It Is Finished

It Is Finished

These words spoken by Jesus on the cross have inspired many songs, sermons, and stories about His crucifixion. I have spent many hours looking at these three little words to try and understand what Jesus meant when He spoke them just minutes before He died.

Some obvious conclusions:

1, His life was over.

I do not believe this to be the meaning. He knew He would rise from the dead. He had already spoken that to the disciples.

2. The price for sin has been paid.

This cannot be the meaning of the phrase. Jesus had not yet gone to heaven to place His blood on the real Mercy Seat in Heaven. That is when sin was remitted.

3. Salvation was provided for all.

One of the most important events to provide salvation was the resurrection. Until Jesus was resurrected, ascended to Heaven, and seated at the right hand of God, our salvation was not yet complete.

4. All prophecy had been fulfilled regarding the life of Jesus.

Again, all prophecy had not yet been fulfilled. Jesus rose on the third day.

5. Jesus had fulfilled the Law by living a sinless life.

This is true. However, I feel there is more to it than just fulfilling the Law.

6. Jesus had fulfilled all righteousness.

Romans 8:1-4 (ESV) There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

            This is also the reason Jesus was baptized by John.

Matthew 3:13-15 (ESV) Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented.

Everything Jesus did in his life on earth was done to fulfill righteousness. If He was not righteous, He could not have served as the eternal sacrifice to provide for forgiveness of sin.

The meaning of the phrase is subjective since we were never told explicitly what Jesus meant. However, there are some clues that help us understand potentially what was meant.  The Greek word used for “finished” in the phrase uttered by Jesus on the cross only appears two times in scripture. The other time is in the previous verse in John.

John 19:28-30 (ESV) After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.” A jar full of 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.

John tells us that Jesus knew all was finished (same word used here as in verse 30). He then asked for something to drink in order to fulfill a prophetic word. If “It Is Finished” was in regard to fulfillment of prophecy He would not have spoken the first “finished” before the prophetic word was fulfilled.

Everything we have recorded of Jesus’ life tells us He was on mission. From the early years, the trip to Jerusalem, He told Mary and Joseph that “He must be about His Father’s business.” His baptism by John was “to fulfill righteousness.” This was the first primary objective of His life, and the only one for which Jesus was directly responsible.

Once His death was accomplished, the next step would be that of Father God, to raise Him from the dead. More things would be accomplished after the resurrection, but “It Is Finished” ended thirty-three years of a man, Jesus, living a life totally surrendered to God, empowered by the Holy Spirit. He fulfilled His mission of preserving His flesh, and blood, from ever experiencing sin, and thus became the spotless Lamb offered for the forgiveness of the sin of mankind.

The Names of God

The blog series on The Names of God has been published as a collection and is available on Kindle. Click Here to check it out.

The paperback is also available at CreateSpace.com. Click Here to check it out.
It will soon be available on Amazon.com as well.

I hope you enjoy reading it. It can be a valuable tool in your study of the Bible.

The Intersection of The Law and Grace

The Intersection of The Law and Grace

I’ve been spending the past few days looking at Grace and The Law. Some very interesting things have turned up as I’ve searched through the various passages that mention these topics by name. However, I’ve come across another topic of interest that is at the very crossroads of these two gifts from God.

I plan to spend more time on this later, but I have come to believe that the Mercy Seat is the very place where our salvation was provided. If you remember, the Mercy Seat that was atop The Ark of the Covenant in the Moses’ tabernacle is where God’s presence was found on earth. He met with the High Priest once a year when the priest brought the blood of the lamb to atone for the sins of the people.

If you read Hebrews you find out that the plans for the tabernacle given to Moses by God were taken from the dimensions of the real tabernacle in Heaven. This is where Jesus took His own blood, the blood of The Spotless Lamb, the Son of God, and placed it there as an eternal sacrifice to not just cover sin, but remove it from us forever.

It is at the Mercy Seat where God’s Justice that demanded death for violation of The Law came in contact with God’s Grace, His desire to redeem man and restore their relationship lost in the Garden; God the Father in agreement with God the Son, in the middle of God’s Presence, the Holy Spirit. The Triune God had completed His plan of redemption.

Once we are In Christ we live our life from that place, the Mercy Seat, immersed in the presence of God forever.

More On The Law

More On The Law

I read, with interest, a quote regarding law from a very unlikely source; Bob Dylan. He said, “If you choose to live outside the law, you must follow the law more stringently than anyone else.” In this particular case he was speaking of civil law, and he’s absolutely correct.

An example of this is someone who decides to drive after having a few drinks, or smoking some pot. They follow the laws of the road strictly by driving below the speed limit, coming to a complete stop at stop signs, and so forth. The reason is they do not want to get caught violating the one law they chose to disregard: driving under the influence.

This process is flawed from the beginning. Because of their impaired state they cannot successfully adhere to the remaining laws even though they try very hard. There is a similar thing that occurs with someone trying to obey The Law of Moses.

If a person chooses to try to obtain their righteousness by keeping The Law, we already know from scripture that they will fail. However, people still try and fall victim to becoming the judge of others in the process. If you attempt to keep The Law by your own power and realize that you missed it in a particular area, you become aware of everyone else that fails in the same area. Not only do you notice it, you become very critical of them by pointing out their sin to others, and possibly even to them directly.

This is one of the reasons the scribes and Pharisees were such vicious people. They knew in their hearts they were living beneath God’s standards, but they attacked anyone who outwardly violated The Law. This is a defense mechanism. If you can deflect the attention away from yourself no one will pay attention to your shortcomings.

This is why they despised Jesus. He always saw through their smoke screen of accusation and spoke directly to the sin in their own heart.

What are we to do? First of all we must admit that we are not capable of keeping The Law. When we acknowledge it in ourselves we can then accept the reality that no one else can keep it either. Then we must accept, by faith, the salvation provided for us by grace through Christ. At that point we become ambassadors to share this Good News with others.

Let us lay aside a critical spirit and embrace those we meet today with the love of God that has come to us through Jesus. Let’s be redemptive in our approach to relationships so others can experience a restored relationship with Father.

More On Grace

More On Grace

So, what role, if any, does The Law have in the life of the Believer? Jesus said that not one iota would pass from The Law until all is accomplished.

Matthew 5:17-20 (ESV) “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

If The Law is still in effect for the Believer (not one iota would pass from it) then we must keep EVERY law, no exceptions, in order to attain righteousness. You cannot omit (relax) ANY of them, or teach anyone to omit any of them. The scribes and Pharisees were those considered blameless in The Law. Your righteousness based on keeping The Law would have to exceed theirs, who were blameless.

The sad truth about the scribes and Pharisees is they did “relax” some of The Law, otherwise they would never have been able to keep it.

Jesus is not trying to tell His followers that they must continue to keep The Law. Far from it! Instead He is assuring them that once He has “fulfilled The Law” that our righteousness would be based on something greater than The Law. If we would identify with His death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seating at the right hand of Father, and receive the gifts that Christ sent us in the Holy Spirit, our righteousness would be based solely on His sacrifice, not our own keeping of The Law.

The only way our righteousness could “exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees,” who were blameless, is for us to be judged based on the righteousness of Jesus.

Romans 3:21-26 (ESV) But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and 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. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

The Law was necessary so Christ could come and fulfill it, allowing us to partake of the salvation provided by His sacrifice through faith. Give Him praise!

Grace Lost, and Grace Restored

Grace Lost, and Grace Restored

When I was growing up sugar was sold in five-pound bags. It had been for years. One day while buying groceries, I was comparing prices and noticed a larger-than-normal difference between the name-brand and store-brand sugar. It’s then that I noticed the store-brand was a four-pound bag, as opposed to the name-brand that was still five pounds.

Before long the store-brand was changed to a four-pound bag, but kept the price at the five-pound bag price. That’s a 20% increase in price and no one ever raised an eyebrow. In these days of low-inflation, manufacturers have to get creative to raise profits without causing customer push-back. Customers reached for their trusty bag of sugar and never even noticed the size difference.

Genesis 3:1 (ESV) Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made.

If current marketing ploys can pull off a coup like the sugar down-sizing, how much more capable is the enemy? Adam and Eve were not gullible. They were created in God’s image, which included a free will to choose. They knew what God had told them about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. However, when the serpent urged them to partake of the fruit of the tree, they considered what he said.

“Why wouldn’t God want us to know good and evil?”, they thought. Without even realizing it they had broken covenant with the One who loved them unconditionally. God had kept that one tree from them so they could love others unconditionally. He knew that the moment they became aware of good and evil their lives would change forever.

You see, knowing the difference between good and evil gives man the ability to judge another man. The only problem is that he doesn’t judge them based on the whole truth, only what he deems to be either good or evil. Without being God, man still presumes to know enough to pass judgment on another man.

With one motion the enemy brought man down from God’s level to his level. Man never envisioned that the first evil they would encounter was their own. They fell from Grace that day. Knowing good and evil made them aware of their separation from God. They feared what He might do to them. They hid, and mankind has been hiding ever since. It is only by a new encounter with Grace that man can come out of hiding.

Innocence was lost, but through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ we can once again regain innocence and be restored to right relationship with our Creator. Jesus took away the curse of “knowing good and evil” and restored access to the “life” of God. That is the Great Exchange: our death for His life. Grace has returned!