Episode Details

It is Finished

Remsen Bible Fellowship, 04/17/2025, Good Friday

Why is Good Friday called “good”? How could the day of the history’s greatest crime—the unjust execution of the only innocent man to ever live—be a “good” day? The answer is found in three simple words which Jesus uttered from the cross: “It is finished.” We find those words in the nineteenth chapter of the gospel according to John.

In John 19:28-30 we read,

After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.” A jar full of the sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.”

I want to meditate for a few minutes this evening on those words in verse 30—“It is finished.” To what, exactly, was Jesus referring?

Public Ministry

We can see, first of all, a reference to his earthly ministry. Jesus’ outward, crowd-facing, ministry was completed at the cross. Though Paul mentions Jesus appearing to over 500 people at one time after the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15), this seems to primarily be as evidence of his victorious resurrection from the dead, not a continuation of the teaching and healing ministry which he had initiated some three years earlier.

Even before the cross, Jesus’ focus had shifted from the crowds and onto his immediate followers. John 17:9, “I am praying for them [his disciples]. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.” Just before this, in John 17:6-8, we read: “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you. For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.”

Jesus had come to make the Father known, both through his actions and his words. Though no one had ever seen God the Father, Jesus made him known—one of the great themes of John’s gospel (John 1:18). He did this, to be sure, through his powerful actions, but those actions were generally meant to illustrate and validate the authority of his words. Thus we read in John 5:19-20,

“Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel.”

At the point Jesus spoke those words in John 5, he had turned water into wine, healed a man’s sick son, restored a man’s ability to walk after he had been lame for 38 years. And Jesus would multiply signs of power over the physical realm: feeding the five thousand, walking on water, healing a man born blind, and raising Lazarus from the dead. John tells us that these are but a small part of a list so long that, were it all written down, the whole world could not contain the books (John 21:25). But all of these mighty works, all of this powerful, authoritative, and God-revealing teaching, were but the tip of the iceberg. There was greater power to show, greater love to demonstrate, more of God’s character to be revealed.

Jesus’ public ministry was completed before the cross. His public teaching, which had led to this moment, was finished before he hung there. His public miracles of healing and provision, these, too, were completed before the cross. Something else was completed—finished—as he hung there on that tree.

Lifted and Planted

In John chapter three, Jesus makes a cryptic-seeming s