This is from the Gospel of John chapter 19:28-30:
“After this, Jesus, knowing that all was finished, said to fulfill the scripture, “I thirst”. A jar of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head, and gave up his spirit.”
So, obviously, this is a powerful scene in the Bible. But what does Jesus mean “it is finished?” What is the it?
A friend and I were studying this verse, so I asked him what “it” was. The exchange went like this:
“Everything! Jesus did it all, so there’s nothing more to do because He did it all, and He even said so.”
I pressed further,
“So you say that it’s finished and nothing more needs to be done by anyone?”
He replied,
“That’s right. Nothing more can be done because Jesus did it all.”
So I said,
“So you’re saying that :
– Jesus didn’t have to rise from the dead because…it’s finished?
– Paul didn’t have to found all those churches because…it’s finished?
– And none of the apostles had to write their gospels because after all, it’s finished!?”
Okay, clearly “it’s finished” means something different than what my friend thought it meant, but what? As you can imagine, there are a lot of different speculations and teachings on this, so let me give you the one that I like the most. It goes like this:
Pretend that you are a Jew, living two thousand years ago and the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) draws near. For a Jew at this time, THE place to be on the Day of Atonement was Jerusalem. Jerusalem (obviously) is situated in the desert and at that time, it had an average population of about 40,000 people. However, during the Atonement, the population would swell to perhaps four times that amount. So now you’re looking at 160,000 people (give or take).
And every family would have with them a sacrifice – typically a spotless lamb – which was brought in order to be ritually slaughtered to atone for their sins. In fact, this is the whole reason they were there. So now you’re looking at thousands of animals that needed to be sacrificed that day.
Why that day?
Because the next day, Saturday, was the Sabbath and you couldn’t work. So just think about this: you’re in the desert and:
- There’s no running water.
- There’s no refrigeration.
- There’s no sanitation or cleaning supplies.
- There are no inspectors to ensure quality.
- There’s nothing.
Nothing to make the job of slaughtering thousands of animals any easier. It was it was…well….you get the picture.
And since it was a ritual, there was a process to follow:
- The animal would have to be bled out.
- You could not break any of it’s bones.
- You had to remove the tendon on the back leg for reasons of biblical continuity (in reference to the fight of Jacob with the angel)
- The offal (intestines) had to be burned
- The blood had to be splashed on the altar.
- Prayers had to be said.
And only then could you take the lamb home, cook it and eat it. There was a lot to do! And there were thousands of animals to process. So all day long you would have had all of these people bustling about, all jockeying for position, the lambs bleating, the temple priests running around, the action of slaughtering these animals…imagine the smell, the noise and the flies, all in the heat of the desert. What an unbelievable mess!
But finally, as sundown drew near, it was time to slaughter the last lamb.
That lamb, however, was reserved to be slaughtered by the high priest himself (which we know from the Bible would have been Caiaphas). So Caiaphas would come out and personally slaughter the last lamb. He would bleed it, he would take out the tendon, he would accomplish all the other duties, and then he would take that lamb, he would have held it up in front of the crowd, and he would have declared to all, “It is finished.”
But this was not your average Day of Atonement, for it was also Good Friday and you can almost imagine Jesus, the true Lamb of God, who atones for all sins (even those of Caiaphas) and renders animal sacrifices null and void, who hangs on His cross and hears Caiaphas’s declaration – perhaps even even seeing it from his vantage point – and who bows His head and says:
It is finished
So, for what it’s worth, this is one way of thinking about this passage. There are others, of course, but personally, I like this one. It fits, it’s historically accurate, and it just makes sense the way everything lays out. But whatever we think of this verse, the job is not done.
After He died and rose from the dead, Jesus gave us the great commission (Mt 28:16–20) and it remains unfulfilled:
- There are still people to baptize.
- There are still people to share the gospel with.
- There are still people who don’t know Jesus.
In Colossians 1:24, Paul says, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I make up what is lacking in Christ’s affliction in behalf of his body, which is the church.” Now, you may be thinking…what on earth could be lacking in Christ’s afflictions? Well, what is lacking is our participation in His passion. We too need to place ourselves at the foot of His cross. In fact, we have to carry our own crosses! And we’ve got a lot of work to do yet, and although Christ’s part is finished, our part is not. But maybe one day at the end of our lives, we can finally lie down and say:
“Lord, I did the best I could – and at least for my part, it is finished.”
Until then, please pray for me that I do well in this fight and I will do the same for you.