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In the Creation account that we find in the Book of Genesis,
we are told that on the seventh day, God rested from all His work which He had
done. In the Book of Exodus, we find the Fourth Commandment, which instructs us
to rest on the seventh day in honor of what the Lord Himself did during
creation. Now for us, the rest is necessary because after six days of work, our
bodies are tired and need time to recover. But for God, He did not rest on the
seventh day because He was tired. He rested because He was finished. The Bible
says that by the seventh day, “God completed
His work which He had done” (Gen 2:2). We serve a God who completes
whatever He begins. And in the sixth word that Jesus speaks from the cross,
recorded for us in John 19:30, God the Son declares, “It is finished.”
In English, we read three words, but in the Greek New
Testament, we find it is only one word: Tetelestai.
This single Greek word is so profound that the great preacher Charles
Haddon Spurgeon said it contains “an ocean of meaning in a drop of language, a
mere drop. It would need all the other words that were ever spoken, or ever can
be spoken, to explain this one word. It is altogether immeasurable. It is high;
I cannot attain to it. It is deep; I cannot fathom it.”[1] Obviously
we cannot say all that needs to be said about such a word in the time we have
today. We must find some way to limit the discussion, and I have chosen to
limit it by the bounds of this text and its context. The words of John 19:30,
and the surrounding context speak of the finishing
or completion of two particular
aspects of the work of Christ. It speaks of the fulfillment of all the
prophecies about Him, and it speaks of the completion of His mission to save
the world from sin.
I. The prophecies have been fulfilled.
Last Sunday, we dealt with the saying of Jesus in John
19:28, “I am thirsty.” And we discussed the necessity of this saying in order
to fulfill prophecy. John said in verse 28, “Jesus, knowing that all things had
already been accomplished, to fulfill Scripture, said, ‘I am thirsty.’” One of
the reasons He said, “I am thirsty,” was to fulfill Scriptures that stated that
the suffering Messiah would thirst in His dying, and that He would be offered
vinegar to drink. Every other promise that had ever been made by God’s prophets
about the coming of the Messiah, His earthly life, His ministry, and His
suffering, had taken place. Of course there were more prophecies that had not
been fulfilled yet, and those would have to follow His death. But the
prophecies concerning how He would come, who He would be, what He would do, and
how He would die, had all been fulfilled. Now that He has announced His thirst
and been offered the sour wine-vinegar to drink, He can say at last, “It is
finished.”
Spurgeon said, “There is not a single jewel of promise, from
that first emerald which fell on the threshold of Eden , to that last sapphire of Malachi which
was not set in the breastplate of the true High Priest.”[2] The
Messiah had been prophesied as the Seed of woman (Gen 3:15); born of a virgin
(Isa 7:14); born in Bethlehem (Mic 5:2); a
descendant of Abraham (Gen 12:3, et al.), of Judah (Gen 49:10), and of David (2
Sam 7:12-19). Of course all of these are uniquely true of Jesus. In addition to
these and many other aspects of His birth, there were explicit prophecies
concerning His ministry on the earth. When Jesus entered the synagogue of Nazareth at the beginning
of His public ministry, He was handed the scroll of Isaiah, and the reading for
the day was from Isaiah 61 – “The Spirit
of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the
poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight
to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable
year of the Lord." And then Jesus closed the book, and sat down, and
said to the congregation, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your
hearing” (Lk 4:18-21). Those words describe perfectly the earthly life and
ministry of the Lord Jesus. He did preach the Gospel to the poor. He did
proclaim liberty to those who are captive in sin. He did grant sight to the
blind. And He did many other things that the Old Testament had announced in
advance that He would do. When John the Baptist was in prison awaiting his
execution at the hands of Herod Antipas, he sent word to Jesus: “Are You the
Expected One, or shall we look for someone else?” And the word Jesus sent back
to John was this: “Go and report to John what you hear and see: the blind
receive sight and the lame walk, and the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear,
the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them” (Matt
11:2-5). In other words, “I am doing everything that the prophets said the
Messiah would do.
And of course the prophets also spoke of His suffering and
death. In recent weeks, we have mentioned the prophetic images in David’s
Messianic Psalms, particularly Psalm 22 and Psalm 69, which spoke of His manner
of death. But nowhere will you find a more exact description of the suffering
of the God’s Anointed Servant than in Isaiah 53.
He
was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not
esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet
we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was
pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the
chastening for our well-being fell
upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone
astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him. He
was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that
is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He
did not open His mouth. By oppression and judgment He was taken away; And as
for His generation, who considered That He was cut off out of the land of the
living for the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due? His grave was assigned with
wicked men, Yet He was with a rich man in His death, Because He had done no
violence, Nor was there any deceit in His mouth. But the Lord was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render
Himself as a guilt offering …
Isaiah 53:3-10 (NASB)
And now each one of the multitude of prophecies has been
finished, fulfilled, and completed. They are completed in Jesus Christ and in
Him alone. Spurgeon notes, “Brothers and Sisters, what a wonderful thing it is,
that a mass of promises, and prophecies, and types, apparently so
heterogeneous, should all be accomplished in one Person!”[3]
Indeed, if we were to read all of the prophetic descriptions of the Messiah
apart from knowing Christ we might consider them to be contradictory and
impossible to find fulfillment in a single person. In the words of Spurgeon,
“He must be a Prophet like unto Moses, and yet a champion like Joshua; he must
be an Aaron and a Melchizedek; he must be both David and Solomon, Noah and Jonah , Judah
These words, or the singular Greek word Tetelestai, indicate that the prophecies are all fulfilled. Now, a
second truth is expressed in these words as well, and that is …
II. The mission has been accomplished.
If you are like me, I imagine that you often start more
things than you finish. My library is filled with books I never finished
reading. Around my house and my office are the remnants of projects that I
started and never got around to finishing. Marathon
runners have unintentionally taught me a lot about life. Once upon a time, if I
heard someone say that they had run in a marathon, I may have asked naively, “Did
you win?”, or, “What place did you come in?” But marathon runners have taught
me that most people don’t run marathons to win. They run to finish the race. The
victory, for them, is found in crossing the finish line after 26.2 miles. The
more I think about that, the more I think that life is a lot like that. What
matters is not how fast we run the race, or even what place we come in, but
whether or not we finish what we set out to do. When Jesus died, He could say
in a unique sense that no one else ever could, “It is finished.” He had
completed what He came to do.
The mission of Jesus was announced by the prophets in
advance, and it was declared to Joseph in Matthew 1:21 before His birth: “you
shall call His name Jesus (which means “Yahweh, or Jehovah, is salvation”), for
He will save His people from their sins.” He came to save His people from sin.
And how would He do that? Jesus said of His own mission, “The Son of Man did
not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many”
(Mark 10:45; Matt 20:28). His mission was to serve humanity by giving up His
life as a ransom to save us from our sins.
We understand this word “ransom,” and usually associate it
with a payment that is made for the release of hostage or someone who has been
abducted. We envision movies where someone glues letters clipped from a
magazine or newspaper together to make a ransom note, and then someone shows up
with a briefcase full of money in exchange for the release of the victim. Well,
in the case of our predicament and Jesus’ ransom, the situation is somewhat
different. We have not been abducted or kidnapped. We have willingly entered a
state of slavery – slavery to sin. Our first parents, Adam and Eve, chose to
disobey God, and by that act, humanity was taken captive in the slavery of sin.
Each of us is born in that state by virtue of their sin, but each of us makes
our own sinful choices as well. So we are sinners from birth by nature, and we
demonstrate that through our own sinful choices and actions. Our predicament is
utterly helpless and hopeless apart from the delivery of a ransom. But Jesus
did not come to earth from heaven with a briefcase full of unmarked bills. He
came into the world with all that He would need to pay the ransom – a human
body with blood coursing through its veins. The ransom to deliver us from sin
was to be paid with His blood as He becomes our substitute and sacrifice on the
cross. At the cross, He bore the sins of humanity beneath the full measure of
God’s wrath. As He carried our sins, the fellowship of God the Father and God
the Son was ruptured for the first time in eternity, prompting Jesus to cry
out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” But now, with the ransom price
having been paid through the sacrifice of our substitute, Jesus can say, “It is
finished.”
For centuries, on the altar before the Tabernacle and the Temple , countless animals
bled and died as sacrifices for sin. But the work of the priest was never done.
These animals did not pay the price. They were like purchases made on credit.
They promised that payment would be made, but the payment had not yet been
delivered. And so, one after another, at times by the dozen, by the hundreds,
or by the thousands, more and more blood flowed from lambs and bulls and goats.
But the price had not yet been paid. It is interesting that when the Lord gave
Moses the instructions for building the Tabernacle, He specified how every
furnishing was to be constructed. But there was one piece of furniture
noticeably missing. There was to be no chair, because the work of the priest
was never done. There was no time for sitting and resting, for there was always
more to be done, more blood to be shed. And so the writer of Hebrews says,
“Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same
sacrifices, which can never take away sins; but He (Christ), having offered
one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of
God” (Heb 10:11-12). He rested from His work, for His mission of redemption was
finished.
Archaeologists have discovered ancient papyri in the Near East which were receipts for taxes that had been
paid. And across those papyrus pages are written the single Greek word, Tetelestai. It means “paid in full.” If
you were to write out all of your sins, and the penalty that they deserve in
the justice of God, and staple that list together with that of every human
being who has ever lived or ever will, you would find that Jesus has written in
His blood across every page, Tetelestai,
“Paid in full!” It is finished. Our sin debt is paid for by His blood in His
substitutionary death on the cross. Paul says in Colossians 2:14 that Jesus has
“canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which
was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the
cross.” The record of sin and condemnation was nailed to the cross as Christ
became sin for us. He received our wrath and paid our debt. It is finished and
it is paid in full.
This means that nothing more is required. How will you be
saved? By looking to Christ as your sin-bearer and seeing the debt of your
offenses before God as paid in full in Him. What more then can you add? Can you
add your own works to this? Can you add participation in some ritual, or
observance of some holy day, or financial contribution to any religious
institution to this? No, because the debt is fully paid. There are some things
that can be improved by addition. You can improve your paycheck by adding an
extra digit. But there are other things that addition only destroys. Imagine if
you were to add a “g” to the word “love”? Would it make it better? Would you
rather have “love” or a “glove”?[5] I
remember my high school science teacher mixing chemicals in the lab one day. He
mixed the liquid from one bottle with another liquid from another, and nothing
happened. But then he dropped just a few flakes of another chemical into the
beaker, and a small explosion occurred. That is what happens when we try to add
anything to the completed work of Christ. It doesn’t enhance our salvation, it
destroys it. Spurgeon said, “Will you pin your rags to the fine linen of
Christ’s righteousness? Why will you add your counterfeit farthing to the
costly ransom which Christ has paid into the treasure-house of God?”[6]
You have nothing to contribute; all you can do is receive. The price has been
paid by grace, in blood, and in full for you.
Over the years, I have asked many people a simple question:
“Suppose you were to stand before God and he were to ask you, ‘Why should I let
you into heaven?’” Many of those people have said to me, “Because I am a good
person, and I’ve done some good things,” and so on. I explain to them how God
has offered Jesus as a substitute to receive our penalty in Himself on our
behalf in His death on the cross. I ask them, “Have you ever put your faith in
Jesus as your Lord and Savior?” Some have said no. But some have said, almost
as an afterthought, “Oh sure, that too.” Friends, it can never be “That too!”
It must be “That only!” Our only hope is to be found in Christ alone, and we
can add nothing to the salvation that He offers us freely by His grace. If we
try to add to it, we are saying that Jesus was not telling the truth when He
said, “It is finished.” It is either finished or it is not. If it is, then you
need nothing but Christ. If it isn’t, then we have no hope at all before God.
It is as simple as that.
Perhaps you are here today and recognize that you have never
fully trusted in the finished work of Jesus Christ to save you. You have never
turned to Him in repentance of your sin and faith that He died to save you by
taking your sins upon Himself at the cross. Today, you can look to the cross
and find all of your sins forgiven because Jesus has paid the full debt and
finished the work of your redemption. He has paid your ransom completely. There
is nothing you can do to add to that or take away from it. You can simply trust
Him to fulfill what He has promised. And He has promised that all who trust in
Him will have their sins forgiven and receive His own righteousness in exchange
before God, and be reconciled to God and granted eternal life as a free gift of
His grace. It is finished, and it is offered to you if you will only trust Him
to save you.
Undoubtedly there are others here today who would call
themselves “Christians,” who think that being a Christian is about something you
do. If you describe your Christianity as something that you have done, then
that is not Christianity. The Good News of the Christian Faith is that you
cannot do anything to make yourself right with God. It has all been done for
you by Jesus. Your part is not to do but
to receive what has been done for
you. He has paid your ransom from sin in full. I heard it said a long time ago
when I was just a young Christian, “Christianity is not spelled D-O, but
D-O-N-E.” All that is required to reconcile you to God and rescue you from sin
has been done by Christ, and when it was completed, He said with finality and
full confidence, “It is finished!” And because His work of redemption is
finished, you can rest in Him. Rest from your tireless effort of trying to earn
God’s love and favor. Rest from the anxiety and fear of never being good
enough. Rest from the constant struggle of trying harder and doing better. Say
to Him, “God, I am a hopeless sinner apart from Christ, and I receive what He
has done for me and trust Him to save me.” And the Lord Jesus will say to you,
“It is finished.”
[1] Charles
Haddon Spurgeon, “Christ’s Dying Word for His Church,” in Sermons on the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1966), 170.
[2]
Spurgeon, “It is Finished.” Metropolitan
Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 421, December 1, 1861, p. 2. Available
online: http://www.spurgeongems.org/vols7-9/chs421.pdf. Accessed March 28,
2012.
[3]
Spurgeon, “Finished,” p. 2.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Philip
Ryken, “Mission
Accomplished,” in James Montgomery Boice and Philip Ryken, The Heart of the Cross (Wheaton , Ill. : Crossway, 1999), 57-58.
[6]
Spurgeon, “Finished,” p. 6.
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