rather taste the most extreme anguishes of Hell than lose you from His presence and fellowship. You, with all the Church, are that precious to Him.

At the end of the ninth hour, Christ is passing from being the victim of sacrifice, to the Lord of glory. All things have already been accomplished, and He now, once more, assumes control. By His own authority He has laid down His life. By His own authority He begins to take it up again. He needs to fulfil the final obligations of the Scripture—He needs to present the sacrifice of His body. He needs to carry out literally the sacramental sign of “This is my body, broken for you . . .”

As one writer has put it, He will not accept death as a fate, but He will perform it as a deed. He will present His offering before the Father as our High Priest. Central to these last tasks is the duty to pronounce to all creation the realities of what has just happened and is about to happen.

To do this He must pronounce. He must speak forth. He must declare.

But His throat is parched. He is terribly weakened. He must will life in the body away. He needs help to perform these last official duties. So He cries out for help to His Father. “I thirst”. The soldiers’ drink was a ration of cheap, sour wine—vinegar—usually mixed with water and eggs. One of them puts some on a sponge and lifts it up so that His parched throat might be cleared and He might speak.

We note the contrast between the earlier offering of wine and myrrh before the crucifixion began—a concoction to drug and dull the pain. But He did not take it. He would enter into the full cup of suffering. Now the pangs of Hell are over, He has triumphed, and He seeks help to speak. So, now He accepts the sour wine. Now He gathers up His strength to cry out with a loud voice the last great two triumphant utterances from Golgotha. He will leave that terrible place triumphant and victorious.

We have been “with” Him, as it were, as we have witnessed and heard His utterances from the Cross. We have been taken through the hours of daylight and we have watched uncomprehending throughout the hours of darkness. But time has moved on. Now we sense the darkness lifting. We sense the worst is over. We sense the far off sound of the silver trumpet’s dawning call. Our hearts are lighter.

Truly, it has been darkest before the dawn. We will now wait eagerly to hear His last two words, for in them lie all our hope and faith.