Like monoliths towering over grassy plains stretched flat to the horizon, the words of Christ, “It is finished!” rise in grandeur and majesty over our otherwise undramatic lives. Never could any words mean more to men and women pressed under the weight of addiction than these.
What lies behind this outburst, so determined, so climactic, so final, yet uttered under circumstances so apparently catastrophic, as this vibrant man, Jesus, now hangs humiliated and broken, executed on a cross?
Least of all can we imagine that Jesus is lamenting, “It’s all over”, as if in a state of resignation and despair over His own fate. This sentence, one of two He expressed the moment before He yielded up His spirit, was uttered in a loud voice, suggesting triumph. “It is finished!” He cries out, “Father into your hands I commit my spirit” (John 19:30; Luke 23:46; Mark 15:37). Furthermore, the Greek word for “finished” here does not mean “ended” in the sense of “terminated”, but ended as meaning a goal accomplished or carried through to perfection (Zodhiates, Hebrew Greek Key Study Bible). Thus, the New English Bible translates Jesus’ cry as, “it is accomplished!” That accomplishment is cosmic in its impact and has the most far reaching implications for believers struggling with their humanity with its burden of sin.
One of the great travesties of modern Christianity is that the transcendent acts of God have so lost their hold on the mind that salvation has come to be seen as a human-directed thing, minimized by the individual human response to it, so that the ones who “give their lives” to Jesus, in effect, “activate” salvation. Thus, salvation is viewed as happening “one at a time”, as if it were dependant entirely upon whether a human being deigns to accept it or not. This understanding is so far removed from the Biblical message of salvation as to be unrecognizable by the same word.
There is an electrifying atmosphere to the Gospel as it blows open to our view. “The time has fully come”, Jesus proclaims (Mark 1:15 Weymouth). Men trudging heavily through the monotony of their worlds are startled by a new sound in these words. “The time has come at last” (Phillips). “The right time has come” (NCV). “At last the time has come!” (Living Bible). Here is Jesus Who can hardly wait. He has come to throw fire on the earth. His feelings are pent up, waiting for the moment to happen (Luke 12:49, 50 Weymouth). An appointed period of time is about to be completed (cf. Mark 1:15 Amplified Bible). The cosmic clock counts down the last moments before Eternity is due to break in on time. Like a tightly coiled spring finally let loose, Jesus bounds on to the world-scene: “The time is fulfilled”! “The Kingdom of God has arrived” (Mark 1:15 Phillips).
Man does nothing to thrust this drama upon the world. It is beyond him, he can’t figure it out, and it is certainly not triggered by his state of mind. In fact, Luke’s account of the events surrounding Jesus’ birth about thirty years before show everybody involved in the matter thrown into an utter tizzy. Zechariah is “agitated and terrified” (Luke 1:12 Weymouth). Mary is startled and confused (Luke 1:29) and the shepherds, when given the news, are “filled with terror” (Luke 2:9 Weymouth).
This is heaven’s schedule we are on here. Jesus’ arrival and mission are pronounced as signifying something long awaited and planned for. And its climactic end is proclaimed by Jesus Himself as something finally accomplished.
To understand what Divine plan was set up and completed between Jesus’ dramatic announcement that the time had arrived and His cry on the cross that something highly significant was now accomplished, we travel back over four hundred years before Jesus’ birth.
Jerusalem had lain in ruins for nearly seventy years after the Babylonians had swooped down from the north and devastated the country, destroying the glorious temple and leaving only the poor in the land, while carrying the wealthy and powerful off into captivity. Daniel, in captivity himself, studied the writings of Jeremiah who wrote a hundred years before, and realizes that the seventy-year captivity is nearly at an end. The empire of Babylon has faded from the scene and Medo-Persia, soon to be under the gentler rule of Cyrus, is now the new Superpower. Daniel, lining up his faith with Jeremiah’s vision of freedom from enslavement after seventy years, begins one of the longest and most heartfelt prayers in the Bible. He is in deep remorse over his and Israel’s sins. He acknowledges that their calamitous captivity was the result of them. He pleads for God to remove His wrath and look with favor again upon Jerusalem, not on account of any merit on their part, but on account of God’s great compassion. Finally, Daniel pleads with God to hear, forgive, listen and take action for the sake of His own Name because His people and His city are called by that Name (Dan. 9:1–19).
God’s swift response, sent through the angel Gabriel, stunningly surpasses all human imagining. In effect God tells Daniel that a period of time has been decreed (Dan. 9:24) in which Israel and Jerusalem will indeed put an end to sin and usher in righteousness (v. 24). The Messiah will come (v. 25) and be killed (“cut off”, v. 26) and thus put a stop to all sacrifices (v. 27), establishing a firm covenant (v. 27), so that the temple, no longer needed, will be destroyed (vv. 26, 27). Daniel must have been utterly shocked by it all as his later reactions of a three-week fast, followed by complete exhaustion and a complexion looking like death suggest (cf. Dan. 10:2, 8, 9). He was, possibly, more struck by the thought of the destruction of his beloved city and temple than the larger meaning of the Messiah.
But we look back at this with the advantage of the hindsight of the Gospel. And with that we see something astonishing in Chapter 9, at verse 24. The period of time decreed was for Israel and Jerusalem:
“to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy place” (Dan. 9:24 NASB).
What! Are these people gods that they could do such a thing!? For the sake of humanity, will someone tell us how this is going to happen? How can a whole nation finish transgressing? End its sin? Least of all, atone for its iniquity? And how, oh how, shall a people bring in everlasting righteousness? How can it ever be done! Individually, nationally, globally!
Those who view the Bible as no more inspired than wishful thinking must look upon this verse as idealistically impossible, and intolerable nonsense. But for those of us who believe the Bible to be the very Word of God, there can be only one plausible explanation: that what God was calling the nation of Israel to, in regards to ending transgression, sin, and bringing in righteousness; all that the nation of Israel themselves aspired to, by the striving of the Spirit within them, was taken up and brought to completion in the ONE MAN FOR ALL MEN, Who was to substitute for them and represent them, the God-man, Jesus Christ.
“Thus says the Lord of Hosts…Behold, I will bring my servant, the Branch…and I will remove the guilt of this land in a single day” (Zech. 3:7–9 RSV). And while thousands of priests were sacrificing thousands of animals daily for the sins of the people in an endless attempt to purge themselves and the whole land of sin, we imagine John the Baptist looking straight at Jesus, pointing directly at Him, as he proclaims aloud to the people, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). This one Lamb, instead of hundreds of thousands of lambs dealing with hundreds of thousands of sins, takes away the sin of the world in one day! “While every priest stands ministering, day after day, and constantly offering the same sacrifices…this Priest, on the contrary, after offering for sins a single sacrifice of perpetual efficacy, took His seat at God’s right hand” (Heb. 10:11, 12 Weymouth). “Christ…once for all entered the Holy place, taking with Him not the blood of goats and calves, but His own blood, and thus procuring eternal redemption for us” (Heb. 9:11, 12 Weymouth). “For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are consecrated by it” (Heb. 10:14 REB).
No wonder Jesus could hardly wait, His feelings pent up until the fire was cast (Luke 12:49, 50 Weymouth)! Almost certainly the time decreed upon Jerusalem was the meaning of Jesus announcement at the beginning of His ministry, “At last, the time has come!” (the time decreed in Daniel 9:24–27 was a prophetic 70 weeks—a day for a year—spanning a period of 490 years, climaxing with the start of Christ’s ministry in A.D. 27 (v. 25) and His being “cut off” (vv. 26, 27) in sacrificial death). And almost certainly, what was accomplished by the close of the decreed time was the meaning of His cry at the end of His ministry “It is finished!” (John 19:30; cf. John 19:28). That cry surely signaled that Jesus in His life and death on behalf of the human race had—for us—“finished transgression, made an end of sin, made atonement for iniquity and brought in everlasting righteousness”.
So where does this place you—the Christian at war with his addictions in the world?
Remember, that when Jesus declared the time had at last come, He followed with, “The Kingdom of Heaven has arrived! Repent and believe!” Everything has now been accomplished, completed for us. Jesus’ finishing transgression, bringing an end to sin, making atonement for iniquity and bringing in everlasting righteousness is the spiritual Kingdom among us, and we are to repent of our old way of viewing ourselves and thinking of ourselves. We are to believe something new. When we do, startling things will happen.
In the light of what Jesus accomplished for us, we are to see our lives as already having arrived. Think of how much time and energy has been spent on struggling to stop transgressing, and bring an end of sin to our lives. Think, even, of our foolish delusion that we could somehow atone for our sins by promises and hard work and dedication. Think of how we have so often striven to become righteous! All these efforts have made us obsessive, driven and addicted. And the energy expended has made us so self-concentrated, so committed to our own spiritual reformation, that we have hardly had an emotion left for the cares and needs of others, except where they contribute to our own spiritual goals.
But faith says: I, who am in Christ, have had transgression and sin finished for me; atonement has been made for it, and I am everlastingly righteous in Christ, for Christ is my righteousness.
With this faith, our response to our lusts begins at a different place. We do not start at the beginning we start at the end. “It is accomplished!” Faith does not strive to overcome sin, and end all its transgressions, and become righteous. That is starting at the beginning! Faith starts at the end, the accomplished End which Jesus brought in, and says, Father, I thank you that my transgression, my sin has met its End in Christ, and my eternal righteousness has found its beginning by starting at the End of All Jesus’ accomplishments for me. Does this lead us to become indifferent to sin in our lives?
There is absolutely nothing passive about faith, as if it were the deathly “armchair” Christianity that so many blind Christians accuse it of, who want to go about establishing their own goodness.
Real faith that expresses sin’s end in Christ is asserted in the midst of battle, resolutely refusing to fight with sin as if it had power and thereby giving it a power it does not now have. Rather, it fights the doubt that sin’s power is over for all who are in Christ. It repents of any false belief that we are what we appear to be. This is faith’s war. And when my lusts for sex or booze or drugs or food clamor for expression and tell me that this whole business of sin hasn’t finished but hardly begun, my faith must not enter in to a controversy with sin and try to prove it wrong by trying to kill it. Killing sin, bit by bit, is exactly what sin wants. It keeps it alive. It is the flesh feeding on the flesh.
Rather, when flesh clamors I enter into a gratitude and praise to God, and an affirmation before Him that wrenchingly speaks against my self and states before Heaven what appears to be a complete contradiction to Earth: that sin is already dead in my new self in Christ. “My God! There is a new me, formed in Christ! My fallen humanity which tries to tell me, ‘This is all there is’ is a lie! I have a humanity in Christ in which sin and transgression are atoned for and finished and in which I am eternally righteous. ‘For anyone united to Christ, there is a new creation’ (2 Cor. 5:17 REB). ‘In Him you have been made complete’ (Col. 2:10 NASB).”
This is the Great War of the Soul. It is a war which slowly vanquishes sin in our lives by not doing battle with it. To war directly with sin is to confirm the validity of our old humanity by virtue of our constant engagement with it. And it is to deny the meaning of Christ’s word, “It is accomplished”.
But the war with our doubt is, conversely, the war of faith. This war is constantly affirming the true reality: that Christ has brought to us a new humanity in Him because He triumphed over old humanity for us, ending transgression and sin, atoning for it, and establishing righteousness in Himself for us.
This battle of faith, though a war of the soul, does not create the stress that the flesh fighting the flesh does. It is a paradoxical faith-war that brings peace: “Let us therefore strive to enter that rest” (Heb. 4:11 RSV). It is a faith striving to enter the accomplished work of Christ. “For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his [own] works” (Heb. 4:10 NASB), that is, among other things, the endlessly, emotionally exhausting work of the flesh to eliminate itself.
And this rest of faith is not a new spiritual self-obsession like the spiritual selfishness it left behind. It develops an outward look because it always has energy to spare, like endlessly flowing water. Faith in the accomplished work of Christ discovers a new energy for the world because it has been energized by God’s love. Love for others grows out of the love we embrace daily from God. And that love grows in direct proportion to faith’s increasing capacity to know that sin and transgression are finished for us in Christ. The Love we receive from God, when freely embraced, cannot remain still and alone in us, not only because it must share the beauty it has found in God, but also because that love has awakened a compassionate desire to share and lighten the sufferings of others. Thus, having found the love of which all other loves speak, we become the lights of the world.
Prepare for your mission…