John 19:16b-30
Sermon preached at Barclay Church, Edinburgh by Rev D. Graham Leitch
18 May 2003

“IT IS FINISHED”

In our Easter series, looking at Christ’s prayers from the cross, we come this week to what’s certainly the briefest yet also, as we’ll see, the most glorious of his last words. In translation it’s a short sentence and identically rendered in practically every version of the Bible ever produced. But in its original form in John’s Gospel it’s a single triumphant word!

The indescribable agony of Christ’s fifth word from the cross is overtaken by the triumphant ecstasy of the sixth. The dark mystery of the Son forsaken by the Father is succeeded by the triumphant majesty of Christ’s supreme work on earth accomplished:

Christ’s anguished“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” is succeeded by a loud cry that shakes the earth and floods heaven’s farthest corners with joy:

“It is finished!”

BARCLAY - AN UNFINISHED BUILDING
Some of you are quite new to Barclay Church and may know less about this extraordinary building in which you now worship than others. I wonder how many of you who are new have noticed that it’s unfinished?!! After the service today (or if it’s raining, on some sunny day) take a quiet stroll round it - and notice that, while some the elaborate carvings of angels which adorn the capitals of the supporting pillars which adorn the doors are complete, others remain half-finished, while the rest are what are sometimes called “sleeping angels” not yet begun!

There are two explanations and you can ask me what they are after the service if you’re interested.

This building stands in one sense, therefore, as a monument to human imperfection - even the best of human enterprises in art, music, literature is imperfect, and all our efforts and work is, in that sense, unfinished.

How often our best intentions remain unrealised! Who amongst is could go home and pull out a drawer, open a sewing cupboard or visit a workbench and find everything done that we meant to do, every letter written or dress altered or item repaired!! Every human life has its “pending” tray!!

A WORK COMPLETED
But as Jesus breathed his last, his work on earth was done - every last thing the Father had planned for Him was accomplished. Jesus alone, could “sign off” at the end of His life, secure in the knowledge and satisfied that He had done all that the Father had appointed Him to do - He could surrender Himself to His life’s end, His work completed.

There is, even in this, a lesson for us, and it is this - that we should try to live in such a way that, whenever the time of our departure comes and God chooses to take us to Himself, we are ready, having done all that we ought to have done!

And since none of us can know when we’ll die and our lives on earth will be over and our appearance before God’s judgment seat take place, the only safe and sensible way to achieve this is by faithfully performing our duty to God and to others each day - by living each day as though it was our last!

The perfect obedience of Jesus to God in his entire life is no more than the sum of His daily obedience - of being each day the Person God wants Him to be; of facing each day the challenges God set before Him and of doing each day the tasks allotted Him.

It is only by following Jesus to the best of our ability in this pattern of obedience that WE can ever hope to reach OUR life’s end and stand before God unashamed and say with our Lord:

“I have finished the work you gave me to do!”

Obedience, like exam revision, is best accomplished in bite sized pieces; in doing and saying the right things and being the kind of person God wants us to be in each situation as we meet it, in each relationship as we enjoy it, and at each moment as it arrives.
WHAT WAS FINISHED AT CALVARY?
But what was it that was completed at the moment Jesus breathed his last at Calvary? “IT is finished!” Yes! But what’s the “IT” - what IS now entire. complete, finished? Notice two things;

JESUS ISN’T FINISHED YET!
The first is that though IT was finished, HE wasn’t finished. What a wonderful truth that is!! He wasn’t finished then, when he was put to death upon the cross and breathed his last. He wasn’t finished then and He isn’t finished now!! The Scottish Church Census was published last week and the press and media predictably gave the impression that the church was on the way out - “It’s just a matter of time!” they seemed to be saying “Christianity has had it’s day!!”

To be sure, the church in its present form may, in many ways, be dying and may need to die!! But look at the cross and learn that there is such a thing as dying in order to live. Did not Jesus say:
“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies it remains alone - but it it dies it bears much fruit.”

Jesus said “IT is finished”and not“I am finished.” Jesus Christ is seriously alive and powerfully present and at work in this world, by His Spirit, still!!

The second thing to notice is that Jesus’ cry wasn’t a whispered admission of failure and surrender to defeat - Matthew and Mark both talk of a ‘loud voice” - it was a triumphant declaration of victory - it was, if it isn’t too irreverent to put it this way - scoring the winning goal in the dying seconds of extra time in the World Cup Final!!

“It is finished”

FIVE THINGS ARE FINISHED HERE
But WHAT precisely IS finished at the moment of His death. - I see FIVE THINGS finished here. Two relate to Jesus Himself but the other three relate to you and and me. The two that relate to Jesus are these:
* that He has now perfectly and completely fulfilled all that is written concerning Himself in Scripture.
* that He has now completed, from his first breath to his last, the perfect obedience the Father required
of Him.

The three that relate to you and me are these:
* that sin’s penalty has been completely paid * that Satan’s dominion has been overcome and
*that heavens door has been opened to all who accept and follow Him.

1. PROPHECY FULFILLED
Let me deal with the first two very briefly. It is certain that one of the things that Jesus meant when He cried out “it is finished” was that in his life and death He had now fulfilled all the prophecies written about Him.

That this is the case is revealed by opening verses of the passage Margaret read to us this morning from John 19:“Later, knowing that all was now completed and so that the scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus cried out ‘I thirst....’” The “all... now completed” of v.28, which is linked to prophecy’s fulfilment, is in the original identical to the “all now completed” of Jesus’ final cry. It’s the same word tetelestai.

The messianic prophecies of the Old Testament all come true in Jesus - from the place of His birth at Bethlehem and its manner, through his character, ministry, death and burial, the Old Testament contains nearly 300 specific prophecies concerning the Messiah.

It has been calculated that the chance of Jesus even fulfilling 8 of the key Old Testament prophecies concerning him - including ones that were entirely beyond his control (He had no say, for example, in the matter of Bethlehem being the place of His birth!!) is 10 th - or 1 in one hundred thousand million million.

The faxct that in Him prophecy was fulfilled was one of the ways the earliest Christians demonstrated to their Jewish kinsfolk that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, the Son of God and the world’s Saviour.

And they took their lead from Jesus himself!. Remember how Jesus helped Cleopas and his companion to understand the events of His sufferings and death :

“..beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.”
(Luke 24:27)

When Jesus died at Calvary and cried out “It is finished” He was saying that He had fulfilled all that had been predicted in Scripture concerning the Jew’s Messiah and the world’s Saviour!!

2 A LIFE OF PERFECT OBEDIENCE
Secondly - He was declaring that from first to last He had offered to His Father the perfect obedience the Father required of Him. Proverbs 20:9 asks a question: “Who can say, "I have kept my heart pure; I am clean and without sin"? When Jesus said “it is finished” He was saying “I have...” In the world’s history there have been many great, deservedly famous and admirable people. But in all the world’s history, only one person has ever lived an entirely faultless life, perfect in every aspect - Jesus Christ.

When Jesus said “It is finished!” He meant that He had held true to God’s purposes for Him from beginning to end - He had carried out everything that the Father had given Him to do.

“O perfect life of love, No work is left undone
All, all is finished now, Of all the Father willed
All that He left his throne above His toils and sorrows, one by one
To do for us below. The scriptures have fulfilled.”

Yet though in life God gave him great work to do - His teaching was simple yet profound, exhibiting a depth and shrewdness unparalleled in history and his miracles astounded - it was in not in His life but in His death that Jesus Christ accomplished His greatest work!

And that work was not for Himself nor even merely for His Father but for US - for you and for me!! To see this is to discover that it is at the foot of the Cross that a life can start again - that old ways can be put behind and a new life traded for the old. Let’s look at what Christ’s cry of triumph “It is finished!” means FOR US!!

It means THREE THINGS:

1. SIN’S PENALTY PAID
It means, first, that sin’s penalty has been completely paid. The manifest disobedience to God’s commands and will that would otherwise condemn us is dealt with, the punishment for sin borne by Him and our pardon won.

Jesus Christ is an inspiring EXAMPLE to us - there is not one amongst us called Christian who ought not to endeavour to be Christ-like daily. Jesus Christ is also a profound TEACHER - Christ’s teaching is not only famous but unsurpassed. He is portrayed in the Gospels as a powerful HEALER too. At his “Rise, take up your mat and start walking” the lame obeyed and the cripple leapt and rejoiced!!

But is it supremely as our SAVIOUR that the New Testament in its entirety presents Him to us:

It was for this He came - it’s there at the very beginning of the New Testament where God reveals to Joseph the name to be given to Mary’s Son:

“You will call Him Jesus for He will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21)

It’s there at its heart as Paul declares:
“God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were sinners, Christ died for us... in Him we have redemption through his blood, and the forgiveness of our sins in accordance with the riches of his grace...” (Romans 5 and Ephesians 1)

And Peter:
“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24)

Amd its there at its end as in the last chapter of Revelation John picture the Lamb upon the throne.

It is supremely as our Savour that the New Testament holds Jesus out to us - and though we know admire His Example, know and try to follow His teachings, observe and appreciate His miraculous powers - it is true that, until we know Him as SAVIOUR and above all as our own Saviour, we don’t really know Him at all!!

There’s an old chorus some of you will remember from your childhood - I wonder if you know it - it captures an important truth and conveys this important lesson:
“He did not come to judge the world,
He did not come to blame,
He did not only come to seek,
It was to SAVE He came.
And when we call Him SAVIOUR,
And when we call Him SAVIOUR,
And when we call Him SAVIOUR,
then we call Him by His name

I certainly want to you to admire Christ’s character and respect and follow his teaching and appreciate his miraculous powers - YES! - but more than all of these I want to you to recognise and rejoice in and receive the benefits of His work at the cross by receiving HIM.

When Christ in triumph cried“It is finished!” he was declaring that He had offered, what Cranmer in the old (1662) Anglican Book of Common Prayer famously called:

“the full perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world.”

2. SATAN’S DOMINION OVERCOME
The second thing that Christ’s “It is finished!” says in relation to our lives is this - that Satan’s dominion has been overcome. This is a very wonderful thing.

In the Bible’s picture of God’s goal in sending Jesus Christ into the world to be its Saviour the conflict which reaches its climax at Calvary is not between religions, ideologies or human parties but between the powers of light and darkness - various called the principalities and powers, the Devil, Beelzebul and Satan and pictured as a serpent or dragon.

With the shadow of the Cross falling darkly across His path and His sufferings and death in view Jesus told His disciples “Now is the time for judgment...now must the prince of darkness be cast out...” (John 12:24)

When He arose from the Last Supper as midnight, He went not to rest but to do battle against Satan - in Gethsemane and at Calvary. And if the kiss of Judas was the sounding of the trumpet, the court of Pilate was the glittering of the spear and the thrashing scourge the crossing of the swords.

Until the battle is fought, victory won and the triumph complete - as the power of heaven and God’s divine heart of mercy wins the day!!

When Christ announced “It is finished” He declared the contest over - the rest of history is but the playing out of a match in which the final result is no longer in doubt!!

It must always be in this spirit that the Christian confronts evil - however bad it may seem and however strong it may appear - its fate is sealed and its ultimate defeat certain!!

3. THE GATE OF HEAVEN OPENED - THE CURTAIN TORN
The third thing that Christ’s “It is finished!” says to us is that, since sin is paid for and Satan vanquished, the gate of heaven is open to faith and a way back to God available to those who will come.

On television not long ago I was watching a programme about the criminal world of drugs dealing. It was a “fly on the wall” documentary about the operations of a police force’s specialist drugs unit. - and one of the operations shown was a dawn raid on the home of one of the drug-lords of the underworld. It showed the armed officers, the forces of the Law, battering down the front door of the drug-lords house with repeated thrusts until the door first splintered and the collapsed.

When Jesus died at Calvary He was breaking down the door and opening up the way for us to come to God. And when He triumphantly declared “It is finished” He was announcing not only to God but to us all that it was done. In His death He had demolished the wall, broken down the door, opened up the way for sinful women and men - for you and me - to approach God - to come to God and know Him.

In the “fly on the wall” documentary I mentioned earlier in which the armed officers broke down the door, they themselves rushed in. But in this case it is different.

Having broken down the door to gain access Jesus doesn’t “rush in” Himself, but rather stands back and with a look of mercy and eternal kindness He ushers US in!!

The third thing that Christ’s “It is finished!” says to us is that since sin is paid for and Satan vanquished, the gate of heaven is open to faith and a way back to God available to those who will come through Christ “the Way.”

THE RENDING OF THE VEIL
Nowhere is this more dramatically portrayed than in one of the strange events which accompanied Jesus’ crucifixion - in this case taking place at the moment of His death. It’s reported by Matthew in Matthew 27:53:

“At that moment” Matthew says, (he means the precise moment when Jesus, crying out “It is finished!” breathed his last) - at that very moment ‘the veil/curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.”

What seems meaningless to us is rich with significance. The veil/curtain referred to is the elaborately embroidered curtain which, in the temple of the Jews, separated the rest of the temple (and therefore the people) from the Holy of Holies - and the Holy of Holies was the place where God was said to be.

And, at the moment of Christ’s death, it was as though an unseen hand had reached out and effortlessly torn the age old curtain apart!!

Notice precisely what Matthew records - he reports not simply that it was torn apart, signifying that because of the sacrifice and finished work of Christ the way to God was now opened to sinners, but that it was torn apart, as he says “from top to bottom” - signifying that this is God’s own doing!!

Looking back many years later to Christ and to the cross of Christ, that was why Paul could say, as he does in Romans: “in Him we have access to this grace in which we stand - access the Father....”

When Christ said “It is finished!!” what He was doing was declaring sin paid for, Satan vanquished the gate of heaven opened and a way back to God provided!

As yet another old chorus says - and this is why the theology of choruses and hymns matters, because it’s from them that congregations get their theology - but the theology in this case is relevant as well as sound!:

“There’s a way back to God,
From the dark paths of sin,
There’s a door that is opened
And you may go in
At Calvary’s cross is where you begin
When you come
as a sinner to Jesus!”

AMEN