It is Finished

Christians reenact the Passion Narrative every year. We know that Christ’s crucifixion is not the end of the story. Yet as much as we might long to turn the page, this event has such gravity—the Son of God dying on a cross—that it cannot help but pull as backward to itself. The Gospel of John reminds of this with Jesus’s final statement, “It is finished.” Preaching on this passage, Erik contrasted what the powers who collaborated to kill Jesus might have thought these words meant with what Jesus himself was confessing:

The Romans intended crucifixion to finish people. They used this method of execution to end storylines they didn’t like. There is a paradox about crucifixions: they were meant for everyone to witness, but no one to talk about. The victim was lifted high so that everyone could see, but what they saw was revolting: a naked, bloody body, suffocating in agony. You couldn’t speak about this without ruining conversations, turning stomachs, breaking the rules of polite society. If you witnessed a crucifixion, you’d never forget it. But you might never talk about it. That is why despite thousands of crucifixions, there is so little written about them. The point was public silence: Rome wanted to utterly discredit and humiliate the victim. The empire declares: “This person, their life, their cause is finished.” “It is finished” is exactly what Rome wanted to hear, and with it all the powers of sin, death, and evil. They wanted such an admission of defeat.

Yet when Jesus proclaimed “it is finished” wasn’t an admission of defeat, it was a confession of faith. He knew his faithfulness to God meant death, but he also that God’s faithfulness to him meant life.