“IT IS FINISHED”

When He had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that He bowed His head and gave up His spirit. John 19:30.

Have you ever wondered what Jesus meant when He said, “It is finished”? I suppose many sermons have been preached on those three words, and many different ideas shared. Here are some of the ideas that come to mind right now.

The Old Testament is full of prophecies about the coming Messiah. Right after Adam and Eve had disobeyed God, He promised that someone would come who would bruise the head of Satan. He was talking about Jesus. When Jesus said, “It is finished,” did He mean that all the prophecies about His first coming had been fulfilled? No-one needed to look for another Messiah because He had shown the people that He really was the Son of God by fulfilling all the prophecies about Himself. 

Did He mean that His life of suffering as a human being on earth was over? Was He saying to God, “I have done everything you asked me to do and now it is over, all the terrible things that I have just gone through, the rejection, betrayal, humiliation, and the agony of being crucified”? Yes, all of that was finished and He could give up His life because He had completed His task.

What about His sacrifice as an offering to God for the sins of the world? All the things that went wrong when Adam chose to disobey God were now put right through His death on the cross. He paid for all our sins, He washed us clean from all our unrighteousness and He brought us back to God as His children. He brought those of us who believe in Him back to one another as brothers and sisters. Jesus completed all of that when He died.

His death also defeated the devil. Satan has always used lies to make us slaves to him when we believe what he says. He tries to make us believe that God does not love us and that he, Satan, is our real master. He tells us that sin isn’t bad, and that sin is fun. When we sin, we become his slaves and he torments us with guilt and shame. Jesus died to get rid of our sin and to show us that the devil is a liar. God loves us so much that He sent His son to die for us.

Bu there is something else that Jesus finished when He died. How do we know that God will answer our prayers? If we ask God to do what He has promised, because He sees everything from beginning to end, when Jesus said, “It is finished,” it means that God has already done what we have asked Him to do. So, instead of begging and pleading, we can say “Thank you” to Him for answering our prayers, even if we don’t have the answer yet because Jesus said, “It is finished.”

For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so, through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God. 2 Corinthians 1:20