This is the first of the Easter Weekend posts. I’m excited, because last year I wasn’t maintaining this blog with enough regularity to warrant such mediations. This year I can call them breaks in a pattern! I”m hoping to look at a few things in some detail for this one.
You may have noticed, over the past few months, that I’ve been sticking around several themes in Christianity. Centrally, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and peripherally, what results when Christ is preached and when He is allowed to change lives. Good Friday is the beginning of the three days that are the core of the Christian faith, the assurance of salvation, the completion of Jesus’ earthly ministry and heavenly mission, and the reason for the celebration of the Christian life. This post is part one of a three-part reflection on what this Easter weekend means to me this year. It’ll all come together in the end.
The title of this post is composed of three things: the words “It is finished”, the statement “complete atonement” and the acknowledgment of one part of the Lord’s Prayer as a central point of the day. I’m going to look at each of those briefly, and try to pull in some of the thoughts that have been arising as the last little while has been happening.
The statement ‘it is finished’ is, interestingly enough, recorded only in the gospel of John, although all four gospels record Jesus uttering a loud cry just before he breathed his last. In all cases, there is a great gravitas in the final minutes of Jesus’ life, a sign of something pivotal happening in his crucifixion and death. John makes it clear what this is. With the great ‘it is finished’, Jesus is speaking to a number of things. It is firstly the fulfillment of Deuteronomy 21:22-23:
“And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.”
which raises some interesting points. For example, what crime did Jesus commit that would cause him to be put to death? And how is the land defiled if a man remains hung all night on a tree? These are areas of interesting speculation, but draw one away from the intent of this first point: Jesus was cursed by God in being hung on a cross. So, too, were the thieves beside him, but even in that curse, Christ could look at one and say today, you will be with me in paradise. In his death lay the potential for redemption even outside of the condemnation of the law
Jesus is also speaking to the work of redemption that God set in motion for man. In the crucifixion of His Son Jesus, God has declared the complete work of fall and redemption, atonement and justification. Christ came into history at a specific point by our reckoning, but (when you think about it), instantaneously in His. God sees both sin and redemption contemporaneously, and that’s what makes Christ’s atonement so incredible. I’ll look at that in just a minute. Hard to wrap your head around, but worth thinking about. Christ is the fundamentally important point of the entire work of the Bible, because it is in Him that everything is fulfilled.
Additionally, Jesus is speaking to the work of his earthly ministry. All that needs to be told about Him, all that is necessary, has been said. He is the gospel. Not his actions, because not all are recorded. Not his teaching, because he has said “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” (Matt.7:12). Not ‘this is what the Law and the Prophets mean,’ although that is implied, but that is what the Law and the Prophets are. No, what ‘It is finished’ speaks to is the truth that He has done what was required. Everything else is going to be trying to understand that.
Which brings us ’round to complete atonement. If the message of Christ is complete, and if He is the gospel truth, then all that we need to believe is that what we are told about atonement through the precursors in the Old Testament and the fulfillment in the New is valid and that it applies to us. Amazingly, it takes the comprehensive insights of multiple authors to arrive at that conclusion in the Word. To return to the point I suggested not too long ago, the contemporaneous understanding of Christ’s atonement means that by its very nature it is complete and universal. It covers all of mans’ sin because all of mans’ sin is that which is in perspective. I’m going to look a bit more at this on Saturday.
Finally, to round off this post (much longer than I had thought it would be), I want to look at the phrase forgiven debts, related as it is to the Lord’s prayer and to what I’ve been saying prior to this. Atonement is one of those fancy theological words that can be said much more simply in ways like this: Debt forgiveness, prices paid, account credited. Financial terms for a spiritual transaction. The great debt that we have towards God — for not killing us in our sin, for example, and for sacrificing His own Son to overcome it — and its only repayment in Christ Jesus is what truly needs to be thought about in this time. Today is the day of Christ’s death, and it is a cause for jubilee, because in it all debts have been forgiven and all credit history erased. Praise the Lord for what He has done.
Blessings;.
Christ-bearer.
