When Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished,” and He bowed His head and gave up His spirit. (John 19:30)
“These are the greatest and most momentous words that were ever spoken upon earth since the beginning of the world. Who does not find in them a cry of victory?
It is a shout of triumph, which announces to the kingdom of darkness its complete overthrow and to the kingdom of heaven upon earth its eternal establishment. How wonderful!
At the very moment when, for the Hero of Judah, all seems lost, His words declare that all is won and accomplished!
Our Lord’s exclamation is like the sound of a heavenly jubilee-trumpet, and announces to the race of Adam, which was under the curse, the commencement of a free and sabbatic year, which will ever more extensively display its blessing, but never come to an end.
Listen, and it will appear to you as if in the words, “It is finished!” you heard fetters burst, and prison-walls fall down.
At these words, barriers as high as heaven are overthrown, and gates which had been closed for thousands of years, again move on their hinges. But what was it that was finished at the moment when that cry was uttered?
The evangelist introduces his narrative with the words, “After this, Jesus knowing that all things were accomplished.” Only think—“All things!” What more can we want? But wherein did they consist?
We hasten to lift the veil, and view in detail what was realized and brought about, and may the full peace be imparted to us which the words, “It is finished!” announce to the world! “Jesus cried with a loud voice, It is finished!”
It would seem as if He had wished to drink only to make this victorious cry sound forth with full force, like the voice of a herald or the sound of a trumpet.
The Lord has now reached the termination of His labors. He has performed the stupendous task which He undertook in the council of peace, before the world was, when He said, “I delight to do thy will, O my God!”
Death, to which He is on the point of submitting, formed the summit, but also the concluding act of His mediatorial work.
Only take into your hands the divine programme of His vicarious earthly course, as compiled in types and prophecies in the archives of the Old Testament, and be convinced how it has been most minutely carried out.
The mysterious delineation of the Messiah, as it passes before us in increasing brightness and completeness in the writings of Moses and the prophets, is fully realized in its smallest and minutest traits in the person of Jesus.
If you ask for the wondrous Infant of Bethlehem described by Micah, “whose goings forth have been of old, from everlasting;” or for the Child born, and the Son given, with the government upon His shoulder, whom Isaiah brings before us; or for the meek and lowly King mentioned by Zechariah, who makes His entrance into Jerusalem on the foal of an donkey— it meets you bodily in Jesus Christ.
Do you seek for the Seed of the woman, who with His wounded heel bruises the serpent’s head; or the second Aaron, who should actually bring about a reconciliation between God and a sinful world—look up to the cross, and there you will see all combined in One.
Do you look about you for the antitype of the brazen serpent in the wilderness, or of the paschal lamb and its delivering blood in Egypt; or for the exalted Sufferer who appears in the appalling descriptions given us in Psalms 22 and 69, which record a malefactor’s awful doom, even to the mournful cry of “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!”—all is combined in Him who hangs yonder, and exclaims, “It is finished!”
Then take a retrospective look into the writings of the ancient prophets, and what meets your view? The ancient types have put on flesh and blood in Jesus Christ.
Their importance to us is henceforth limited to the testimony they bear that the divinely-promised Messiah is indeed come, and that no other is to be looked for.
Every condition of the work of human redemption had been fulfilled at the moment when Christ uttered the words, “It is finished!” with the exception of one, which was included and taken for granted in them, because it inevitably awaited Him, and actually took place immediately afterward—thus bringing the whole to a perfect conclusion.
That which still remained unaccomplished clearly proves that Jesus did not hang on the cross on His own account, but as our Representative. It was our death. The laws of nature forbade that a green and thoroughly healthy tree, which was rooted in eternity, should bleed and sink beneath the blows of “the last enemy.”
He dies in the crown of triumph. At the moment when His heart ceased to beat, the words, “It is finished!” revealed the entire fullness of their meaning.
He had now reached the final completion of His work of redemption. The exclamation, “It is finished!” resounded in heaven and awoke hallelujahs to the Lamb which shall never more be mute.
They reverberated through the abodes of darkness, like the thunders of God, announcing the termination of the dominion of their prince.
But a more blissful sound on earth does not strike the ear of the penitent sinner to this hour than the words, “It is finished!” It is as the sound of the great jubilee-trumpet, and the proclamation of an eternal salvation. Yes, we are delivered.
There is no longer any cause for anxiety, except in the case of those who refuse to acknowledge their sinfulness, and turn their backs on the Man of Sorrows on the cross. But if we are otherwise minded and, honoring truth, have judged and condemned ourselves in the presence of God, then come!
No more circuitous paths—no fruitless efforts to help yourselves—no vain recourse to the empty cisterns of this world, whatever proud names they may bear!
The voice of peace is heard on Calvary.
O that we were solemnly conscious how much was done for us there! Great was our guilt; we were condemned to death, and the curse lay upon us; but all is done away in the words, “It is finished!”
If He has paid the ransom, how can a righteous God in heaven demand payment a second time? Know you not the assertion of the apostle, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus!”
Let us give our whole hearts to Him, and neither the multitude nor the heinousness of our sins need appall us. His closed eyes, His death-like visage, His pierced hands and feet oblige us, even for the glorifying of His name, to oppose not only the infernal accuser and the judge in our own breasts, but even the law of Moses, with the apostle’s watchword, “Who is he that condemneth, since Christ hath died?”
What invaluable fruit, therefore, do we reap from the tree of the cross! That which the Saviour accomplished by His death was not merely the work of saitisfaction to divine justice, by which He removed the curse from our heads, but likewise His representative obedience, which is henceforth imputed to His believing people, as the righteousness which avails in the sight of God.
Along with the sentence, “Depart from me, ye cursed!” is also the “Mene, Tekel,” erased from our walls, and in its stead we read the mighty words, “Ye are washed, ye are sanctified, ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus.”
And that we are so is confirmed to us by the fact that God now lovingly inclines toward us, breathes His Spirit into us, leads us in bonds of mercy and kindness, and as soon as we have finished our course, opens the gates of His heavenly mansions to us.
But that condemned sinners are regarded as holy before God, without any infringement on His justice, holiness, and truth, is intimated by that which the suffering Saviour accomplished on the cross.
Even the twenty-second Psalm asserts that this would be the consequence of His death, since in the last verse it is said, “They shall come and shall declare his righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that he hath done this.”
How just and well founded is, therefore, the victorious cry, “It is finished!” with which the Lord, after performing His work, inclined His head to rest! “With one offering he hath forever perfected them that are sanctified” (Heb. 10:14).
Yes, by the one act of the offering up of Himself, He has so laid the foundation for all who believe in Him, of their justification, sanctification, and redemption, that they may now unhesitatingly rejoice in the first as an accomplished fact; that they bear in them the second; and that they have the third as surely and certainly in prospect, as Christ their Representative has already taken possession, in their names, of the glorious and heavenly inheritance.”
—F. W. Krummacher, The Suffering Saviour: Meditations on the Last Days of Christ (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1947/2004), 403-410.
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