THE SIXTH “WORDS FROM THE CROSS”

After Jesus drank the wine vinegar on the hyssop plant, He uttered the sixth “words from the cross”.  Only John recorded this:

“When He had received the drink, Jesus said, ‘It is finished.’”  (John 19:30)

The word Jesus used here is one of the richest in the entire New Testament.  The three word sentence in English, “It is finished.” is the transliteration of one word in the original: Tetelestai.  It simply means, “paid in full”.  Ancient tax receipts written on papyri have been found by archaeologists with this exact same word.  When the tax collector wrote Tetelestai on your bill it meant that you had fully paid your bill.  You didn’t owe the government anything else.  You were free!

When Jesus used that word, He was crying out that the debt for sin has been paid in full…it is finished…prophecy is fulfilled…God’s justice has been fully satisfied…sin has been totally atoned for…salvation is completed…the victory has been won! The writer of Hebrews echoed this truth when he wrote about Christ’s crucifixion as the final and perfect fulfillment of all the blood sacrifices in the Old Testament:

“This is the blood of the covenant which God has commanded you to keep…In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness…Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one, He entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence…But now He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of Himself.  Just as man is destined to die once and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people…we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all…because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.”  (Hebrews 9:20-28; 10:10,14)

When Jesus cried out Tetelestai, He was declaring that the work of redemption was fully completed.  Everything that the earthly tabernacle and many animal sacrifices pointed to was now completed…fulfilled…finished.  The earthly shadow of the heavenly reality was totally fulfilled by Christ.  There was no more need for animal sacrifices in the temple.  As the holy “Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), the perfect sacrifice had now been made.  This was the fulfillment of what Christ had told His disciples the night before His crucifixion at the last Passover meal, when He gave them the wine to drink.  “This is My blood of the new covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”  (Matthew 26:28)

Because of Christ’s virgin birth…sinless life….and perfect death – there was absolutely nothing left to be done.  Not only was His physical and spiritual suffering of spirit, soul and body completed, but everything necessary for our full and final redemption was finished.

Notice that Jesus did not say, “I am finished.”  But rather, “It is finished.”  The cross did not “finish off” Jesus.  Rather, on the cross, Jesus “finished off” sin and all of its consequences.  So this is a clear clarion “cry of victory” rather than in any way a “cry of defeat.”  We know by coupling this word with the words that immediately followed, that Jesus cried out with a “loud voice”.  (Matthew 27:50; Mark 15:37; Luke 23:46)

Tetelestai proves that Jesus died with a loud shout of victory! He did not die with a quiet, gasping whisper of defeat.  As God’s Messiah, He had fully faced and defeated our sin and all of its consequences on the cross, just like He would defeat our last enemy – death – in three days through His resurrection from the grave.  (I Corinthians 15:26)  As a result, our salvation is secured for time and eternity because He has written across all of our unpayable debts to God: “Paid in full!”

There is a praise chorus that I love to sing that expresses this simple yet profound truth. I don’t know the author but the words go like this:

“He paid a debt He did not owe.
  I owed a debt I could not pay.
I needed someone to wash my sins away.
And now I sing a brand new song,
amazing grace all day long.
Christ Jesus paid the debt that I could never pay!”

“Tetelestai!  It is finished!”