“It Is Finished” – John 19:30

Some of life’s hardest challenges are also the most rewarding. When the challenge is over, we can look back and smile, particularly if we finished the challenge successfully.

Years ago, I was taking a class in logic. The first day of class, the professor assured us that if we tried our best, we would not fail the class. At the time, I didn’t think anything about it, just something that was said to get us into a proper frame of mind.

I attended the lectures, read the assigned reading and did the work. The time for the first test came, and I crashed and burned. I got the test back and it was one of the worst grades I had ever made on a class where I had applied myself. I could tell I wasn’t alone in that feeling. The atmosphere in the room was one of defeat and despair.

It was then that the professor reminded us of his words on the first day of the class. If we tried, we would not fail.

I left the class that day and continued doing what was expected of me. Then one day, the scales fell from my eyes, and I began to grasp the subject. The frustration I had been experiencing suddenly turned to excitement and joy. What had once been a foreign language to me was now a delight. The next few weeks flew by, and every lesson was a reaffirmation that I had started to see what was happening.

The day of the final, I sat at my desk, looked over the paper and began to answer the questions. As I continued with the test, I began to realize all my efforts over the semester were bearing fruit. When I answered the last question and turned in my final exam, I walked out of the room with a sense of accomplishment and victory. The class that had at one time threatened to overwhelm me now was under my command. It was finished and I had won.

Passing a class is nothing compared to some other challenges or crises people experience. To come through a literal battle and live to tell about it can only be considered a great achievement. Flying to the moon and back with computers less powerful than a modern cellphone is a remarkable achievement for everyone involved.

Such achievements all fall short, though, when compared to the events on the hill called Calvary so many years ago. It was there that God’s love reached its greatest success as Jesus died for our sins.

Is it any wonder that He would want to proclaim to the world, “It is finished?”

Central Truth: Jesus’ statement was a resounding declaration of His victory and our salvation.

What is finished?

Jesus’ ordeal on the cross

Almost from the moment Jesus was born, He knew where He would die. He wasn’t sure of the time, but He knew He would lay down His life for His friends and disciples. When Jesus did know the time, Luke reminds us that Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. From that moment, Jesus knew what awaited Him. Though He asked the Father to take the cup from Him if possible, once Jesus was given God’s answer, He willingly went to Calvary.

The agony Jesus endured began hours before He was hung on the cross. There was the false accusations, the beatings, the taunts, the jeers before the Sanhedrin and at the hands of the Romans. Without food or water for the hardest, most physically trying day of His life, Jesus willingly hung from the cross. There, He expressed His forgiveness for those who were wronging Him. He promised salvation to the thief who professed His faith in Jesus. He made provisions for His mother’s care. All this while hanging on the cross.

For six hours, Jesus hung there. He cried out to God in anguish, expressed His thirst, and now, in what John regards as the last statement, Jesus proclaims, “It is finished.”

It is important to remember that Jesus was very clear that He was laying down His life. In John 10, Jesus said, “The reason My Father loves Me is that I lay down My life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from the Father” (John 10:17-18). Jesus knew when the time had come to lay down His life—it was only after the price of atonement had been paid. He had successfully completed the task the Father had called Him to do, and so His time on the cross had reached its conclusion. Having nothing more to do, Jesus states simply that the task is finished, and the ordeal is over.

John goes on to say what happened after Jesus gave up His life. To conform to Jewish law, the three men on the crosses had to die before sundown in order to prepare for the Sabbath Passover. People could stay alive for 12 hours or longer on the cross. By the time Jesus proclaimed it was finished, it was 3 p.m. Sundown came in three hours. The soldiers were ordered to break the legs of the men on the crosses. They went to the first thief and broke his legs. They went to the second thief and repeated the procedure.

When they came to Jesus, they saw there was no need to break His legs because His life was gone. Instead, to verify that Jesus was no longer alive, one of the soldiers stabbed Jesus in the side with a spear. John then goes on to state that he was a witness to all this and that he is telling this part in order that we may believe. He also says the events after Jesus died fulfilled Scripture, Psalm 34:20 and Zechariah 12:10.

When Jesus said, “It is finished,” He knew that the horror of the cross was finished, and He lay down His life.

Jesus’ earthly ministry

The cross was the culmination of why Jesus gave up His glory in heaven and came to earth. It was a fulfillment of God’s love as declared in John 3:16 and demonstrated in the way Jesus lived. By coming to our world, Jesus showed us the Father in His words and His deeds. He also literally showed us the Father as clearly as we could see Him. Everything Jesus said and did pointed us to the Father. His ministry was focused on the intention of bringing us to the Father through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ.

With the atonement for our sins achieved through Jesus’ death on the cross, Jesus’ earthly ministry had largely come to a close. There would be another forty days when the risen Christ would walk with the disciples, preparing them for the coming of the Holy Spirit. But for the most part, Jesus’ ministry reached its conclusion that afternoon on the cross.

And what a ministry it had been. Taking 12 men from different backgrounds and interests, He bound them together into a brotherhood committed to Him with a belief that came only from the Father. Even though Jesus one of them would betray Him, nonetheless, Jesus demonstrated His teachings by loving Judas until the end.

Jesus had done so many miracles—healing the lame, giving sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, cleansing to those who suffered from diseases. He calmed storms, fed thousands with a small lunch and even raised the dead (at least three times). From the wedding at Canaan until the day at Calvary, Jesus’ life was one of miraculous events.

Not only did Jesus do great things that touched people’s lives, He also spoke great words, showing us how we are to relate to God and to one another. There is the Sermon on the Mount, the various discourses recorded in John’s account of the Gospel. Jesus taught in His parables. He stressed the need of compassion and acceptance, of faith and obedience, all the while sharing His love with those around Him.

Look at the way ministered to people. The woman at the well. The centurion with the gravely ill servant. The father whose son was possessed by a demon. See how gently Jesus addressed the woman with the flow and the woman caught in adultery. Jesus’ words to Zacchaeus and the woman who anointed His feet. All of these encounters with people showed us how we are to reach out to others, how we are to minister.

Everything about Jesus’ life was a demonstration of God with us in every sense of the phrase. And now, as the afternoon grew late on Calvary, Jesus knew that His earthly ministry had reached its peak and its end.

And so He said, “It is finished.”

Our enslavement to Satan and sin

What Jesus did at Calvary made it possible for you and me to be set free from Satan and to become God’s children. Without Jesus on the cross, without Jesus finishing the task before Him, there would be no hope for us, no promise of salvation. But because Jesus finished it, we are no longer bound to Satan and are free to follow Christ.

When we accept salvation from God through Christ, we are transported back to Calvary. There, as Paul reminds us in Galatians, we have been crucified with Christ, and we no longer live, but Christ lives in us. The life we live in the body, we live by faith in the Son of God, who loved us and gave Himself for us (cf. Galatians 2:20-21). Because we have been crucified, the Bible tells us that we died to sin. All of us who have been baptized into Jesus Christ have been baptized into His death, allowing us to live a new life (cf. Romans 6:2-14). We know that we can life a new life because we are a new creation (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:17). We now live because Jesus lives—He is in the Father, and we are in Him and He is in us (cf. John 14:20). Having been raised with Christ, and since we are in Him, we are now seated with Christ at the Father’s right hand, allowing us to set our hearts and minds on the things of Christ (cf. Colossians 3:1-4).

Because it is finished, we are victorious over Satan. John tells us that we are of God and have overcome the world, because greater is He that is in us than he who is in the world (cf. 1 John 4:4). We can praise God because He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:57).

Because we have this great victory, Paul reminds us we are to stand firm and give ourselves to the work of the Lord (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:58), and that we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, knowing that God is working in us to act according to His good purpose (Philippians 2:12-13).

The joy we experience comes from knowing that we are children of God, loved by the Father and that we have a very real, very personal relationship with Him. And all of this is made possible because it is finished.

Conclusion

The mistake the world often makes when it depicts the events of Jesus’ life is that they end it with the burial. In both “Jesus Christ, Superstar” and “Godspell,” both end with the procession to the grave.

But to assume that it all ended on the cross is to miss the second part of Jesus’ statement in John 10. He laid down His life, yes, and it was finished at Calvary. But He picked it up again, by the Father’s authority. He lives, and because He lives, we too will live.

It is finished set us free, but the empty tomb gives us hope, gives us assurance and gives us the knowledge that we shall see Jesus face-to-face, and that we have eternal life even as we live and breathe.

“It is finished,” and because it is finished, we have a new beginning in Christ.