The darkest day in history, nearly 2,000 years distant. A day when, at noon, the earth went dark. On this day, remembered throughout history as “Good Friday,” there hung three men on a cross, with a gathering crowd, suffering the most extreme version of capital punishment known to history. Each of them was considered guilty of crimes — the outer two of defrauding fellow citizens, the man in the middle accused by religious leaders of defrauding God. Hung around nine o’clock in the morning, these men labored to breathe as the spectacle grew. The crowd jeered the man in the middle, and one of the men on his side joined in the chorus.
At three o’clock PM, the man on the middle cross declared, “It is finished.” But what was this man — who claimed to be the Son of God — declaring complete? Could this simple declaration just signal being worn out and done suffering? Or, does it mean something wildly different? The shout of “It is finished” from the lips of Jesus as he hung, broken and bloodied, was not a simple sigh of resignation, but rather a pronouncement that what He’d come to accomplish has been accomplished.
The Meaning of teleō
From the Greek word teleō, we see the declaration of something being finished. This word was used throughout the Greek-speaking world when speaking of the fulfillment of something, or something brought to its end, its completion. This comes from a family of words, tel-, which carries the weight of something being brought to its appointed conclusion. It is not merely a simple cry of exhaustion, but a declaration of mission accomplished. Some have declared that this phrase means, “the debt is paid,” which theologically is true, but does not fit within the pure definition of the word. The focus is not on what was given from the cross, but what was accomplished there — the mission that was brought to its final conclusion.
The Mission Accomplished
The man who hung on the middle cross was the Son of God, Jesus Christ. We are given insight into this in the opening verses of the Apostle John’s gospel when he writes, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”1 The gospel accounts have clear declarations of Christ’s mission, especially when he says, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”2
Throughout the gospel we read of this mission that Christ came to accomplish. That was the will of the Father. He said in John 4: “Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.’”3 Then again, he said, “ …For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me.”4 It was for this reason alone that Christ lived in the flesh, fulfilled the law, and ultimately hung between two criminals on this Good Friday. Hours before his death he even prayed, “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do…”5
The declaration of Christ that “It is finished,” is no sign of resignation, but a triumphal declaration of “mission accomplished.” The work that the Father gave Him to do, he did and now it was finished. Paul recounts this in Philippians when he writes,
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.6
He was “obedient to the point of death,” because He was given the awesome responsibility to redeem mankind and now — at this dark hour — He’d accomplished just that. It is finished.
Implications of Christ’s Finished Work
So far removed from the original Good Friday, we can look back and see certain theological implications for ourselves in the declaration that “it is finished.” These implications for us are not definitional in terms of what the cry meant, but how it is applied. Christ’s mission was completed; all that the Father gave Him to accomplish He did. That finished work unfolds in three distinct, but unified, ways: financial, military, and judicial. Now, because of that completed work, we see a financial implication: our debt to God has been canceled. There’s also a military implication: Christ conquered death, hell, and the grave, disarming rulers and powers of the air through the cross. And, finally, there’s a judicial implication that allows those in Christ to be free of condemnation.
Throughout Scripture, there is a common theme that our sin against our Holy God is considered a debt. Many of the teachings of Jesus have this very theme within them, and famously, we are even told that the payment for our sin — our wages — is death.7 In many ways, we have a debt to our Creator because we’ve profaned His holiness; a debt that we cannot pay of our own accord. This is why the substitutionary sacrifices of the Old Testament foreshadow what took place on this original Good Friday. These sacrifices of animals covered the sin-debt of the Nation of Israel with blood. When Christ accomplished all that the Father had given Him to do, it provided an opportunity for our debt to be cancelled as well. Paul writes in Colossians, “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.”8 On the cross stands the blood payment for our sin.
Second, the finished work of Christ has a military implication too. For though He seemed defeated at the cross — breathing His last — it is clear that no one did this to Him, but He did this willingly as a substitute in our place. His death set the parameters for victory. By willingly laying down His life, he rendered the power of sin useless against those found in Him and even “disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.”9 There truly is victory in Jesus, our Savior forever.
Finally, Christ’s death — His completed work — has a judicial angle as well. Throughout the book of Romans, Paul set the scene as a cosmic courtroom with God sitting at the bench as a Judge. Before Him stood us and our sin, with Paul essentially acting as a prosecuting attorney. He lays out the case against us, that we are wholly unrighteous before a Holy God because “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”10 Yet, when Christ cried “it is finished,” He secured before God the Father our justification. Justification is a theological term that means “to be declared righteous,” and it is only made possible through Christ atoning sacrifice on our behalf and our faith in Him as our Lord. Paul writes that even though we’re all sinners we “are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.”11
The cry of “it is finished,” Christ’s message from the cross, should not leave us unchanged. It was not a defeated resignation, but a triumphal declaration that rendered the power of sin and hell useless. All that God had given Christ to do, he did. And, in doing so, He justified us before our Holy and righteous Judge. For us the only response is repentance and faith. We cannot be left the same once encountering our crucified Lord. No, we must recognize what Christ accomplished on our behalf which will lead us to a point where we can “…confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”12
What was finished on that original Good Friday was not Christ’s life, but His work. That’s why this Friday — the darkest day in history — is called “good.”
1 John 1:1-2, 14; unless otherwise stated all Scripture references taken from: The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (Crossway Publishers: Wheaton, IL, 2011).
2 Luke 19:10
3 John 4:34
4 John 5:36
5 John 17:4
6 Philippians 2:5-11
7 Romans 6:23
8 Colossians 2:13-14
9 Colossians 2:15
10 Romans 3:23
11 Romans 3:24-25a
12 Romans 10:9-10