It Is Finished

“When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, It is finished: and He bowed His head and gave up the ghost.”  John 19:30

The sixth utterance, “It is finished”, made by Jesus on the cross, was a signal to His Father that He was ready to come home.  It was His declaration that He had accomplished every requirement that God ordained to pay the penalty for the sins of mankind and provide redemption for mankind so that men and women could return into a right standing and intimate relationship to God the Father through His Son, Jesus Christ.

Actually, it was really the beginning, the beginning of eternal life for all who trust Christ.  Yes, Jesus had obeyed His Father and had accomplished everything that His Father desired of Him including the giving up of His life for the sins of all people.  I think Jesus, while completely willing to suffer and die and regardless of the hate and persecution that He suffered from His enemies, enjoyed His life on earth.  He made some really good friends, including His disciples, except maybe for Judas who betrayed Him.  If Judas had repented of his betrayal, I believe Jesus would have forgiven him and welcomed him back into the fold.  Jesus was always a friend to Judas even if Judas rejected Jesus’ friendship.  (As a side note, Jesus must have been very sorrowful over the fact that one of His own inner circle would betray Him, but He knew this was part of His Father’s plan.  God did not force Judas to commit such a heinous crime against God’s Son.  Judas was chosen because his heart was wicked.  Judas had every opportunity to repent but his greed overpowered any love that he had for Jesus.  His punishment would be so heavy, and righteously so, that the only thing that would have spared him, as Jesus said, was for Judas to have never been born-Matthew 26:24).  Besides the disciples, Jesus also enjoyed the friendship of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus.  There were others including the publicans (tax collectors) and regular folks who were excited about having Jesus for a friend.  Are we excited that Jesus is our friend?

Jesus’ journey to the cross began even before He was born to Mary.  God determined in the beginning that men and women would need a Savior, and this Savior would have to be sinless and willing to die for the sins of mankind.  Only Jesus could be that Savior.  We don’t have very much information about His childhood other than His birth (Luke 2:16), His first visit to the temple for circumcision (Luke 2:22), His trip to Egypt to escape Herod’s threat to kill Him (Matthew 2:14), and His visit among the religious leaders in Jerusalem, among whom sat experts in the law who were astonished at Jesus’ understanding of scriptures and the deeply thought out questions that He was asking at the age of twelve (Luke 2:46).  Other than those events which were recorded in scripture, we know nothing about His life between the age of twelve and thirty.  I would expect that He lived with His parents, half-brothers, and half-sisters, working with His earthly father, Joseph, in his carpentry shop, and was a wonderful role model of a Son.  How could He not be?

After Adam and Eve sinned, God instituted a system of animal sacrifice and faith in His promise of a future Redeemer by which men and women could receive forgiveness of their sins.  But, because humans have a sin nature, their continual sins required repeated animal sacrifices which were only a temporary covering of sin.  These animal sacrifices and offerings could never take away sin (Hebrews 10:1-4).  “Without shedding of blood” meaning Christ’s blood only, “is no remission” of sin (Hebrews 9:22), that is no forgiveness, pardon, freedom, or deliverance for the sinner.

There are many folks today who believe that there are many “paths” to God, but God, in His word, makes it abundantly clear that it is only by the blood of Christ that a sinner can be redeemed.  Christ’s sacrifice was an agonizing, extremely painful, humiliating, and tortuous experience for Him to suffer.  If anyone asks why this way and not some other way, the answer is because sin is such a horrible crime against the sovereign, righteous, holy, and just God, that it required a penalty commensurate with the crime.  As bad as sin is, God can forgive all sin but one–the unforgiveable sin–rejecting His Son and His offer of salvation.  When Christ died on the cross, He completed the only way to become right before a holy God.  And I am so thankful that He did.  “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9)

Tomorrow:  “The End Brings the Beginning”