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Sermon preached at
The Church of the Divine
Patience
On April 6, 2007
The Sixth Word from
the Cross
IT IS FINISHED
It Is Finished but It Is Not Over
Just moments before Jesus
died, but not immediately before He died, Jesus spoke the sixth word from the cross,
the last but one word from the cross: "It is finished." Yes, a
perfect life of love is finished. No work was left undone.
The Greek word used is tetelestai, "It is finished."
In the Gospel according to
What exactly did Jesus
refer to when He said, "It is finished"? In other words ‘What was
finished?’
Jesus was fully conscious. He
knew what he was talking. He meant what he said. So, what did he mean?
In my meditations on this
verse I wanted to take an honest look at it. When do we usually say ‘It is
finished’? We say those words when we have finished doing some task that has
been given to us; when we have completed doing some work that we had intended
to finish doing; when we had accomplished something that had been our aim
and goal. So, even in the case of Jesus it must have been the same
experience of having completed some task that was given to him that had made
him say ‘It is finished’.
And I found this to be
correct.
Jesus himself has said: “I
have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do.” (
What was the work?
The work was to do the will of God. The work was God’s work. The work was given by God.
Hebrews 10: 7 reads: Then
said I, Lo, I come to do thy will,
O God. Listen to the passages from John’s gospel: John 4:34: "…..my food
is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work."
John 5:36: "for the very
work that the Father has given me
to finish, and which I am doing testifies that the Father has sent me."
We have a lesson here.
What is the will of God for
us?
The will of God for us
according to Jesus is to believe in the words of Jesus so that we may have
everlasting life and be raised to life at the last day.
And what is eternal life? Go
back to Jesus again: “And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou
hast sent.” (
For
Jesus, God comes first, always.
Know God. Love God. Serve
God. You know, the work of Jesus was only this: Glorifying God. Glorifying God is
by knowing him; by loving him; by serving him; by doing his will. Even in the
prayer he taught us, the first four acts of prayer are: 1) To call God ‘Our
Father’; 2) to glorify His name; 3) To will for the coming of His kingdom; and 4)
to live in such a way that God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven. God
was everything for Jesus. The very name ‘Jesus’
contains this idea. Jesus is Greek. Its
Hebrew equivalent is ‘Yahoshua’. And
Yahoshua
means ‘God
is Salvation’. Well, this is what Jesus also preached and
practiced: God is salvation’. He loved God and his fellow men perfectly. That
was salvation for Jesus. It was service to God and man. Love thy God, love thy
neighbor.
The task is finished. The
work is finished. The goal is reached. The mission is accomplished.
Jesus’ work, his goal in
life, and the work that God had given him was to glorify God on earth. Get back
to John 17:4. ‘I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work
which thou gavest me to do.’
How did he glorify God?
Jesus glorified God by
submitting himself to his will.
Glorifying God is submitting
one’s self to the will of God. It is surrendering one’s self to the will of
God. At every point in his life we see Jesus submitting to the will of God.
Even in the
Our Muslim brothers have
utilized this concept skillfully. For the very word ‘Islam’ means ‘submission’
or ‘surrender’.
Once, a certain Professor
from
(There is a verse in the Quran wherein Jesus describes himself as
the servant of Allah. He is Abdullah. ‘Abd’ means servant. Prophet
Muhammad
confined the meaning of the word Allah to mean just God.)
The Bible tells us that Jesus
was the servant of God. By being the servant of God he surrendered to the will
of God.
Philippians 2 : 7,8 reads: But made
himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in
the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.
The sixth word from the
cross, ‘It is finished’ points to
this submission even to the point of dying. Jesus glorified God even by laying
down his life for God. When he said ‘It
is finished’ he meant his task of glorifying God on earth is finished.
Yes, Jesus glorified God in
his words as well as in his actions.
Christians had always bowed
in worship before Jesus; but they had rarely undertaken to understand his life in
its own historical environment and his teachings in the sense in which
Jesus meant them to be understood by his hearers. Jesus had realized the life
of God in the soul of man and the life of man in the love of God. That was the
secret of his life; he
knew the Father.
Jesus began his preaching
with the call: ”The time is fulfilled; the
All the teaching of Jesus and
all his thinking centred about the hope of the
The
fundamental value in the
Love is the
society-making value. Love
creates fellowship.
Love equalizes.
Jesus desired to found a society
resting on love, service and equality.
Jesus in his life taught this
and also practiced this ethics of the
There is something not finished.
What is not finished is the
coming of the
Back to
Next,
it was God who glorified Jesus by raising him from the dead.
Like
Jesus, let us glorify God in our lives, and God will glorify us in His own way
and also by raising us too from the dead at the last day.
It is finished, but it is not over.