John 19:30

THE FINISHED WORK

‘When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, It is finished.’

John 19:30

‘It is finished!’ What was finished here? It is the pent-up agony of centuries breaking into relief at that sighing word. Finished!

I. Finished all that the Father and the Son had worked for since man fell.—So far back—we are told it by John—so far back as the first deplorable hour when the child of His love fell away, the hope of this redemption had begun to fill God’s heart, and the will of God had bent itself to this new task that we had set Him. And on and on the long years have dragged, working out their wicked will, and sin had grown, and the trouble had deepened, and the sorrows had multiplied, and the disease had spread, and the warfare had sharpened, and death darkened, and still the Father strove with plan to follow and pursue and implore, and invoked, and chastened, and smote, and punished, and fought, if by any means He yet might win and gain the sheep that He had lost. Still all was in vain—in vain until He gathered everything into one final and supreme effort, when He Who ‘so loved the world’ sent ‘His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ For this final deed He had chosen a people stubborn and stiff-necked, who yet, if they once laid hold of the truth, would by their very stubbornness never let it go. For this He carried them in the wilderness, like an eagle carries her young. For this He had fed them, and nourished them, and planted them, and brought them by ways they knew not; for this He had raised up prophet and priest and king. And the image of a Redeemer had grown clearer before His eyes; through persecution and suffering of these men the need of that tremendous task had marked out its outlines. So through the pressure of this thousandfold experience, under the tumult of disaster and incessant defeat, under the iron heel of the Captivity, the deed that had to be done grew and assumed more and more definite proportions in its terrors and its glories.

II. And at last the day had come.—The awful venture was made. God’s last stake—there was no more that could be done when once He had said of these evil husbandmen, ‘They will reverence My Son.’ He had come. The dream of all these centuries had been fulfilled as it were in a moment, and the work of the entire story of man’s fall and his rescue had been up-gathered and concentrated into this single act. And down the storm had broken. And when it came, who could have guessed it would have been so fierce? The rush, strength, and rage of the whole thing—who could have measured its horror? Down it had poured upon Him, the flooded hate of the whole world’s sin, turned by the course of one wicked will down on the patient Martyr of God, merciless, savage, horrible, as He hung there on the bloody tree. What sorrow could ever have been like His sorrow? How long is it to last? Will it ever end? Will He bear it much longer?

III. And then, just at the worst and blackest moment of all, there is a sudden turn, a flash— a door opened.—‘It is finished!’ He is through! Round and about Him indeed the scene is but little changed. The storm roars and blusters, but deep within it is felt, it is known, the signal is given from God and recognised. The corner has been turned, the battle has been won. He shall not die, but live. It is secured and done for ever. No fear now; He is through, He is out on the other side. ‘It is finished! It is finished!’

—Rev. Canon H. Scott Holland.

Illustration

‘ “It is finished”—nearly done and over. We come to the peace, the incomparable peace of relief—the relief of the sailor on the groaning, labouring ship, as his quick eyes detect that the fury of the storm is spent, that the gusts that still shake his vessel begin to betray their exhaustion, and have not their old terrible intensity. The worst is past. “It is finished.” He will ride it out, thank God! It is the whisper of hope to those who are beset in some desperate garrison, like that of Lucknow. After all the sickening delay, after all the hopeless disappointment, as day after day they had looked from the shaking, crumbling ramparts, it seemed as if they would hardly last another hour. They looked out over the plain every morning to see if they could just see the glitter of an English bayonet, just listen to the sound of an English gun. Would they never come? Would they ever hold out all those long eighty days? Who would believe it? And at last, as they look one day, they see a movement, a stir somewhere. Hark! There is the far sound of a Highland pibroch! “Look, we are saved!” The peril is past, tears start, tears of a joy that cannot be believed. “We are saved! It is finished! Thank God! Thank God!” ’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE VICTORY OF THE PASSION

I. It were a poor view of the Redeemer’s Passion to take were we to dwell in any way exclusively upon its physical side of bitter suffering.—This part was great; but added to it, and going with it, was, and always shall be, the note of eternal victory. ‘It is finished,’ the work is done, the labour accomplished, the effort carried through. ‘In the volume of the book it is written of Me, I come to do Thy will, O God.’

II. Now that blessed will is altogether consummated.—He had come down a little babe to Bethlehem; He had left the courts of heaven and the worship of the young-eyed cherubim, and had taken on Him, for our sakes, the form of human weakness and subjection. And for this they had hung Him, as if He were a malefactor, on the Cross of shame. ‘We will not have this Man to reign over us.’

III. But there is one thing that man cannot spoil: it is the victory of the Passion.—‘It is finished.’ The Victor, alone and unaided, has trodden the winepress. ‘He suffered, and was buried,’ says the Creed. It is the most glorious of epitaphs: ‘It is finished.’

—Rev. A. Osborne Jay.

Illustration

‘There, in the studio of Michael Angelo, one sees on the canvas the inception of a splendid painting; but little more than the outline exists. Beside the easel lie oils and brushes as the artist left them, but the fingers of the renowned genius are cold and stiff in death. The skilful chisel of Thorswalden is never to give the finishing touch to the fine group in marble, which, at a glance, betrays the Danish sculptor’s marvellous power. On his study table at Gad’s Hill lies the unfinished MS. of the last novel which Charles Dickens began. The grandest engineering achievement of our time is inaugurated by royalty amid flying banners and universal congratulations; but the architect of the gigantic bridge that spans the Forth never saw its completion. It was only Christ Who could say, ‘It is finished.’ And His finished work is our only hope.’

(THIRD OUTLINE)

‘’TIS FINISHED, ALL IS FINISHED’

‘Finished!’ What a cry of relief from the long strain which had been upon Him! And what may we say the words specially refer to?

I. Finished sufferings.—I think, first of all, to His own sufferings. Christ must suffer. That was, if we may say it reverently, a foregone conclusion. Think of all the world, with all its accumulated wickedness and sin. Think of the sin in our own hearts, the sin in our own parish, the sin of London, the sin of every great city accumulated, if our imagination is sufficiently vivid and acute. It is not different now, is it? The world is just the same to-day. It is more polished, perhaps; it calls sin, in its multiplicity of forms, by different names. But is not the heart of the world exactly the same to-day as it was then, the world as you know it, as you see it represented in those friends of yours who do not love Christ? The sin which animates their hostility to Christ, do you not think that that sin would put Christ to death again if He came to the world? Do you not think that if Jesus came to the world to-day He would not be wanted? Would He be wanted in our homes, our social life? If He came to our churches would He be wanted there? He must suffer in order to enter into His glory. How is it with us? Need we wonder if when we try to do right we must also suffer? It has been so from the very beginning, but because Christ has said in His moment of apparent defeat, when the world thought that they had done with Him, ‘It is accomplished,’ therefore you and I may be assured that we shall have victory. The glory will be ours through suffering.

II. Finished temptations.—Not only were His sufferings accomplished, but also His temptations. He had wrestled with the tempter and had overcome. All His life He had temptations to overcome. There is a note of quiet rest struck in these words, just as much as there is a note of triumph. Doubtless you have your temptations, something which you know, if you let it get the upper hand, will cripple your life, sap your spiritual energy, and you determine that you will set all your spiritual forces upon it that you may overcome it. And then you overcome it, and it becomes a thing dead. Weeks may pass away, and you may not have felt it; it has not touched your life, and you are rejoicing; and just in the moment of your rejoicing it comes again with all its old force and power, and you almost feel inclined not to wrestle with it any more, but to let it have its way because you cannot say, ‘It is accomplished; it is finished.’ Do not let us give way—let us realise that it will be overcome some time. And the same way with our sin, and griefs, and pains. Do not let us despair because they take so much overcoming, because we have always to fight and wrestle with them, and there seems no finality with them. Jesus has said: ‘It is accomplished. Thy temptation is at an end. It is finished.’ The most powerful thing in the world, Christ has vanquished it, and if you will but go on fighting in His strength, the time will come when you will be able to say, ‘It is finished.’

III. Finished work.—And then something else, too, Jesus accomplished—His triumphant work. The battle of His corporeal life was over, but not before redemption, full and free, had been secured. What does it all mean? You and I have sinned, there is no doubt about that; we have all sinned consciously, every one of us, I doubt not—if not consciously, unconsciously. We have therefore broken God’s law, risen against Him, rebelled, and by our very sin we are afar off from God. How are you and I to get near, for God’s Law saith, ‘The soul that sinneth it shall die’? There is only one way. We have it put into words by St. Paul: ‘If One died for all, then were all dead.’ There was the need, the need of one perfect One to come and die for us and take our place. And you and I are now to believe it. ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.’ That is the first step, I say, in our spiritual life. In our Communion Service we say that Jesus made upon the Cross ‘a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world’; but that sacrifice is of no effect if we do not believe it and accept it as God’s way of salvation. Let us look at the Cross now, and pray that God will give us the faith we need, that we may see in Jesus our Saviour and our Redeemer, our Prophet, our Priest, and our King, One Who ever liveth to make intercession for us.

—Rev. T. J. Longley.

Illustration

‘This remarkable expression, in the Greek, is one single word in a perfect tense, “It has been completed.” It stands here in majestic simplicity, without note or comment from John, and we are left entirely to conjecture what the full meaning of it is. For eighteen hundred years Christians have explained it as they best can, and some portion of its meaning in all likelihood has been discovered. Yet it is far from unlikely that such a word, spoken on such an occasion, by such a Person, at such a moment, just before death, contains depths which no one has ever completely fathomed. No one single meaning, we may be sure, exhausts the whole phrase. It is rich, full, and replete with deep truths.’