John 19

³⁰ When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

In 1970, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Near the end of his speech, Solzhenitsyn made a most remarkable statement: “One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world.”[1] In his speech, he was calling on writers and artists to speak truth and to speak it against a world full of lies. We should not despair, Solzhenitsyn argued, because truth is weightier than falsehood. Thus, his statement.

It is the kind of statement that stays with you: “One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world.”

I think there is great wisdom there. One single word that is true has more substance, more weight, than an entire world of falsehood. There is great power in a single word of truth.

The sixth word from the cross is a single word. It is a single word of truth, and it outweighs the whole world. That word, in the Greek of the New Testament, is this: tetelestai. Most of our English translations translate it as, “It is finished.”

Tetelestai.

It is finished.

One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world.

An ocean of ink has been spilt trying to explain this one word of truth.

For instance, the great Southern Baptist Greek scholar A.T. Robertson calls it “a cry of victory in the hour of defeat.”[2] The Dutch New Testament scholar Herman Ridderbos said that “this cry indicated for [Jesus] not only the end of the road that he had to travel but also the completed work of salvation that he had accomplished for his own as the new foundation laid once for all for the life of the world.”[3] The Australian commentator Francis Moloney says the sixth word means that “the task given to him by the Father…has now been consummately brought to a conclusion.”[4] And the American Baptist John MacArthur says it means that “sin was atoned for…Satan was defeated and rendered powerless…Every requirement of God’s righteous law had been satisfied; God’s holy wrath against sin had been appeased…every prophecy had been fulfilled.”[5]

What an amazing word, tetelestai. We will approach it by considering what each of the three words in our English translation suggests.

“It”: The Enabling of Our Salvation

“It is finished.”

What is it?

“It” is the task for which Jesus came, the commission He received and accepted from the Father. “It” is the reason why Jesus came. “It” is the great work of salvation that culminated in the cross and then the resurrection.

“It is finished. I have completed the task. I have done what I came to do.”

N.T. Wright points out that there is a series of six miracles that frame the gospel of John. For instance, John explains the changing of water into wine in John 2:11 with these words: “This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.” It was the first of six signs. The six, Wright argues, are these:

The first sign: the changing of water into wine (John 2)

The second sign: the healing of the nobleman’s son at Capernaum (John 4:46-54)

The third sign: the healing of the paralyzed man at the pool (John 5:1-9)

The fourth sign: the multiplication of loaves and fishes (6:1-14)

The fifth sign: the healing of the man born blind (John 9:1-12)

The sixth sign: the raising of Lazarus (John 11:1-44)

Wright goes on to argue that “John cannot have intended the sequence to stop at six.” This is because John alludes to Genesis 1 throughout the book therefore necessitating a total of seven signs “completing the accomplishment of the new creation.”[6] If this is the case, then the cross would be the seventh sign, the sign of culmination. On the cross Jesus proclaims, “It is finished,” meaning that His great work is now complete.

But if “it” is finished, then “it” has enabled our salvation, for this was the reason why He came. “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). “It is finished. I have now made a way for the lost to be saved.”

And if “it” refers to Christ’s finished work and the enabling of our salvation, then that means “it” also refers to the ending of the reign of the devil, the ending of the brutal tyranny of the one Paul referred to as “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience” in Ephesians 2:2. This likely explains what is happening in Luke 10 when Jesus rejoices over the triumphant report of those he sent out two by two to preach the Kingdom. In verse 18-19, Jesus responded by saying, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.” In other words, the proclamation of the life-giving gospel of Christ goes hand in hand with the end of the devil’s reign of terror.

In the mid-1700’s, the great Charles Wesley wrote the amazing hymn, “’Tis Finished! The Messiah Dies.” It was one of his favorites, and he was still editing it on his deathbed. It reads:

’Tis finished! The Messiah dies,

Cut off for sins, but not His own:

Accomplished is the sacrifice,

The great redeeming work is done!

’Tis finished! all the debt is paid;

Justice divine is satisfied;

The grand and full atonement made;

God for a guilty world hath died.

The veil is rent in Christ alone;

The living way to Heaven is seen;

The middle wall is broken down,

And all mankind may enter in.

The types and figures are fulfilled;

Exacted is the legal pain;

The precious promises are sealed;

The spotless Lamb of God is slain.

The reign of sin and death is o’er,

And all may live from sin set free;

Satan hath lost his mortal power;

’Tis swallowed up in victory.

Saved from the legal curse I am,

My Savior hangs on yonder tree:

See there the meek, expiring Lamb!

’Tis finished! He expires for me.

Accepted in the Well-beloved,

And clothed in righteousness divine,

I see the bar to heaven removed;

And all Thy merits, Lord, are mine.

Death, hell, and sin are now subdued;

All grace is now to sinners given;

And lo, I plead the atoning blood,

And in Thy right I claim Thy Heaven!

Tetelestai.

“It is finished!”

Heaven is now opened and no one ever need go to hell! The devil has been served his papers and you can now live in triumph over him.

“Is”: The Certainty of Our Salvation

And then there is an amazing word of certainty. “It is finished!”

Christ’s work is finished.

The death-bringing curse of sin is finished.

Your guilty verdict is finished.

Craig Keener translates tetelestai as “it has been completed” and points out that “the perfect tense most likely connotes action finished in the past with continuing effects in the present.”[7] That is an important point, for “It is finished!” does indeed reverberate onward and onward. Richard John Neuhaus writes, “‘It is finished.’ But it is not over. It will not be over until every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”[8]

For instance, the work of Christ on the cross marked the end of the devil’s reign for those who are in Christ, but the devil will not ultimately be vanquished until the end. So his reign is “finished” positionally, for those who are in Christ, but, experientially, the devil still bites at us and harasses us. This means “It is finished!” is our daily bread. We should daily remind ourselves of this most crucial truth.

The same dynamic is at work in salvation. “It is finished!” means that the work of Christ is complete and cannot be added to. Thus, our salvation is secure. Even so, Paul could write in Philippians 2:

¹² Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

What is he doing here? Well he is certainly not trying to sow the seeds of doubt. Instead, he is recognizing that though our salvation is secure because “It is finished!” we nonetheless need to (a) make sure that we have truly trusted Christ and (b) walk in such a way as to honor the fact that we have been saved. So “It is finished!” but we should grow in our confidence in this fact by living consistently with that great truth. We need to grow into tetelestai.

“It is finished!”

It is!

The inability to grasp this “is” is at the heart of a lot of Christians’ unhappiness today. We say “It is finished!” but we seem so very unsure. As a result, many have no confidence and no joy. The late Christian counselor David Seamands remarked:

            Many years ago I was driven to the conclusion that the two major causes of most emotional problems among evangelical Christians are these: the failure to understand, receive, and live out God’s unconditional grace and forgiveness; and the failure to give out that unconditional love, forgiveness, and grace to other people…We read, we hear, we believe a good theology of grace. But that’s not the way we live. The good news of the Gospel of grace has not penetrated the level of our emotions.[9]

That is a great way to put it: “The good news of the Gospel of grace has not penetrated the level of our emotions.” Our inability to accept that we have been forgiven and tha we are loved is an inability to accept Jesus’ tetelestai.

I ask you: do you really believe that you are indeed forgiven, that it is in fact finished? Do you truly believe that Christ has set you free, that you have been forgiven, that the devil no longer has mastery over you? This is what tetelestai is calling us to, this kind of trust and faith and certainty.

“Finished”: The Basis for Our Current Peace

What this means is that we can now live in the light of tetelestai. We can now proclaim, “It is finished!” In so proclaiming, we are set free from a legion of tyrannies that seek to erode our confidence and joy.

N.T. Wright translates tetelestai as “It’s all done!” and notes that the word is “the word that people would write on a bill in the ancient world after it had been paid.”[10] What a beautiful image!

I believe we should go about writing tetelestai on all of our anxieties, on all of our fears, on all of our irrational worries, on all of our rational worries, on our crippling insecurities, on our temptations to anger and rage, on our desires for vengeance, on our lusts and our greed, on our obsessive need to be accepted, on our insecure longing to be number one!

On all of these, Tetelestai!

Over the accusations of the devil we should shout, Tetelestai!

Over our fears that erode faith, over our successes that erode humility, over our failings that erode our grasp of God’s love for us, over our sins that plague us, our addictions that harass us, and our needs that consume us: Tetelestai!

Christ, suspended between Heaven and earth, shouts, Tetelestai!

What a wonderful work He has done!

What a wonderful Savior He is!

What a beautiful cross we gather around!

Tetelestai! It is finished!

 

[1] www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1970/solzhenitsyn-lecture.html

[2] A.T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament. Vol.V (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1960), p.304

[3] Herman Ridderbos, The Gospel of John. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1992), p.618.

[4] Francis J. Moloney, S.D.B., The Gospel of John. Sacra Pagina. Vol. 4 (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1998), p.504.

[5] John MacArthur, John 12-21. The MacArthur New Testament Commentary (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 2008), p.356.

[6] N.T. Wright, John for Everyone. Part Two (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), p.130-131.

[7] Craig Keener, The Gospel of John. Vol. 2 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003), p.1147.

[8] Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon. (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2000), p.205.

[9] Philip Yancey. What’s So Amazing About Grace. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1997), p.15.

[10] N.T. Wright, p.131.