It Is Finished

[hldude33]

YouTube Video Devo

“It Is Finished”
John 19:30 NIV
When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

I don’t know about you, but I am a person who likes to begin a project and see it through till the end. I don’t like starting something and not finishing it. Drives me crazy. It has happened more times that I would like and there’s still many projects around my house that have remained unfinished. Life happens and you just get distracted and say you’ll get to finish some day.

Many of us like the feeling of finishing something we start. There’s a great sense of accomplishment when we finish something we have worked on for a short period of time or a long period of time. We really like watching the HGTV shows of home renovations and also the show of Building Off The Grid that shows people putting in way more than expected hours, days and months to build a home they’ve envisioned for years.

When we finish a project, it’s great to say the words, “It is finished.” There’s nothing like that feeling of accomplishment.

As we have just celebrated Easter weekend, I so often think of the words spoken in John where Jesus said “It Is Finished.” Those are VERY powerful words. He came with a mission and completed it. But it wasn’t just like any mission most people would embark on. HGTV has nothing on what Jesus did! No mission on earth by any human being could ever be greater than His mission. Jesus had the greatest mission and when He completed it, it was literally earth moving. The temple veil tore I two and we gained direct access to the Throne of God!

There’s an old Petra song I really like and this past weekend, it came back to mind as it does every year at Easter. The song is “It Is Finished.” There is no accomplishment in all of life that could ever be as great as what Jesus did for us on the Cross.

His mission was completed. The mission is now passed down to us to carry on. We must carry His mission out and spread the Good News! His death was just the beginning of amazing things He would continue to do in the lives of so many who accept Him!

As David Phelps' song says, “This was the end of the beginning.”

 

[Illuminator]

YouTube Video Devo

“It Is Finished”
John 19:30 NIV
When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

I don’t know about you, but I am a person who likes to begin a project and see it through till the end. I don’t like starting something and not finishing it. Drives me crazy. It has happened more times that I would like and there’s still many projects around my house that have remained unfinished. Life happens and you just get distracted and say you’ll get to finish some day.

Many of us like the feeling of finishing something we start. There’s a great sense of accomplishment when we finish something we have worked on for a short period of time or a long period of time. We really like watching the HGTV shows of home renovations and also the show of Building Off The Grid that shows people putting in way more than expected hours, days and months to build a home they’ve envisioned for years.

When we finish a project, it’s great to say the words, “It is finished.” There’s nothing like that feeling of accomplishment.

As we have just celebrated Easter weekend, I so often think of the words spoken in John where Jesus said “It Is Finished.” Those are VERY powerful words. He came with a mission and completed it. But it wasn’t just like any mission most people would embark on. HGTV has nothing on what Jesus did! No mission on earth by any human being could ever be greater than His mission. Jesus had the greatest mission and when He completed it, it was literally earth moving. The temple veil tore I two and we gained direct access to the Throne of God!

There’s an old Petra song I really like and this past weekend, it came back to mind as it does every year at Easter. The song is “It Is Finished.” There is no accomplishment in all of life that could ever be as great as what Jesus did for us on the Cross.

His mission was completed. The mission is now passed down to us to carry on. We must carry His mission out and spread the Good News! His death was just the beginning of amazing things He would continue to do in the lives of so many who accept Him!

As David Phelps' song says, “This was the end of the beginning.”

It all started with a Sunday morning service at the local Evangelical church which my wife and I attended during our last year at seminary. The preacher had just finished an exciting sermon on the meaning of Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary. But something he said stuck with me. In the middle of the message, he raised a simple question: “In John 19:30, what did Jesus mean when he cried, ‘It is finished’? What does the ‘it’ refer to?” Instantly the standard Evangelical answer came to my mind: Jesus’ words signify the completion of our redemption at that moment.

The preacher happened to be a fine Scripture scholar as well as one of my favorite seminary professors, so I was taken aback when he proceeded to show quite convincingly that Jesus could not have meant that. For one thing, Paul teaches that our redemption is not complete without Jesus being “raised for our justification” (Rom. 4:25). The preacher also showed how the standard Evangelical answer is taken from theology and read into the text (“eisegesis”), instead of being drawn from the text interpreted in context (“exegesis”). To my amazement, he candidly admitted he didn’t have a satisfying answer to his own question.

I couldn’t hear the rest of his sermon. My mind began racing ahead in search of a solution. It only came after graduation, in my first year as a pastor while studying Scripture in preparing a series of sermons on what we Presbyterians called “the Lord’s Supper.”
it's long, but worth the read