LENT 2025 – PART SEVEN

IT IS FINISHED

 Jesus said some amazing things as he died on the cross, and for the past 6 weeks, we took time to meditate on each of them. He forgave his tormentors; He took care of His mother, He promised salvation to a fellow sufferer, and He expressed both the pain of separation from God and the serenity of entrusting himself into the Father’s hands. All those words have deep and abiding significance for us, but none more so than His last words, “It is finished,” which really mean, “I have finished it.” This seventh word from the cross isn’t a cry of relief but a cry of accomplishment. Let’s read.

 After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said, in order to fulfil the scripture, “I am thirsty.” A jar full of sour wine was standing there so they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. And when Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” He bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

 The last word of Jesus is only recorded by John and is very short. In fact, it is a single word in Greek: tetelestai, or it is done – completed, finalized. It doesn’t mean my suffering is finished, not at all. In the gospel of John, when Jesus is arrested in the garden, and Peter cuts the ear off one of the servants, Jesus says to Peter: Put your sword away. Shall I not drink the cup my Father has given me? This is the cup of judgment, the bitter cup that Jesus drank to the last dregs as he took on the sin of the world, dying on the cross in our stead. Through this powerful act of love, Jesus ensures that we don’t have to drink this cup – He did it for us. In another incident, when James and John ask for positions of power to be seated on His left and right, Jesus says to them: Can you drink the cup I am going to drink? In other words, this is what Jesus came to do – He came to die so that He could say, “It is finished.”

 This is a word of victory and triumph. In Matthew 27, we read that at the moment of Jesus’ death, the curtain of the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The fact that it is torn from top to bottom is to let us know that God did the tearing because of what Jesus accomplished. With his death for the first time since the Garden of Eden, there is no separation between God and humanity anymore. God’s dwelling is with us, so there is no need for a temple anymore, for Jesus is the living Temple.

 In Christ, God reconciled the world to himself, not counting our sins or trespasses against us. The death of Jesus opened the way for us to come home to God. It is the victory of God over the forces of death and evil and sin and hell. And while the work that Jesus had done on our behalf is finished, our work isn’t finished. There is something we need to do, and that is to respond in faith to the finished work of Christ.

May God awaken in each of us a profound thankfulness this week as we remember his suffering, death, and ultimate victory on Easter morning. It is the Good News that the Church has been proclaiming for two thousand years. Let us not keep this good news to ourselves.

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