“It Is Finished.”
6. The Word of Triumph
“WHEN JESUS received the vinegar, He said, IT IS FINISHED.”
“At these words,” said F. W. Krummacher, “you hear fetters burst and prison walls falling down; barriers as high as heaven are overthrown, and gates which had been closed for thousands of years again move on their hinges.”
The two previous words from the cross voiced its tragedy. This saying shouted its triumph. The word of dereliction changed to a cry of jubilation. Those were cries wrung from an agonizing victim, this the triumphant paean of a Victor.
The three English words, it is finished, are the equivalent of a single Greek word, tetelestai. With ample justification, this has been called the greatest single word ever uttered.
In his charming way, F. W. Boreham points out that it was a farmer’s word. When there was born into his herd an animal so shapely that it seemed destitute of defects, the farmer, gazing on the creature with delighted eyes exclaimed, “Tetelestai.” It was an artist’s word. When the painter had put the finishing touches to the vivid landscape, he would stand back and admire his masterpiece. Seeing that nothing called for correction or improvement he would murmur, “Tetelestai.” It was a priestly word. When some devout worshiper overflowing with gratitude for mercies received brought to the Temple a lamb without blemish, the pride of the flock, the priest, more accustomed to seeing blind and defective animals led to the altar, would look admiringly at the pretty creature and say, “Tetelestai.”
And when in the fullness of time the Lamb of God offered Himself on the altar of the cross, a perfect, flawless sacrifice, He cried with a loud voice, “Tetelestai!” and yielded up His spirit.
I sing my Saviour’s wondrous death;
He conquered when He fell.
“‘Tis finished!” said His dying breath,
And shook the gates of hell.
AUTHOR UNKNOWN
Can we with any degree of certitude arrive at the inwardness of this pregnant word? We may not be able to exhaust its depths, but we can discover some of its secrets.
Some have read Christ’s “It is finished” as a cry of despair, “It is all up! I have tried and failed!” One preacher said, “Just before Jesus expires, He reviews His brief ministry and says in effect, ‘Well, I did what I could. Whatever it is it is. It’s too late to do anything about it now. It is finished.’”
But that is exactly the reverse of its significance. True, there would be in it a sigh of relief in that the eternity of anticipation of the cross was now over; that His absence from His heavenly home was now at an end; that never again would He experience the averted face of His Father; that the burden of a world’s sin had been removed. But there was in this cry no note of disappointment or despair.
To Him it had been a foregone conclusion that He must suffer, and that on Him would meet the accumulated guilt and sin of a lost world. He must experience the loneliness and rejection, the desolation and desertion, the sneering and scoffing, the physical agony and mental anguish incidental to His taking our humanity and our guilt. The cup of suffering was indeed full for Him, and as Maclaren aptly puts it, “having drained the cup, He held it up inverted when He said ‘It is finished!’ and not a drop trickled down the edge. He drank it all that we might never need to drink it.”
John affirmed that “no man hath seen God at any time,” but he added a statement indicating the purpose of Christ’s advent. “The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him,” or made Him known (John 1:18). Our Lord confirmed this when He said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9).
In Jesus, God became visible and tangible. In His humanity He interpreted the Father to us in terms of human life. To discover what God is like, all we need to do is to look at Jesus. If we desire to know how God would act, we need only turn the pages of Scripture and discover how Jesus acted in similar circumstances.
In Thee most perfectly expressed,
The Father’s glories shine.
“Not in broken syllables; not ‘at sundry times and in divers manners,’ but with the one perfect, full-toned name of God on His lips and vocal in His life of manifestation of God, He proclaimed ‘It is finished!’ And the world has since, with all its thinking, added nothing to the name which Christ has declared.”
In Him the shadows of the Law
Are all fulfilled, and now withdraw.
The types and shadows of the Old Covenant had been necessary and had fulfilled an invaluable ministry in the education of God’s people. But they were temporary, transient. The very constancy of the animal sacrifices was a declaration of their insufficiency and imperfection. The fire must burn and the blood must flow—and yet the sacrifice of an irrational creature could never make satisfactory atonement for the sin of a rational being.
But in the death of Christ the centuries of sacrifice found their culmination. The letter to the Hebrews speaks of “sacrifices, which can never take away sins: But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God” (Hebrews 10:11–12). Never again need one drop of sacrificial blood be shed.
“He had at length offered up the perfect sacrifice,” wrote Bishop J. C. Ryle, “of which every Mosaic sacrifice was a type and symbol, and there remained no more need of offering for sin. The old covenant was finished.”
Finished all the types and shadows
Of the ceremonial law,
Finished all that God had promised,
Death and hell no more shall awe.
It is finished! It is finished!
Saints from hence your comfort draw.
JONATHAN EVANS
Of all mankind, Jesus alone at the close of life could say, “It is finished!” Early in His ministry He had claimed, “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work” (John 4:34). At the close of His ministry He claimed, “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do” (John 17:4). He alone could review His whole life approvingly, conscious that in every detail His Father’s will had been faithfully carried out. He had done what the first Adam had failed to do—He had kept the law of God perfectly, and so obtained a righteousness that is now available for all who believe in Him.
Compare our Lord’s triumphant “Tetelestai” with the great Cecil Rhodes’s cry of frustration as he lay dying: “So much to do, so little done.” Christ entertained no regrets, for no ground for regret existed.
The truceless conflict between God and Satan forms the unifying theme of the Scriptures. From the very hour of man’s Fall in Eden, the adversary of God and man channeled all his hellish ingenuity into an endeavor to frustrate God’s purpose of grace for mankind.
His slimy trail may be traced throughout the Old Testament, but with the advent of Christ, his assaults became more direct and open. On the cross he launched his final attack against the seed of the woman who was to deal him his deathblow (Genesis 3:15), and at first it looked as though he had been the victor. But it only seemed so. The resurrection demonstrated that Christ was Victor.
He hell in hell laid low,
He death by dying slew.
S. W. GANDY
“The moment of Satan’s triumph was the moment of his defeat. The Victim on the cross became the Victor through the cross.”
God had entrusted to His Son the most stupendous task of the ages—the redemption of a world of lost and enslaved men. What irrepressible joy must have surged through Him as He cried in triumph, “It is finished!” Every obstacle standing between man’s fellowship with God was removed, every demand of His law satisfied. There was nothing to add—the redemption He had secured was perfect and complete. Henceforth the way to God was open to all men. Henceforth they would know Him as a God of love.
The joy set before Him (Hebrews 12:2) was already in sight, and now He could gladly summon His servant, death, and dismiss His spirit.
‘Tis finished—was His latest voice;
These sacred accents o’er
He bowed His head, gave up the ghost,
And suffered pain no more
‘Tis finished—the Messiah dies
For sins, but not His own;
The great redemption is complete,
And Satan’s power is overthrown.
AUTHOR UNKNOWN