It Is Finished!

Good Friday
April 18, 2014
John 19:30

CrossWords: “It Is Finished”

In his 1923 poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” poet Robert Frost captured the burden of responsibility that weighs heavily on our shoulders. Out on a winter’s evening, he pauses near some woods and dreams briefly of being finished with responsibility and obligation – of being able to let go. The final verse of the poem says this:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

On this Good Friday evening, we gather to give thanks that in Jesus all of God’s promises have been kept. And having been kept perfectly through his sinless life and his atoning sacrifice upon the cross, the burden of Jesus’ mission is now complete. Before he closes his eyes in the sleep of death, he cries out, “It is finished!” (John 19:30). And it is all finished. The whole objective of Jesus’ life, the goal of his mission, was to become that sacrificial victim who would offer his life as a substitute for others. Jesus’ death is the culmination of God’s plan to redeem the world. It is the pinnacle and climax of history.

The words we heard in Psalm 22 and Isaiah 52-53 all looked ahead to the work of salvation being finished. They speak of that promised One who would willingly bear the sins of the people and give his life for them. All of the burnt offerings of old would not suffice as payment for the sin of the world, so God-in-flesh, Jesus, who is true God and true man, entered our world of sin and presented himself as the final, once-for-all and all-sufficient sacrifice for sin. All this Jesus does willingly that the Scriptures may be fulfilled, and that he may reverse the curse – the curse of sin, death and separation from God.

So we come to this place and time in which we see Jesus suspended between heaven and earth, hanging from the cross. With his final breath, Jesus proclaims, “It is finished!” The price for your sin has been paid in full through the blood of Jesus. You are now declared holy and righteous before God for Jesus’ sake. “The blood of Jesus God’s Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7) – all sin. Once and for all. It is finished.You do not have to earn God’s forgiveness or favor. It is finished, once and for all.

There are only two religions in the world: the “doing” religion and the “done” religion. The “doing” religion is so named because it involves people doing things to earn salvation. It may be keeping the Ten Commandments, or the Five Pillars of Islam, or the Eightfold Path of Buddhism. The operative word with a “doing” religion is try. You try to keep the rules, practice the rituals, to do enough to merit forgiveness and salvation from God. But the problem with a “doing” religion is that you never know if you’ve tried hard enough. In contrast, there is the “done” religion, which affirms that everything necessary for our salvation has already been done. Jesus did it all when he cried out from the cross, “It is finished!” Jesus lived that perfect life of obedience that we could not and he died the death we rightly deserved because of our sin. All this, he has done for us, and he gives all of this to you and to me freely. In this “done” religion, there is no need to try to earn forgiveness and salvation from God because it’s already been done for you. Instead of trying, you trust. You simply trust that Jesus Christ has fully paid the price of your forgiveness. Because salvation has been accomplished in Jesus, it is “done” – now and forever. This is what Jesus’ words from the cross – his CrossWords – mean for you.

A follower of Jesus once tried to convince his friend of this. He shared that because of what Jesus had done, the work of redemption was finished. But his friend always disagreed and insisted that he must do his part. That friend was an artist, and one day delivered a beautiful landscape painting that had been commissioned by his believer friend. When unveiled, the man said to his artist friend: “Very nice, but before I hang it on the wall, I think I need to paint in some trees here in the foreground and do a little touch-up work here and there. There’s a few other things I need to do make it right.” His artist friend was stunned. “That’s an insult! You have no right to add anything to what I’ve done. It’s completely finished!” “And that is exactly the point,” the other person said. “There is nothing you can add to what Jesus has already done. To try and do so is an insult to him.”

On this Good Friday, recognizing that Jesus has fully and finally accomplished our salvation, we can only say thanks be to God that “It is finished.” Amen.