The night before his Crucifixion Jesus had told his disciples, “I came from the Father and have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and am going to the Father” (NRSV, John 16:28).  And now that time had come.  The appalling sense of desolation which had wrung from him the cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (NRSV, Mark 15:34), had now passed and he was again completely conscious of the bond between his Father and himself.

So Jesus comes now to the Father in his own right and in the unspotted purity of a holy life.  Never had he thought or said or done anything to disturb or ruffle his life with God; and so, though still in agony, there is tranquillity over his soul and he dies like a child settling down to sleep.

That untroubled calm of his last moments was the result and the continuation of a whole life spent in unbroken union with God.  He ended Good Friday as he had always ended every day from his earliest childhood – by committing himself into the Father’s care in the words of Psalm 31, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (NRSV, Luke 23:46).