It is Finished!

Jesus was absolutely determined to finish the race, even to the cross. Now we come to the actual culmination of the earthly life of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels, reading from John’s Gospel, chapter 19, verses 28 through 30. Jesus had been on the cross for three hours or more, He was near to His end and this is how the record reads:

"Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, 'I am thirsty.' A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. When He had received the drink, Jesus said, 'It is finished.' With that, He bowed His head and gave up His spirit." (NIV)

Notice, Jesus dismissed His own spirit. He had told His disciples earlier, "No one takes My life from Me. I have the power to lay it down and I have the power to take it up" (John 10:18). Before He dismissed His spirit one of His last great utterances was, "It is finished." What was finished? His earthly task, His assignment. All through He’d been saying, "My food is to do the will of Him that sent Me, to finish His work" (John 4:34).

In anticipation of this moment, in His prayer in John 17 He said, "I’ve glorified You on earth. I’ve finished the work You gave Me to do." And here it was fulfilled. "It is finished." That was not a cry of defeat. That was the cry of triumph! "It is finished! Everything that was assigned to Me I have done. I have done it completely. I’ve left nothing out. Now redemption is available through My sacrifice there on the cross."

I wish I could convey to you the fullness of the meaning of that simple phrase, "It is finished." In Greek, it is just one word: tetelestai. It’s the perfect tense of a verb that means 'to complete something', 'to finish something', or 'to do something perfectly'. In groping around for a way to communicate it in English I thought of such phrases as: 'it is completely complete', 'it is perfectly perfect' – 'everything that has to be done for humanity’s redemption through the sacrifice of My body has been done'. Jesus would not release His spirit until He could say, "It is finished." Until He knew that He had done everything that was required of Him by the Father. That was the goal to which His life was directed. That was the supreme motivation. That was the thing that had caused Him to set His face like flint, that had enabled Him to go through the shame, the pain, the rejection, the disgrace. Only one thing kept Him going.

We have often heard it said it wasn’t the nails that held Him to the cross, it was His commitment to the Father’s will; something from which He would not swerve, He would not turn to the right or to the left. That was His motivation. That was His purpose in living. God had given Him a body and He knew from the Scripture that God’s purpose for that body was that He should sacrifice it on the cross on behalf of humanity. And so, everything He did was directed to that, to the fulfilment of the will of God, the completion of His assignment.