1. Hugh Schoenfield, The Passover Plot (New York: Bantam, 1965).
Tetelestai!: The Triumph Is Complete
to His mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the sour wine, He said, 'It is finished!' And He bowed His head, and gave up His spirit."
Throughout the crucifixion, Jesus Christ was on a divine timetable. God was sovereignly directing every incident. Step by step, each detail of Old Testament prophecy was fulfilled. Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 in particular outlined prophetically the specific features of His death. All of them were carried out precisely.
As He hung on the cross, Jesus knew that "all things had already been accomplished" (John 19:28) — all, that is, but one final prophecy. Psalm 69:21, where Christ speaks prophetically of His own death, says, "For my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink." And so "in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled, [He] said, 'I am thirsty' " (John 19:28). The soldiers responded. They were under divine impetus; God was moving to fulfill the prophecy.
Some have maintained that Jesus was simply a man who purposely engineered details of His life and death to coincide with selected Old Testament prophecies. A well-known book of the 1960s made precisely that argument.1 The author pointed to phrases like "in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled" (John 19:28) as proof that Jesus manipulated circumstances to give the appearance of fulfilling Scripture.
But a mere man trying to mislead people could not have had the kind of sovereign control over events Jesus repeatedly displayed. This verse proves why. It was not Jesus alone, but everyone around Him — His enemies included — who fulfilled precisely the details of Old Testament prophecy: "A jar full of sour wine [vinegar] was standing there; so they put a sponge full of the sour wine upon a branch of hyssop, and brought it up to His mouth" (John 19:29). Exactly as the prophecy had predicted.
Note that the sponge was lifted to His mouth on a branch of hyssop. Hyssop, a long reed with a bushy end, had a history of significance in the Jewish sacrificial system. Exodus 12:22 prescribed hyssop as the tool by which lamb's blood was to be applied to the doorposts and lintel during the first Passover. Hyssop was used in many of the Levitical sacrifices (Lev. 14:4, 6, 49 – 52; Num. 19:6, 18). It was so closely tied to sacrifices for sin that when David wrote his great psalm of penitence, he said, "Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean" (Ps. 51:7).
How fitting, then, that hyssop should be the tool at the sacrifice of the true Passover Lamb! Do you think the Roman soldiers understood the relevance of what they were doing? I am certain they did not. But Jesus sovereignly saw to it that they carried out every detail, although they surely thought they were displaying their power over Him!
1. Hugh Schoenfi eld, Th e Passover Plot (New York: Bantam, 1965).
Jesus Fulfills His Gospel
It Is Finished!
Verse 30 says, "When Jesus therefore had received the sour wine, He said, 'It is finished!' " The Greek expression is only one word — tetelestai. It was not the groan or curse of a victim; it was the proclamation of a victor. It was a shout of triumph: "IT IS FINISHED!"
The wealth of meaning in that phrase is surely impossible for the human mind to fathom. What was finished? His earthly life? Yes, but far more. Every detail of redemptive prophecy? Certainly, but not that alone.
The work of redemption was done. All that the law of God required, full atonement for sins, everything the symbolism of ceremonial law foreshadowed — the work that the Father had given Him to do — everything was done. Nothing was left. The ransom was paid. The wages of sin were settled. Divine justice was satisfied. The work of Christ was thus accomplished in toto. The Lamb of God had taken away the sins of the world (John 1:29). There was nothing more on earth for Him to do except die so that He might rise again.
Here it is appropriate to add a crucial footnote: when Jesus said, "It is finished," He meant it. Nothing can be added to what He did. Many people believe they must supplement His work with good deeds of their own. They believe they must facilitate their own redemption through baptism, other sacraments and religious rituals, benevolent deeds, or whatever else they can accomplish through their own efforts. But no works of human righ teous ness can expand on what Jesus accomplished for us. "He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righ teous ness, but according to His mercy" (Titus 3:5). The beginning and the end of our salvation was consummated by Jesus Christ, and we can contribute nothing.
What would you think if I took a felt-tipped pen and tried to add more features to the Mona Lisa? What if I got a hammer and chisel and offered to refine Michelangelo's Moses? That would be a travesty. They are masterpieces! No one needs to add to them.
In an infinitely greater way, that is true of Jesus' atoning work. He has paid the full price of our sins. He has purchased our redemption. He offers a salvation from sin that is complete in every sense. "It is finished!" Nothing we can do would in any way add to what He accomplished on our behalf. Nor does "lordship salvation" suggest otherwise.
Having finished His work, our Lord "bowed His head, and gave up His spirit" (John 19:30). There was no jerk, no sudden slump. He bowed His head. The Greek word evokes the picture of gently placing one's head on a pillow. In the truest sense, no man took Jesus' life from Him. He laid it down of His own accord (cf. John 10:17 – 18). He simply and quietly yielded up His spirit, commending Himself into the Father's hands (Luke 23:46).
Tetelestai!: The Triumph Is Complete
Only the omnipotent God who is Lord of all could do that. Death could not claim Jesus apart from His own will. He died in complete control of all that was happening to Him. Even in His death He was Lord.
To the human eye Jesus looked like a pathetic casualty, powerless in the hands of mighty men. But the opposite was true. He was the One in charge. He proved it a few days later by forever bursting the bonds of death when He rose from the grave (1 Cor. 15:20 – 57).
And He is still in charge. "For to this end Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living" (Rom. 14:9).
This, then, is the gospel our Lord sends us forth to proclaim: That Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate, humbled Himself to die on our behalf. Thus He became the sinless sacrifice to pay the penalty of our guilt. He rose from the dead to declare with power that He is Lord over all, and He offers eternal life freely to sinners who will surrender to Him in humble, repentant faith. This gospel promises nothing to the haughty rebel, but for broken, penitent sinners, it graciously offers everything that pertains to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3).
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Part 6
Appendixes
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Appendix 1
The Gospel According
to the Apostles
few years ago a well-known conference speaker wrote to ask my thoughts on the proper presentation of the gospel. I think he expected me to affirm the notion that saving faith is only a matter of believing the facts of the gospel. Instead, I gave him a distillation of what I have written in this book.
He wrote back saying that he had read my material but felt it was not a sound argument because I based my view of the gospel on Jesus' message, not on apostolic teaching. "I would have appreciated receiving a cassette tape from you on your teaching of Romans 3 and 4," he wrote. "Certainly it is wisest for us to teach the way of salvation in this day of grace for obvious reasons from these chapters, written by Paul on precisely this nonnegotiable subject."
He added this comment, which sparked my curiosity: "Therefore, we see the wisdom of Machen (the best, perhaps, of this century) when he said, 'Nothing before the cross can properly be called the gospel.' " Dr. J. Gresham Machen was a Presbyterian from the Reformed tradition, a scholar, and most certainly a defender of the faith. It seemed to me that whatever he meant by that statement, it was not likely that he was discarding the teaching of Christ as the basis of the gospel appeal for today.
In searching for the source and context of that quotation, I encountered these words by Machen:
I know that some people hold — by a veritable delirium of folly, as it seems to me — that the words of Jesus belong to a dispensation of law that was brought to a close by His death and resurrection and that therefore the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, for example, is not intended for the dispensation of grace in which we are now living.
Well, let them turn to the apostle Paul, the Apostle who has told us that we are not under the law but under grace. What does he say about the matter? Does he represent the law of God as a thing without validity in this dispensation of divine grace?
Not at all. In the second chapter of Romans, as well as (by implication) everywhere else in his Epistles, he insists upon the universality of the law of God. Even the Gentiles, though they do not know that clear