Bowling Green Covenant Church

Friday 20 July 2007

“When Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, ‘It is finished,’ and He bowed His head and gave up His Spirit.” – John 19.30

“This remarkable expression, in the Greek, is one single word in a perfect tense, ‘It has been completed.’ It stands here in majestic simplicity, without note or comment from St. John, and we are left entirely to conjecture what the full meaning of it is….No one single meaning, we may be sure, exhausts the whole phrase. It is rich, full, and replete with deep truths.” –J.C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels, IV.322

What is left unfinished, since Jesus has announced with eternal finality, “It is finished,”?

The answer is nothing. There is not one thing Jesus Christ left undone. Everything He came to do, everything He needed to do, and everything He had to do He did. And once He fulfilled His mission He punctuated His achievement with triumphant declaration, “It is finished.” That simple statement is Jesus’ way of saying, “Mission accomplished.” And it is said for our benefit to the glory of God.

Let it be understood with crystal clarity. When Jesus said, “It is finished,” He declared victory over sin, judgment and condemnation. Death appeared to have won, but three days later He would defeat death—an event summarized in the simple yet profound declaration, “He is risen!” But that is getting ahead of the present point. In his letter to the Colossians, the apostle Paul explains the totality of Jesus’ victory at the cross. He writes:

“And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This He set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in Him,” (Colossians 2.13-16).

At Calvary, God performed a miracle through the death of His One and Only Son. Whereas an angel was dispatched to prevent Abraham from slaying Isaac, his son, his only son, God the Father sent no angelic messenger with a stay of execution for His One and Only Son. He permitted His Son to be nailed to the cross. He ordained Christ’s crucifixion yet, in His perfect wisdom, He also ordained that horrible death to become for us what J.R.R. Tolkien has termed a eucatastrophe— (literally, a good catastrophe), a tragedy leading to a good end. For on the cross of Christ is nailed all our trespasses. And how encompassing is “all”? What sins have been left out if “all” our trespasses (ours as individuals and ours as a collective humanity, depraved and rebellious) have been nailed to the cross and covered by the blood of Jesus? The answer is none. (Now lest my Reformed friends believe me to have embraced universalism, let me assure them I remain convinced that while the blood of Christ is sufficient for all, it is efficient only for the elect.)

The cross of Christ’s crucifixion is where God put to open shame the very rulers and authorities who crucified His One and Only Son. To paraphrase an old professor, the wisdom of God may be foolishness to the rulers and authorities of this age, but then how much more foolish are they, who in their “wisdom” carried out the will of God by crucifying Jesus on the very cross by which He would put them to open shame?

J.C. Ryle is right. When we ponder Jesus’ declaration, “It is finished,” “no one single meaning exhausts the whole phrase. It is rich, full, and replete with deep truths.” Perhaps no one single meaning exhausts the whole phrase because in choosing those who will follow His Son, God has created a body (the church) as diverse as His manifold wisdom, and as numberless as the sands on the shore and the stars in the sky.

Before He was arrested Jesus declared, “And this is eternal life, that they may know You the Only True God, and Jesus Christ Whom You have sent,” (John 17.3). As those who have been graced with eternal life, let us commit to the eternal exploration of the “rich, full and replete” glory of this truth: “It is finished.”

You think about that.

MM