“And when the centurion, who was standing right in front of Him, Saul the way He breathes His last, he said, truly this man was the son of God!” Luke 15:39
In verse 37 of that same chapter it says “and Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last.” According to Luke 23:46 Jesus breathed his last when he cried out “Father into your hands I commit my spirit.” Just before Jesus spoke those last words on the Cross, He said “tetelestai” which of course means “perfect,” or “accomplished, completed.” These would’ve been the last two statements the Roman centurion would’ve heard uttered from the lips of Jesus just as he was dying. What is it about the “way he breathed his last” that would’ve caused the Roman centurion to acknowledge that Jesus was the son of God. Let me share a few thoughts. When Jesus declared Tetelestai He was not speaking the words of a victim full of self-pity and despair; instead, this was a word of faith in something good accomplished. This is a word that indicated that something extraordinarily wonderful was taking place behind the scene of a circumstanceHE that seemed so dark and terrible. This was a word spoken by someone who saw something that nobody else seemed to be able to see, and He was believing in something that contradicted everything going on around him in the natural. This wasn’t a word spoken by someone who was helplessly resigning to a situation he had no control over. No, this is a word spoken by someone who knew an extraordinary victory was taking place, and who was fully embracing a truth for bigger than sight. Truly this was a man who lived by faith and knew something or someone that was bigger than any apparent defeat was somehow winning something big. Jesus confirmed that when He acknowledged that there was a Father, who was obviously present and somehow in control’ accomplishing something extraordinary, when He said “Father into your hands I commend my spirit.” Jesus was confident that he was in the hands of another who could be trusted; who was ordering His steps and was accomplishing something extraordinary and wonderful. The centurion saw a man who in the midst of great pain and suffering, manifest and abandoned confidence in a Heavenly Father whom Jesus obviously believed was good, and genius in His workings.
Hebrews says that Jesus is the author of the perfecter of faith and I believe that in these last words spoken at the Cross, that so radically changed the centurion’s life is one of the great moments of faith in the life of Christ.
Faith does not always look like stewarding signs and wonders that issue in light where there is darkness; sometimes faith looks like absolute confidence that even in the darkest places full of confusion and pain, God in his brilliant goodness is doing something good, even extraordinarily wonderful, though you can’t see it with the natural eye. Faith does sometimes bring light in the dark places that dispels the darkness, but sometimes faith looks like seeing light when everything else around you looks dark. When we learn to trust him in the darkness, I believe that we graduate to a new place of faith where he is able to trust us to do something about darkness at higher levels.