The Cross: It Is Finished

John 19:23-37

Main Idea: Jesus proves he is the Messiah through the fulfillment of numerous Old Testament prophecies.

1. Jesus Fulfilled Prophecy.
   1. The prophecy of the garment
   2. The prophecy of the drink
   3. The prophecy of the bones
   4. The prophecy of the piercing
2. Jesus Finished Redemption.

Christopher Hitchens, a self-proclaimed antitheist, was interviewed by a Unitarian minister named Marilyn Sewell. She told him she was a Christian but didn’t believe the Bible literally and didn’t believe Jesus died for her sins. Hitchens responded,

I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian. (Sewell, “Hitchens Transcript”)

To be a Christian, one must look on the death of Jesus Christ and believe on him as the Messiah who takes away the sin of the world. At the heart of Christianity is faith in Jesus Christ, but what is “faith”? Hitchens described his response to someone who claims to have faith. He would say,

“Wait a minute, you just told me you’re prepared to accept an enormous amount on no evidence whatsoever. Why are you thinking that that would impress me?” I have no use for it, when I could be spending time looking through a telescope or into a microscope and finding out the most extraordinary, wonderful things. (Ibid.)

In the first quote Hitchens does an excellent job of describing the heart of Christianity—it is faith in Jesus’s death for us. But then he describes faith as accepting an enormous amount on no evidence whatsoever. Is he right? No, biblical faith is not a fool’s journey. It’s not the search for the fountain of youth. It’s not a willingness to shut the brain off and embrace ancient mythology. Faith means you’ve found the truth and are confident in it. When the darkness of deception parts and the first rays of truth break into our hearts, that’s when faith blooms. Faith is the work of God opening our eyes to his truth.

Faith isn’t fueled by fantasy. Faith is informed by revelation. We don’t believe on Jesus of Nazareth because we’re gullible, because we no longer want to think deeply about life, or because we hate the truth. We believe on Jesus because God has revealed himself to us. God has opened our minds to understand the truth. God has delivered us from our gluttonous addiction to lies and given us an insatiable appetite for what is true. The Christian faith is not uninformed or unreasonable. The faith we profess is informed by the Word of God, and in his Word we find reasons to believe in Jesus. In John 19 we discover two more reasons to believe in Jesus.

Jesus Fulfilled Prophecy

I remember reading an article, written by an ESPN reporter, about a football coach who worked with troubled players. What I found interesting was how much biblical terminology was used in the article. The author mentioned or alluded to redemption, salvation, justice, mercy, and atonement. Could this player be saved from his past? Was he redeemable? Had he done enough to atone for his actions? I don’t know if the writer intentionally used Christian terminology, but the terms—and beyond that the concepts—are part of our vocabulary and are hard-wired into our DNA. Built into all of us is some understanding that sin must be atoned for. You don’t have to take a class in theology to desire justice and believe restitution should be made for wrongdoing.

When we see injustice going unpunished, we can respond one of two ways. We can nod and say, “That’s natural selection at work.” Or we can cry for justice, for help, for salvation from the wickedness all around us. The Bible informs this innate, human understanding of salvation. It moves salvation beyond the political and physical and anchors it in the spiritual. It tears down the false concept of self-salvation and teaches salvation must come from God. The Old Testament is full of pleas for salvation and promises of salvation. Mankind has sinned and faces judgment. Evil has oppressed and burdened the people. Where will they find help? God will intervene. He will send salvation. How will God fulfill the promise of salvation? God promised a King who would bring salvation, but he also promised that the King who would rescue the afflicted would himself be afflicted. All of these promises of salvation, deliverance, and justice sound great. The idea of a coming King is exciting. But then Jesus arrives, supposedly as Savior, Deliverer, and Ruler, and ends up executed as a criminal. Is he King? Will he deliver us? If so, then why is he strung up between two criminals to die?

The death of Jesus is the initial fulfillment of the promise. The promises of salvation and justice in the Old Testament include a truth the religious leaders overlooked. The coming King was sovereign and righteous, but he was also afflicted. The prophecy of the coming King could only be fulfilled if the King suffered and died for our sin. John records four different prophecies of the King’s suffering and shows how they’re fulfilled in the death of Jesus.

The Prophecy of the Garment

After the soldiers gamble for Jesus’s garment, John records a quotation from Psalm 22, which is the cry of an afflicted king. This psalm was written by David, who stands as a picture of the Messiah in the Psalter. The Messiah would come from the house of David, be a son of David, and be like David. When we read the Psalms, we’re instructed to look for a King, righteous and just, and similar to David. David’s reign wasn’t easy. He had great victories, but he also experienced tremendous affliction. Psalm 22 records some of David’s affliction. One particular affliction David suffered reveals what we should expect to happen to the Messiah: “They divided my garments among themselves, and they cast lots for my clothing” (Ps 22:18). At the foot of the cross, four Roman soldiers divide up Jesus’s sandals, cloak, and belt. Then they cast lots for his tunic, so that it wouldn’t need to be torn in pieces. In their greed and cruelty, they confirm Jesus is the righteous, afflicted King that Psalm 22 prophesied. The apostle John records their actions and then points us to the prophecy to strengthen our faith.

I watched a debate between a Christian pastor and an atheist. When the pastor mentioned fulfilled prophecy as a reason for faith, the atheist scoffed. His comment was that Jesus knew the Old Testament so he intentionally did things to “fulfill” prophecy. “That’s not prophecy. That’s manipulation,” he said. I love R. C. Sproul’s response to that suggestion:

John does not say that the Roman soldiers got together and said, “We should gamble for His garments because it says in the Jewish Scriptures that someone is going to cast lots for His clothes and we want to make sure that the Scriptures are fulfilled down to the last detail.” No, this is John’s editorial comment, pointing out that the soldiers, when they went through this act of gambling for the garments of the Christ, unknowingly and involuntarily were fulfilling the precise details of the Old Testament prophesies concerning the death of the Messiah. John is zealous to help his reader understand that what happened on the cross was not an accident of history, but it came to pass through the invisible hand of a sovereign Providence. (John, 367)

If these men are attempting to fulfill Scripture, would they really crucify the Messiah and then divvy up his belongings right in front of him while he dies?

The Prophecy of the Drink

Psalm 69, a beautiful psalm of God’s salvation and deliverance, includes these words of affliction from David—words that prepare us for the Messiah:

You know the insults I endure—my shame and disgrace. You are aware of all my adversaries. Insults have broken my heart, and I am in despair. I waited for sympathy, but there was none; for comforters, but found no one. Instead, they gave me gall for my food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. (Ps 69:19-21)

John describes the events of the cross in chapter 19, verse 28, and makes a reference to Jesus’s thirst and how the soldiers give him sour wine to drink—another perfect fulfillment of messianic prophecy from a thousand years earlier.

The Prophecy of the Bones

John writes, “These things happened” (v. 36). He’s referring to the request by the Jewish leaders to break the legs of the three men hanging on crosses. But when the soldiers get to Jesus, he’s already dead, so they don’t break his legs. This fulfills the prophetic words of David in Psalm 34: “One who is righteous has many adversities, but the Lord rescues him from them all. He protects all his bones; not one of them is broken” (vv. 19-20). The Messiah—righteous and afflicted—would suffer, but not one of his bones would be broken. Though the soldier approaches Jesus with hammer in hand to crush the bones in his legs, the promise of God is fulfilled. The hammer does not strike; every prophecy comes true.

The Prophecy of the Piercing

The soldiers refrain from breaking Jesus’s legs, but one of them takes a spear and thrusts it into his side. As the soldier pulls the spear back, blood and water gush out of the wound. The combination of blood and water has spawned many interpretations, including that it represents the two ordinances—Communion and baptism. That’s reading too much into John’s description. Here’s the significance: Jesus is a real man who dies a real death. Bodily fluids don’t come out of a spirit; they come from a body. Jesus doesn’t fake his death. It isn’t an act or a hoax.

The piercing also fulfills a prophecy made by Zechariah. The book of Zechariah is the message that the Messiah is coming, and when he comes, he will rescue his people from captivity. The Messiah will be both a priest and a king, and as King he will perfectly obey the will of God. Near the end of the book, the imagery of the Messiah changes from the perfect King to the Good Shepherd. God says the people will reject the Shepherd and follow evil shepherds into destruction. However, God will still deliver his people through the Messiah, the righteous King and Good Shepherd, rejected by God’s people. God says,

Then I will pour out a spirit of grace and prayer on the house of David and the residents of Jerusalem, and they will look at me whom they pierced. They will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child and weep bitterly for him as one weeps for a firstborn. (Zech 12:10)

The Messiah, who brings salvation, will be pierced by the nation of Israel. This is fulfilled when the spear of the Roman, whom the Jews had employed, penetrates Jesus’s side and blood pours out.

These details aren’t included to amaze us or disgust us but to help us believe (John 19:35). The apostle John acts as a witness climbing into the stand and placing his hand on the Bible. His solemn oath as an eyewitness is intended to cause belief. “I was there,” John says in effect. “I saw it all with my own eyes—the divided garment, the sour wine, the unbroken legs, and the pierced side. I saw each one. The reason I’m telling you is so you’ll know the Scripture has been fulfilled and will believe on Jesus as the Messiah.” Each fulfilled prophecy can strengthen our faith in the promise of God to deliver us from death and judgment through his Son.

The cross of Christ cannot simply be a moment in history. Though we study it, we must do so differently from the way we would study medieval architecture. It’s fine for a Christian to be bored in a class on British literature, but it’s tragic if the cross of Jesus Christ produces nothing more than a yawn and a shrug of the shoulders. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ is a real, historical event, but it can’t be consigned to dusty shelves in the back of a library or cobwebbed corners or our minds. Nearly two thousand years after the fact, we read the Gospel accounts of the crucifixion and understand that they were written so we would respond in faith. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John didn’t record this event as a memento for their grandkids. They wrote these Gospel accounts so people would read them and respond by believing in Jesus Christ. We must guard against ever looking at the cross callously or flippantly. Each glance should remind us that God has been faithful to his promises, and it should reinforce our trust in his sovereign grace and his unending mercy.

Jesus Finished Redemption

Something takes place on the cross when Jesus dies. In verse 30 Jesus says, “It is finished” or “It has been accomplished” (v. 30; author’s translation). What has been accomplished? The beginning of the answer is found back in chapter 17 when Jesus bows his head and says he has finished the work God gave him to do (v. 4). The work of Jesus on earth, given by the Father, is fully complete. What is that work? That work is bringing salvation to God’s people. John the Baptist, whose role was to announce the coming of the Messiah, looked at Jesus and said, “Here is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (1:29). Jesus’s work as sin-bearer and Savior is completed when he lays down his life on the cross. The sacrificial offering of his life completes his divine rescue mission. Jesus offers his life as the Passover Lamb who once and for all brings deliverance and salvation. There’s no longer any need for annual sacrifices. The penalty for sin is completely served. The price of redemption is completely paid. The justice of God is completely satisfied. The deliverance of sinners is completely secured.

The writer of Hebrews contrasts the sacrifice of Jesus with the constant sacrifice of lambs in the Jewish temple: “But now he has appeared one time, at the end of the ages, for the removal of sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Heb 9:26-27). When Jesus said, “It is finished,” he meant the entire work of salvation was taken care of. Our redemption had been accomplished and applied.

Here lies one of the distinctions between Catholicism and Protestantism. In Roman Catholic theology the death of Jesus Christ isn’t a one-time sacrifice. Each week during the observation of the mass, Jesus is being sacrificed again for sin. The elements—wafer and wine—turn into the body and blood of Jesus, and he is once more crucified. In Catholic theology, it is not finished. It has not been completely accomplished. There is more to be done.

Understanding that redemption has been completed motivates faith because it’s the only response we have. If redemption isn’t finished, then I have to do something to earn it or complete it, whether it’s taking Communion or being baptized or going on a pilgrimage. When we understand the work of salvation is complete, then we’ll also understand we can do nothing—absolutely nothing—to earn it or keep it or maintain it.

• We can only trust in the grace of God to save us.
• We can only believe in his promise of salvation.
• We can only place our faith in his Son, sent to purchase our redemption.

The moment you stop believing Jesus finished salvation is the moment you’ll start working for your salvation. You’ll wonder what activity you need to do to keep God in your favor. When trials come, you’ll wonder if it’s because of what you’ve done. Your relationship to God will become a checklist of dos and don’ts. Do you see how this changes your relationship with God? If he has done everything to secure your salvation, then you will relate to him as the child of a gracious and giving God; but if you need to do something, if his view of you is based on your performance, then that relationship of love and freedom becomes one of guilt and fear. You’ll be plagued by worry and doubt about your standing with him. You’ll wonder if he’s happy with you today. You’ll quiver in the corner of the kitchen, wondering what your Father’s mood will be when he returns home.

Don’t turn God into a vicious and moody Father who demands you act a certain way to earn his love. He is kind. He is loving. He is good, and he has done everything necessary for us to enjoy his love and kindness. As a Christian, your standing before him has been settled by the blood-soaked sacrifice of Jesus. Your hope and confidence must never be in yourself—in what you’ve accomplished. It must be in Christ and what he accomplished for you on the cross.

Conclusion

Frieda van Hessen was one of Holland’s foremost opera singers, but during the Nazi invasion she, as a Jew, was forced into hiding. In the providence of God, her life was spared. After the war someone told her she should convert from Judaism to Christianity, just in case something else was to happen. This suggestion nagged at her until she finally gave in and spoke to a minister. He set up a meeting for her with a Christian lady named Elizabeth who had converted from Judaism. Their Bible study turned into an argument. Frieda just couldn’t believe what she was reading from the Gospels. She accused Elizabeth of believing fairy tales. After six weeks of fruitless arguments, they decided the next week would be their last meeting. Elizabeth asked Frieda to read two chapters from the Old Testament before their last meeting—Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53. Frieda writes about that week:

Six days went by, and I could no longer procrastinate. I went to a small room in the house, closed the door, and opened up the Bible. . . . God, in His wisdom, had said to Elizabeth, “Tell her to read Psalm 22.” . . . I found it, and what did I see: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” I . . . remembered that in Bach’s “St. Matthew’s Passion,” the basso, portraying the Lord, sings, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” Still in my rebellion, I said, “What do you know, they stole this from Bach!”

Oh, God is so wise! This finally got my attention. Now I wanted to continue reading to see what else had been “stolen” from Bach! Then I came to verse 16, and read, “They pierced my hands and my feet.” Almost in shock, I literally yelled out “That’s Jesus!”

. . .

I knew that Jesus died in that devastating way. The Jews stoned people to death but did not crucify them. Crucifixion was a Roman death penalty. Yet David wrote Psalm 22, prophesying this form of death hundreds of years before crucifixion was ever invented and practiced by the Romans.

Then I reread Isaiah 53, and clearly understood that it described the whole crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Instantly, God had taken the blinders off my eyes and Satan was defeated! I called Elizabeth, who came over immediately, and together we read Isaiah 53. Then, all of it became very clear to me: how “He was despised and rejected of men,” how He was a “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” how “we hid our faces from Him,” how “He had been afflicted and wounded for our transgressions,” and how “with His stripes we are healed.”

I realized how “all of us, like sheep, have gone astray,” and how “He died for our iniquities.” Yes, for my sins too.

I reasoned that if David . . . and Isaiah . . . both knew Him, and Paul, a Pharisee, saw Him and knew Him, then I needed no further proof. I accepted Him too, as my Lord and Savior. (Roos-Van Hessen, Life, 190–92)

Proof, not speculation, not blind leaps in the dark. God has graciously given us his Word so we might believe on Jesus Christ.

Reflect and Discuss

1. Is faith in Jesus dependent on acceptance without evidence? Why or why not?
2. How does the Bible inform the innate human understanding of salvation and justice?
3. How does Jesus fulfill the prophecy of Psalm 22:18?
4. How does Jesus fulfill the prophecy of Psalm 69:19-21?
5. How does Jesus fulfill the prophecy of Psalm 34:19-20?
6. How does Jesus fulfill the prophecy of Zechariah 12:10?
7. Why does John include the gruesome details about the cross?
8. How should your study of the cross look different from study of other historical events?
9. Why does Jesus say, “It is finished”? How is this good news for you today and not just at the moment you first believed?
10. Does the finished work of Jesus change the way you respond to your own sin? How so?