It is finished! Beautiful word. Blessed salvation. It is the sixth and second to last cross word. Jesus spoke one more time after that. He said, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” Before he surrendered his spirit to the Father, Jesus said, “It is finished.”

What is three words in English is one word in Greek: te-tel-es-tai! The dying Christ came out of the darkness of the cross, and the whole universe came with him. He said, “I thirst!” He thirsted after his immense effort to accomplish salvation. The bystanders put a sponge full of vinegar to his mouth. With that taste of vinegar stinging his cracked lips, tingling on his teeth, and biting his parched throat, he uttered one last, glorious shout. With a voice empowered by the divine, he uttered a shout that reverberated throughout the universe: “It is finished!”

That shout made heaven and the angels rejoice, and it made hell and Satan shudder. The hosts of fiends that were so active at the cross must have paused, looked questioningly at each other, and asked, “What is finished?” They had been so busy. Busy all his life. Busy at his birth, so that Herod rose up to slay Jesus. Busy in the minds of Jesus’ enemies. Busy even on the lips of his own disciples. Busy in the chambers of the high priest and the council room of the Sanhedrin. Busy on the lips and tongues of the false witnesses, busy at Gabbatha, busy in the hammer blows of the soldier who nailed Jesus’ hands and feet to the cross, and busy in the throats of the mob shouting, “Crucify him!” Busy on the road leading past Golgotha as the crowds jeered, mocked, and reviled the dying Christ. They had worked so hard to bring him to the cross, to crucify Jesus, to finish him, and to bury him once and for all. Then at the bitter end of the cross, he shouted victoriously, “It is finished!”

What is finished?

The victory cry from the cross of Calvary reverberated not only in heaven above and in the portals of Satan’s kingdom beneath, but that cry also reverberates down through history wherever the gospel is preached. The victory shout of the dying Christ was a one-word summary of the whole gospel of Jesus Christ and his cross that would be preached, that is being preached, and that has been preached throughout all the world. The gospel, if it is to be gospel, must declare the cross of Christ. The preaching must declare about the cross of Christ what Jesus shouted about his own cross before he gave up the ghost: “It is finished!” By this one word everyone who hears the gospel can test whether what they hear is indeed the gospel or whether it is a lie by which men contradict the dying Christ.

It is finished! All the work that is necessary for the church of Jesus Christ to have fellowship with God is finished. All the obedience that is necessary for the believer to have fellowship with God is finished. All the labor that was necessary to take away the stain of guilt, the punishment of sin, and the pollution of transgression is finished. All of salvation is accomplished.

All was finished in the perfect obedience and lifelong suffering of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ assumed human nature in order to suffer. He assumed the human nature and became a real man in order to suffer in the same human nature in which the offense of his people had been committed. When he was made man, incarnate in the womb of Mary, he was found in fashion as a man by the law of God, and Jesus was made sin and a curse for his people. Because he was their head and representative, all their sins were imputed to him, and he suffered for those sins. In all his suffering he obeyed, and in all his obedience he suffered.

He suffered during his whole life. He suffered as the object of the wrath of God every moment of his existence. He suffered in the womb because for his sake there was no room in the inn. He suffered in the stable as the world rejected him. He suffered as a child. He suffered in the desert as the devil attacked him. He suffered in his ministry as the Son of Man who had no place to lay his head. His enemies whispered, despised, criticized, contradicted, glared at, and flattered him. They plotted against him and tried to entrap him and to incite him to anger and to mistakes. He was rejected by his own brethren and was thronged by a crushing multitude, and afterward they all left until only twelve remained, and one of them was a traitor and a devil. The Jews begged him to leave their country, wished him ill, and called him the most terrible names. They envied him. They tried to kill him. He suffered during his whole life. He suffered as perfection itself among sinners. Was there any sorrow like his sorrow?

He suffered especially at the end of his life. One who ate bread with him lifted up his heel against him, sold him for thirty pieces of silver, and betrayed him with a kiss. The weight of wrath pressed out of him his bloody sweat, a look into the cup that he had to drink nearly killed him, and he was sorrowful unto death. All the while he was attended by sleeping disciples who soon were offended at him, forsook him, and fled. The mob with swords and staves bound him as a thief. He suffered in his trial before the members of the Sanhedrin: all their abuse, their feigned righteousness, their hypocrisy, the false witnesses, and the lies. The oath! They put the Son of God under oath. He suffered in his trial before Pilate and by the gratuitous brutality of Pilate’s soldiers and then before Herod and his men, at first desiring to see Jesus and quickly tiring of the silent Christ. He was exchanged for the murderer, thief, and rebel, Barabbas. Jesus’ whole nation shouted for his crucifixion.

He suffered at the cross most of all. All his life he lived in its shadow. In the garden he shrank from the cross as a horrible reality, and it filled his soul with agony. The cross was not merely an aspect of the suffering of Christ, but the cross was the central part of his suffering. He marched toward the cross, and the shadow became larger and darker the closer he came. The cross was terrible because its essence was the wrath of God. The form that wrath took was the curse. Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree! When God in his holiness maintains himself against the sinner, God curses the sinner. That curse is the living word of God that works the damnation of that sinner. By the utterance of God—by the word of God—everything is and is maintained. To say that there is a word of God that works the sinner’s damnation means that everything—every particle of creation, everything possessed by the sinner, and every moment of that sinner’s existence in that creation—works his damnation. That was the cross. That especially was the darkness at the cross. Three hours of terrible, furious, hellish darkness. God forsook Jesus.

After thirty-three and a half years of suffering that wrath of God and after three hours of horrible darkness, Jesus took a last taste of vinegar—the last of the vinegar, the last of his suffering. And from his lips came the cry that shook heaven above and earth beneath and hell under the earth: “It is finished!”

The suffering is finished. He accomplished all the work of salvation. It is ended, finished, completed.

More than that, finished means that the plan is completed. In all his lifelong suffering, but especially at his cross, he finished a grand plan, a master plan of salvation.

God had eternally decreed all of Jesus’ suffering to be the perfect and only foundation of salvation. Salvation, the salvation of God’s elect, did not begin at the cross but in eternity. The cross, according to the Christ of the cross, demands that we ask about its origin. Where did that cross come from? What explains that cross and all the details of that cross? Did man conceive of the cross? Did Jesus’ enemies devise the idea of the cross? Did the man Jesus Christ propose the idea of the cross? No, the cross is God’s, wholly God’s, in every detail and from eternity.

In his eternal decree God expressed his unchanging and eternal love for his people and his will to bless them with unspeakable blessedness: that they know him, have his fellowship and friendship, worship him, and praise him as the God of all grace and mercy. Since God’s decree is not a dead blueprint but God’s living and active will, he refers to all Jesus’ lifelong suffering as it was exquisitely carried out by God in order to accomplish God’s eternal will for the salvation of his elect people. Salvation—salvation full and free, salvation and every benefit of salvation—is accomplished, finished, brought to completion, just as God decreed and governed it.

Satisfaction is finished. The salvation of God’s people demands satisfaction because the justice of the righteous God against whom they had sinned demands satisfaction. Jesus made the perfect payment for sin, so that all the punishment of God’s wrath against the sins of his people was finished at the cross, and there is no more punishment for sin. Finished!

Redemption is finished. With that satisfaction Jesus accomplished redemption. He purchased his people from the power and bondage of sin, hell, death, and the grave. He paid to God what God was owed for their sins, so that they escape the punishment that their sins deserved. Finished!

Righteousness is finished. Jesus fulfilled all righteousness. Everything that God required, all his demands, as those are expressed in the law of God, Jesus fulfilled. He performed the whole law for all his people and thereby accomplished their righteousness. He earned for them the forgiveness of sins and the verdict of perfection. Their whole salvation and all their blessedness rest on his work of righteousness. Finished!

Reconciliation is finished. Oh, Jesus did not reconcile God to his people. Jesus came from God. He was God’s gift in love to those whom he loved. Jesus reconciled God’s people to God. They were enemies in their minds because of sin. They ran from God, fled from him, hated him, and sinned more against him. God reconciled them to himself in the cross. He removed the barrier of sin and accomplished the righteousness by which they can stand before him and live with him. Heaven opened, the covenant confirmed, fellowship with God realized, the way to the Father made plain. Finished!

God’s plan of salvation saved not only people but saved also his whole creation with his elect people at its heart and Christ at its head. God planned to wrap up all things into one, to join heaven and earth, to live with his people in eternal happiness forever in a new creation. God’s eternal plan to join all things into one in Christ Jesus; to unite heaven and earth; to destroy sin, death, hell, and the grave once and for all—finished!

Every benefit and blessing of salvation, every saving act of God on you, in you, and for you is to be traced to the cross and the work of Christ at the cross. He did all—all that God had planned and determined and all that was necessary to save his whole elect church. Every benefit stored up in him: of God he is made to us wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.

Oh, please do not say, “But what about all the work Jesus does from heaven? Does his work in heaven not contradict his words, ‘It is finished’?” Jesus ascended into heaven, and he received the Spirit and pours out by that Spirit his heavenly graces on his people. But understand that all that work of Jesus is based on his work on the cross. All salvation was accomplished at the cross. All Jesus’ work at the cross was rooted in God’s eternal decree to save his elect by Christ and in Christ. Yes, yes, Jesus Christ pours out on his people heavenly graces: he regenerates them, calls them, and works faith in their hearts, and they really do repent and believe. And he justifies them and sanctifies them; and by virtue of that work of Christ, they really do good works. But understand that nothing of what we do, nothing, nothing at all, adds to the perfect work of Christ on the cross. All these graces flow to us by the work of the Spirit as surely and infallibly as the blood and water poured from Jesus’ wounded side.

He is the complete, perfect, and only savior. He did enough. He did all. There is no other work that we need than his for salvation, blessedness, and fellowship with God now and forever.

When Jesus had received the vinegar, therefore, he said. He said it. He took the vinegar. He gave up the ghost. He! Jesus Christ! He is the only one who can finish salvation and the whole plan of God. God in the flesh. He took that taste of very sour vinegar mingled with bitter gall. In that there is a word to us of how he accomplished all of our salvation.

Vinegar is closely related to the idea of leaven. It is sour. Like leaven, vinegar stands for sin, corruption, and its bitterness and power to dissolve and to work death. And gall, oh gall, tells us of the bitterness of that vinegar; for gall in the Hebrew is snake venom! There was in the suffering of the cross the painful bruise of the serpent to Jesus’ heel. He took a last swig of that bitter wine.

Thus that last taste of the vinegar was also symbolic of all his suffering—all the cruelty, unrighteousness, venom, poison, wrath, corruption, sin, and curse that he suffered. How he received the vinegar—he tasted it and drank it down—is how he finished salvation.

He became one with us and with all our misery. He did that in God’s eternal counsel when he was appointed head of all and thus also made our head and representative. He was made one with us in order to take responsibility for us. In the fullness of time, when he was conceived in the womb of the virgin Mary, he took our flesh. He became flesh and dwelt among us. He entered into our night, misery, suffering, and all our bitterness. He did that as our head and representative and thus as the one who was responsible for all our sins and miseries and tasked to take away all our sin and guilt.

He was made sin and became a curse for us, so that it entered into him and he drank it down as the bitter and terrible cup of God’s wrath. He drank that cup. He drained that cup of God’s wrath and took it away. That cup terrified him. O Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. If there is a way to finish thy will, to accomplish salvation, if there is any other way, any other possibility, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt. To drain this cup willingly was required. It was not poured down his unwilling throat; he had asked for it. He asked for it in order to carry out God’s will; he asked for it in love for God; he asked for it in love for his people. He asked for it in order willingly to drink all of its bitterness, terror, misery, wrath, and anguish—the very anguish, wrath, misery, terror, and bitterness of hell itself. That is what the whole life of Jesus was, the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Was there any sorrow like his sorrow? And that life of sorrow led up to and culminated in the bitter and shameful death of the cross.

He brought that life to an end. After the last taste of bitter vinegar, Jesus bowed his head and gave up the ghost. Finished! His whole life was bitter suffering and sorrow, pain, anguish, and torment for our sins. He bore my sins and your sins, and so also the sins of every one of his elect people.

Oh, do not make him suffer for a man who is not saved. That is the most terrible blasphemy of the cross. If God offers salvation to every man and desires the salvation of every man who hears the preaching of the gospel, and if Christ also died for every man, every single human being who ever lived, then I would empty hell rather than deny that his cross was effectual.

But this adds to the wonder and mystery, the glory and grace of the cross. He tasted death for every kind of human being. He died for black and white, rich and poor, bond and free, king and beggar, for we are all beggars before the cross. For scandalous sinners and respectable sinners. He died for every one of his elect people. He laid down his life for his sheep. He suffered in the place of each one individually, and so he lived and suffered for my sins, was tried for my sins and found guilty by God, was hung on a tree and cursed for my sins, and he had suffered at the cross the full and eternal weight of the wrath of God for my sins.

He said, “It is finished!” He bowed his head and gave up the ghost! He brought that life in which he suffered for you and me to an end. That life of yours and mine in which we had to be punished for our sins, suffer for our sins, go to hell for our sins—that life is finished, it is dead and buried in the grave with Christ.

So it is for everyone who believes in him. For by faith we are dead and buried with him. It is finished. All punishment is past. All righteousness is ours. By faith. And that is God’s gift.

That sixth cross word is terrible, then, for the world. Jesus overcame the world. How that word reverberated as God in human flesh cried with a loud voice. It reverberated and shook the foundation of Satan’s dark kingdom, shook that great red dragon, for Christ had crushed his head. Satan fell from heaven with that word; he fell, fell, fell and has been falling ever since, until he will be cast into the deepest, darkest, and lowest hell, where the fire is unquenched and the worm does not die. That word of Christ is terrible for the unbeliever. There is no comfort in the cross for the unbeliever. It declares that he is finished except he repent and believe. The cross declares to him that so long as he remains impenitent and unbelieving he stands outside salvation, heaven, for this cross word declares Christ as the only way of salvation.

The word is terrible for the man who works for his righteousness, the man who says, “I must do this to have fellowship with God,” who says, “I must do this to have a richer experience of fellowship with God; I must do this to enter rest, have heaven, joy, assurance, and glory.” The word is terrible for the one who says, “It is not enough that Christ died; you must also do this and that to be saved.” He makes Christ a liar. He will be damned for his unbelief in Christ’s word. For one of these things is true: Jesus is not a complete savior, or you must find all things in him necessary for your salvation.

Jesus said “It is finished” for our comfort who believe in him. Shout against all your sins and your guilt and your besetting sin, “It is finished!” Shout against all your suffering and sorrow, “It is finished; this can only be for my glory.” He said that for us, so that we may have comfort and glory in his cross. He did enough. He did everything necessary for your salvation.

Nothing of what you do can ever add to Jesus’ work, and then nothing that you do can ever be a ground or reason for your blessedness. And comfort of comforts, nothing you do can ever confound or bring to nothing that work of Christ.

Believing that word, you too must learn to die. Take up your cross and follow Christ and learn to die willingly—to die to yourself and your own desires and your own will—and to do God’s will, which is only good.