Jesus knew where to go in the Bible for the language that suited Him; for He had been a diligent student of it all His days. He heard it in the home of His childhood; He listened to it in the synagogue; probably He got the use of the synagogue rolls and hung over it in secret. He knew it through and through. Therefore, when He became a preacher, His language was saturated with it, and in controversy, by the apt use of it, He could put to shame those who were its professional students. But in His private life likewise He employed it in every exigency. He fought with it the enemy in the wilderness and overcame him; and now, in the supreme need of a dying hour, it stood Him in good stead. It is to those who, like Jesus, have hidden God's Word in their hearts that it is a present help in every time of need; and, if we wish to stay ourselves upon it in dying, we ought to make it the man of our counsel in living.
It is worth observing in what manner Jesus made this quotation from the Psalter: He added something at the beginning and He omitted something at the close. At the beginning He added, "Father." This is not in the psalm. It could not have been. In the Old Testament the individual had not begun yet to address God by this name, though God was called the Father of the nation as a whole. The new consciousness of God which Christ introduced into the world is embodied in this word, and, by prefixing it to the citation, He gave the verse a new colouring. We may, then, do this with the Old Testament: we may put New-Testament meaning into it. Indeed, in connection with this very verse we have a still more remarkable illustration of the same treatment. Stephen, the first martyr of Christianity, was in many respects very like his Master, and in his martyrdom closely imitated Him. Thus on the field of death he repeated Christ's prayer for His enemies--"Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." Also, he imitated this final word, but he put it in a new form, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit;" that is, he addressed to Christ the dying prayer which Christ Himself addressed to the Father.[2] The other alteration which Jesus made was the omission of the words, "for Thou hast redeemed me." It would not have been fitting for Him to employ them. But we will not omit them; and if, like Stephen, we address the prayer to Christ, how much richer and more pathetic are the words to us than they were even to him who first penned them.