On Good Friday each year, my church does a special service after the Good Friday liturgy call The Seven Last Words. During this time, people from the church share a sort of devotional reflection on the last seven things that Jesus said before dying on the Cross. This year, I’m giving the reflection on, “It is finished.” It’s the sixth of the seven. Here’s the full list:

1. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
2. “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”
3. “Woman behold your Son…Son, behold your mother.”
4. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
5. “I thirst”
6. “It is finished”
7. “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”

These reflections are shared by each person, and then followed by a short prayer and moment of silent reflection by the congregation. It’s typically planned alongside the Veneration of the Cross (the Good Friday liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer) and The Stations of the Cross.

my reflection on “it is finished.”

“It is finished.”

When Jesus says this, it’s not about his earthly life. He has always been, and always will be alive. As the Apostle John wrote about Jesus, 

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”

So even though we see Him hanging on the Cross, His life is far from finished.

Rather, He’s speaking about His mission. He’s done what was needed to fulfill God’s plan for salvation.

And this mission is something He’s had from the very beginning. 

In Genesis 1 we see the Triune God… Father, Son, and Holy Spirit… having a conversation (with Himself, which kinda blows my mind), saying,

“Let us make man in our image.”

And He continues,

“And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

I’m sure that there was a lot more to that conversation than what we have recorded in the Scriptures!

Listen, I’m a dad to five kids. I know how this goes. “Okay, I’m going to give you all the things and trust that you’re going to do the right thing the right way all the time, and it’s all going to be great.”

Nope. I know they’re going to screw it all up! 

And you know that the Triune God knew the same thing about us. 

I imagine that parts of that conversation were like, “Okay… here we go… let’s just hope they don’t break anything too bad, or wind up in the hospital, or hurt someone else while they’re just trying to look cool.”

Jesus was probably all like, “Yep. So if we’re doing this, then I’ve got a plan to fix whatever they break. When the time is right, I’ll be there and be ready.”

So when the time was right, He came, walked among us, showed us the better way, and took the burden of our sins on His shoulders.

This moment, when He says “it is finished,” marks the beginning of the New Covenant.

But first, let’s take a quick trip back through the times God showed up to make the way. 

There were five times, in particular, that God made covenants with His people…

1. In the Creation Covenant with Adam, God gave humans dominion over Creation and the promise of eternal life. From the very beginning, He planned for us to have eternal life!
2. In His Covenant with Noah, He promises protection and a new beginning. 
3. God’s Covenant with Abraham promises blessing through him to all families on the earth, and sets up redemption through the coming Messiah.
4. In the Mosaic Covenant, God establishes the Israelites (those whining and complaining and disobedient people) as His chosen people.
5. And finally in the Davidic Covenant, God promises a lineage through which would come a Messiah who would bring His Kingdom of justice and peace.

The Catechism in the Book of Common Prayer says, 

“A covenant is a relationship initiated by God, to which a body of people responds in faith.”

Through all of this, we see God working out His plan from the very beginning. He keeps coming back to His people over and over and over, after they repeatedly turn from Him and mess things up, and He keeps making the way… and pointing to the one event that will take care of it once and for all.

And that’s where we arrive with Jesus when He’s hanging on the Cross.

Of course I’m making an assumption here, but I imagine Him hanging there, near death, with the memory of Adam and Noah and Abraham and Moses and David, remembering every face of every human who ever lived and every one who ever will, thinking about how this was always part of the plan so that we could all be together, and saying…

It.

Is.

Finished.