The last words of Jesus on the cross
Seven sentences, assembled from four accounts.
They are traditionally called the seven last words, though they are sentences rather than words, and no single Gospel carries all seven. The set is assembled from four accounts that each recorded what they recorded.
That is worth knowing before you read them as a sequence, because the order is a later arrangement rather than a transcript.
The seven, and where each is found
- Luke 23:34"Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing."
- Luke 23:43To the man beside him: "today you will be with me in Paradise."
- John 19:26–27To his mother and to John: "behold your son… behold your mother."
- Matthew 27:46"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" — also in Mark 15:34
- John 19:28"I am thirsty."
- John 19:30"It is finished."
- Luke 23:46"Father, into your hands I commit my spirit."
The first of them, with the room around it
Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they are doing.
Luke places this in the same sentence as the soldiers dividing his clothes between them. It is not said afterwards, in reflection, and it is not said about people in the abstract. It is spoken over the men doing it, while they are doing it, and while they are already dividing up what he owned.
How the seven move
Taken in the traditional order they travel outward to inward: first the people killing him, then the man dying beside him, then his mother — and only after that does anything turn to himself.
The fourth is a quotation. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me" is the opening line of Psalm 22, which his listeners would have recognised, and which does not end where he stops. What that implies has been argued about for a very long time, and is worth sitting with rather than settling.
The whole collection, one day at a time
Walking with Jesus: Devotional has a collection called Words from the Cross that takes these one a day — each with the passage around it, a short reflection, a prayer and one thing to carry into the day.
A one-time purchase, about five minutes a morning.
Questions people ask
- What were the seven last words of Jesus?
- In the traditional order: "Father, forgive them" (Luke 23:34), "today you will be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43), "behold your son… behold your mother" (John 19:26–27), "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46), "I am thirsty" (John 19:28), "It is finished" (John 19:30), and "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit" (Luke 23:46).
- Why are they called words when they are sentences?
- "Word" is being used in its older sense of an utterance or saying, as in "a word from our speaker". The seven are sayings, not single words.
- Does one Gospel contain all seven sayings?
- No. Luke records three, John records three, and Matthew and Mark record the one about being forsaken. The set of seven is a later arrangement that combines all four accounts.