It is Finished!

John 19:28-30

April 13, 2003

 

After three weeks of punishing bombardment and raging battles, United States military forces took part in an amazing sight. Right in the heart of Baghdad, in a square bearing a huge monument to Saddam Hussein, a crowd gathered in an attempt to topple this image of his brutal dictatorship. With a little help from a crane, the statue toppled and with it the symbolism of Saddam's brutal regime.

 

But very quickly the coalition leaders warned that the job was not finished! Though Saddam's statue was toppled, and his regime essentially broken, the war is not over. That was proved out by the continued battles we've witnessed via the media since Wednesday. 

 

Unfortunately, some people look at salvation in much the same way. At the cross, Jesus Christ did great damage to the regime of Satan, and even symbolically toppled his power. But he did not finish the job. That is left to us to complete through our works, service, and rituals. 

 

Jesus Christ declares otherwise!  The work the Father gave Him to do, He completed (John 17:4).  There was no more redemptive work before Him.  There was nothing else beyond the cross necessary for the salvation of sinners (understanding that the cross and resurrection are viewed as a whole).

 

But multitudes of people do not believe this.  They view the work of Christ as something added to their works to give them merit before God (the classic Roman Catholic view of justification).  Or they view the work of Christ as insufficient for their salvation, so they cast it aside and cling to their own righteousness (illustrated so often by legalists).  Or they consider the work of Christ as inspirational and moving, one which serves as an example for their own sacrificial living which they believe will suffice before God (practiced by modern asceticism which is seen typically in those who take vows of poverty in order to achieve merit with God).

 

The Apostle John uses the word "completed" in various ways throughout his gospel.  In particular, he uses it three times in the space of our text to highlight the theme of his gospel:  Jesus Christ finished the saving work the Father sent Him to do.  The entire gospel finds a wonderful climax in the words, "It is finished!"  These words give us the assurance that in Jesus Christ our salvation is complete!

 

The cross of Jesus Christ is the dividing point of humanity.  A man either trusts wholly in Jesus Christ and Him crucified or he considers that he has no real need for the bloody death of Christ on the cross or perhaps he thinks the cross is a good thing to add to what he is already doing.  At this point humanity is divided for eternity.  We are not dealing with negotiable religious ideas when we come to the cross.  Instead, we stand on the brink of an eternity with God or without Him.

 

Nothing can be added to the work of Jesus Christ on the cross.  It is finished!  What does this imply for all of us as we reflect upon the cross?

 

I.  The Incomplete

 

The word "accomplished" in verse 28 and "it is finished" in verse 30 are exactly the same word in the Greek.  The phrase, "might be fulfilled," comes from the same root word as the other two verbs.  All three imply something that is brought to a conclusion or a completion.  If this is the case, then obviously, there must be some things that were incomplete before Jesus Christ finished what He was sent to do.  In order to understand what Jesus completed, I believe it is important to give some consideration to what remained incomplete apart from Jesus Christ and His work on the cross.

 

1.  Ceremonially incomplete

 

The Jews who looked upon the crucifixion were involved that very week in the Passover celebration.  It commemorated God's gracious hand of deliverance for Israel while in Egypt.  The Lord instructed Moses to have the people take an unblemished lamb or kid, slay it, and sprinkle its blood on the doorposts.  The covering of the blood served as an 'atonement' ('covering' being the literal meaning of atonement) for the people as the death angel passed over Egypt in judgment.  They had not only sprinkled the blood of the lamb, but they had also eaten all of it.  Alfred Edersheim describes the significance of the Passover:

The direction, to sprinkle the entrance, meant that the blood was to be applied to the house itself, that is, to make atonement for it, and in a sense to convert it into an altar.  Seeing this blood, Jehovah, when He passed through to smite the Egyptians, would "pass over the door," so that it would "not be granted the destroyer to come in" unto their dwellings....The sacrificial lamb, whose sprinkled blood protected Israel, pointed to Him whose precious blood is the only safety of God's people...The lamb was to be...roasted and served up whole--complete, without break or division, not a bone of it being broken, just as not even a bone was broken of Him who died for us on the cross [Old Testament Bible History, II, 79-80].


The Egyptians had no covering for this fearful judgment of God in the tenth plague.  There was no "atonement" for them, so they faced the loss of the firstborn.  It was the blood of the unblemished lamb that spared Israel from the same fate.

 

Paul points out to us in I Corinthians 5:7, "For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed."  Peter alludes to this same idea when he wrote that we are redeemed "with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ" (I Pet. 1:19).  The relationship of Jesus' atoning sacrifice to Passover was not a strange coincidence.  Instead, it points us to the inadequacy of the ceremonial Passover to take away sin.  Yes, it covered Israel during the passing over of the death angel, but it had no eternal power in it.  It could not permanently "take away sins," as Jesus came to do (I John 3:5).  Every celebration of the Passover pointed to the day when God Himself would provide the Lamb to cover the sins of the people, to deliver them from the judgment legally due them as lawbreakers.

 

All of the ceremonies instituted by the Lord had their completion in Jesus Christ.  Calvin states that in the cross you have "the abolition of all the ceremonies of the Law" [NT Commentaries, vol. V, 183].  The Jews participated in feasts and holy days each year as reminders of the Lord their God and His redemptive work among them.  The problem among the Jews at this point was an unwillingness to realize that their ceremonies were incomplete, that they could not save one person from their sins.  They held to them and rejected the only sufficient sacrifice of God.  Paul expressed this clearly in Colossians 2:16-17, pointing out that all of these ceremonies were simply shadows of the reality that was fulfilled in Christ.  "Therefore let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day--things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ."

 

The cry of our Lord, "It is finished!," points to the end of the ceremonial law.  It shows that the ceremonial law is inadequate for our salvation and only a reminder that God will always be faithful to His promises.

 

2.  Personally incomplete

 

We do not necessarily think in terms of ceremonial law.  Perhaps none of us were brought up celebrating the Passover or the Day of Atonement.  So it is vital that we see another aspect of the incompleteness of salvation apart from Christ.  It is found in our own lack of sufficient righteousness to stand before God.  When John writes, "all things had already been accomplished," he points to the fact that we need cling no longer to our own self-generated righteousness.  It was a grand statement of our personal insufficiency when it comes to salvation.

 

Most people do not want to admit their helplessness before God.  They will tenaciously cling to their works of righteousness and all of the good deeds they have accomplished.  Rather than seeing them as "rubbish," as the Apostle Paul did, many think of their works as a treasure to God (Phil. 3:8-9).  They look around at their fellow sinners and surely find plenty who are a worse lot in outward behavior.  They then look at themselves and with a proud spirit, parade their accomplishments before God.  They have a hope, some go as far as calling it an assurance, that they have enough personal merit to give themselves a right standing before God.

 

I would point out to you that if there was an eternal work for Jesus Christ to "finish," then something is lacking on our part.  What is lacking, you ask?  We have no righteousness of our own to offer God.  Apart from righteousness, no one can stand before the Eternal Judge of the Universe.  He is a righteous God who dwells in holiness.  When He gave the Law to the children of Israel, He did not tell them to obey Him some of the time.  "Do this and live," the Lord told Israel.  Did they obey the Law having received it from the hand of Moses at Mount Sinai?  All they did was disobey.  They followed their natures.  God gave them, and us, the Law to expose the reality of our sinfulness.  

 

Paul expressed it like this to the church at Galatia, a church that was threatening to fall back into a legalism for righteousness.  "Is the Law then contrary to the promises of God?  May it never be!  For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law.  But the Scripture has shut up all men under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe" (Gal. 3:21-22).  As Paul points out in Romans 7, the problem is not in an inadequacy found in the Law, rather it is inadequacy found in us.  We do not have the nature to wholly keep the Law and live.  We are incomplete when it comes to personal righteousness.  Therefore, apart from Jesus Christ satisfying the legal demands of the Law for lawbreakers and apart from Him imputing His own righteousness to us, we have no claim to eternity with God.  We stand incomplete apart from Christ.

 

II.  The Complete

 

The emphasis in our text is upon completion.  The ceremonial Laws upon which religious men cling for salvation are incomplete.  The personal efforts of righteousness which moral men hold for salvation are incomplete.  It is only in Him who cried on the cross, "It is finished!," that we are complete.  What did Jesus complete on the cross?

 

1.  Prophetically complete

 

John's intention is to show us that everything prophetically related to the saving work of Jesus Christ was fulfilled at the cross.  We must keep in mind that John views the passion of Christ as a whole, so that we see both His death, burial, and resurrection thought of when expressing statements on the death of Christ.  You do not have one without the other in John's thinking.  (This is somewhat different from Paul's approach in proving the resurrection in I Corinthians 15).

 

Again, John uses a term for 'completion' when dealing with the Old Testament Scripture.  "After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished, in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, "I am thirsty"."  The word "fulfilled" simply put means 'to be completed'.  We have already noted in previous studies that specific details of prophecy were fulfilled in minute detail during the crucifixion.  The casting of lots for His garments, being numbered with criminals, and now, the thirsting of Christ, are all recorded in the Old Testament.  

 

Certainly, being crucified in the heat of the Judean sun would dehydrate anyone.  The cry of thirst in our Lord was an expression of the actual suffering and anguish which He experienced on our behalf at the cross.  Calvin wrote, "No words can fully express what bitter sorrows He endured; and yet He does not desire to be free from them until He has satisfied the justice of God" [182].  His cry of thirst was not a plea to deliver Him from the cross, but to fulfill what the psalmist had already predicted of Messiah.  I do not think that Christ had a mental check-list while enduring the agony of the cross to make sure that He had taken care of every detail.  He was bearing our sin!  He was facing the wrath of God which caused infinite suffering in the Son of God.  Out of the agony of those moments, the natural cry went forth, "I am thirsty."  David had described it in Psalm 22:15, "My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaves to my jaws."  Later in Psalm 69:21, David states in distress, "They also gave me gall for my food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink."

 

The vinegar offered to Christ has been described as a 'watery vinegar' which was a cheap wine used by the soldiers and common laborers in Palestine.  This is different from the numbing drink offered to Christ at the beginning of the crucifixion, a practice begun by compassionate women in Judea.  He refused this drink, desiring instead to feel the full effects of His suffering for sinners.  The sour wine given to Him may have revived Him enough physically so that He could utter those captivating words of our salvation, "It is finished!"  All that the Old Testament prophesied concerning the atoning death of the Lamb of God was fulfilled at the cross of Jesus Christ.

 

2.  Chronologically complete

 

The cry, "It is finished!," also had the effect of stating an end chronologically to the work Jesus was sent to do.  (Oscar Cullman stated that John 19:30 contains both the chronological sense of "ended" and also the theological sense of "achieved" [TDNT, VIII, 59, fn. 10]).  In the mind of Christ, He had purposed to fulfill every detail of what the Father commanded Him.  He stated in John 17:4, "I glorified Thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which Thou hast given Me to do."  There was no detail left out.  There was nothing that was necessary for our salvation left to chance or left to our efforts.  

 

This is significant for us to consider.  For one of the basic problems that seems to plague some earnest seekers of Christ is their attempt to add something to the work of salvation.  These people are serious about desiring salvation, but due to their backgrounds or their personality make-up, they cannot fathom that there is nothing left to do to complete salvation.  They acknowledge the death of Jesus and lay claim to it, but they consciously or unconsciously try to add some of their personal effort to what Christ has done.  Consequently, they have not trusted wholly in Jesus Christ, but partially in Christ and partially in their own efforts.  Some set out to do this from the start.  Others slide into it because of the problem of unbelief.

 

Listen to the words of our Lord:  "It is finished!"  There is nothing else that you can do or need to do to secure salvation.  It is His work alone!  Look at God's timetable for salvation.  "The end" is stamped upon the cross.  You can be set free from the vain efforts of trying to add to the work of Christ if you will but see that "it is finished," completed in Jesus Christ.

 

3.  Theologically complete

 

What needed to be completed for God to be able to justly forgive sinners and justly bring them into His kingdom?  The answer is the cross of Jesus Christ.  Paul addressed this whole matter of God's justice in Romans 3, among other places.  He stated that the cross was for God's own satisfaction.  The word used to describe this is "propitiation."  It refers to God's just demands upon sinners and consequently, His just judgment against them, being satisfied through the death of Jesus Christ.  God demands eternal damnation for all who dare to breach His holy character expressed in His law.  His demand is not a mere whim or an immature reaction to being wronged.  It is the righteous response of One who is infinitely Holy, who has been spurned and blasphemed by the very ones He has given the breath of life.  He has established the Law for His creatures.  To break even one Law demands death because of the heinous nature of sin against God.

 

Romans 3:25 explains that at the cross "God displayed publicly" Jesus Christ "as a propitiation in His blood through faith."  God would be unjust to simply acquit one sinner without justice being satisfied.  To forgive or to let even one sin 'slide under the table', would be injustice on the part of the One whose character is infinitely just.  So God "demonstrated His righteousness" in forgiving sinners past, present, and future, by assigning the judgment due to us unto His own Son at the cross.  Paul adds that God did this so "that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus" (3:26).  

 

The work of Christ on the cross propitiated God, so that God might pardon sinners and declare them to be fully righteous before Him.  We do not stop being sinners when God declares us righteous, though we have a different relationship to sin.  But His justice has been fulfilled.  On the basis of the death of our Substitute who satisfied the righteous demands of the Law, He has pardoned us for eternity.   His wrath has been satisfied, so that He can justly declare a sinner to be righteous due to the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ and the imputation of the righteousness of Christ for his standing before God.

 

"It is finished!" was a declaration that God has completed through Christ all that is needed to justify a sinner.  Gardiner Spring, in the 19th C., explains this in such marvelous language:

Justification is the reverse of that state of condemnation to which man as a sinner is adjudged by the law of God.  It is not the creature's act, but purely the act of God.  It is not the moral character of the creature that is affected by it, but his legal relations.  It is not the work of the Holy Spirit on his heart, nor his own personal exercise of a gracious disposition; but the sentence of God, as Lawgiver pronouncing him just, and accepting him as a righteous man.  It is not an acquittal of the charge of personal wickedness; for in the very act of justification, there is the strongest implication of that charge.  Nor is it in any form, or degree, a vindication of the sinner's conduct, nor any excuse or palliation of it; but, on the other hand, a direct condemnation of it, and in the most emphatic terms.  "It is God that justifieth."  It is the act of God, originating in his free, unmerited grace, whereby he judges the disobedient to the rewards of the obedient--the unjust to the rewards of the just; securing to them all the positive blessings which his law secures to an unoffending and perfectly obedient subject [The Attraction of the Cross, 85-86]


Do you see that there is nothing you can add to the work of salvation?  Do you see that you have no merit to offer God for pardon?  He has accepted the work of His own Son on our behalf, so that we might be pardoned and declared righteous before Him as His children.

 

III.  The Dividing Point

 

This is the dividing point for humanity.  We have seen the cross and the glory of it being God's finished work for the salvation of sinners.  But so few will believe that what Jesus accomplished is truly finished.  They labor and strain with all of their self-effort trying to appease God.  They go through all sorts of religious rituals and acts of service to be justified.  Again, listen to the words of Jesus Christ as He hung on the cross as the Mediator between God and man:  "It is finished!"  There are no sweeter words to the heart than the assurance that Jesus Christ has availed for us so that we are no longer living under the condemnation of the law and the curse of the fall.  All that God has demanded of us for life, Christ has finished.  Not even the best person on the face of the earth could add anything to what Christ has done.  If it is finished, it is finished!

 

Do you believe this?  I do not mean that you simply acknowledge this as being what the Bible teaches.  Do you believe that God the Son became a Man to mediate the way to God for you?  Do you believe that apart from Him and His work on the cross, you have nothing, absolutely nothing, to offer God for your salvation?  Have you come to the place of recognizing that you are a sinner, condemned before God because of the curse of the fall and your own breaking of His holy Law?  Have you in anguish of heart found yourself desperate for God's pardon?  Have you come to the place of longing to have the life that He alone can give?   My friend, look to Jesus Christ and Him crucified for you.  Hear Him say, "It is finished!"  Cast yourself in trust and dependence upon the Lamb of God slain in your place.

 

The hymn-writer, Jonathan Evans (1740-1809), captures the heart of this wonderful truth of "It is finished!":

 

Hark! the voice of love and mercy Sounds aloud from Calvary;

See! it rends the rocks asunder, Shakes the earth, and veils the sky:

It is finished!  Hear the dying Saviour cry.

 

It is finished!  O what pleasure  Do those wondrous words afford!

Heavenly blessings without measure  Flow to us through Christ the Lord:

It is finished!  Saints, the dying words record!

 

Finished all the types and shadows  Of the ceremonial law,

Finished what our God had promised;  Death and hell no more shall awe.

It is finished!  Saints, from hence your comfort draw.

 

Saints and angels shout His praises!  Children, join to sing the same!

All on earth and all in heaven  Join to praise Immanuel's name!

Hallelujah!  Endless glory to the Lamb!

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