It is finished! 19:17-42

John, as far as we know, was the only one of the apostles who was present at the crucifixion. The accounts in the other gospels were therefore second-hand, either from the women who were present, or perhaps from people such as the soldiers (Mt 27:54).  Each gospel recounts different elements of the event, particularly Jesus's words while He was on the cross. But the fact that John was an eye-witness gives his account special weight.

Once Pilate had sentenced Jesus to crucifixion, Jesus was flogged again (Mt 27:26), this time much more harshly.

Then He was led out to the crucifixion site, outside the city and by one of the main roads, where His fate would be visible to everyone. Custom was to take the prisoners the long way round, carrying on their shoulders the crossbar to which they would later be nailed . Each victim would be accompanied by four soldiers, and a Centurion would oversee the whole procession.  In front of each, a placard would be carried giving their name and the crime for which they were being punished.  Along with Jesus there were two other prisoners, probably  Barabbas’s henchmen.

Along the way, there were many women watching, bewailing what was happening. Jesus was so weakened by the flogging that He could barely stay upright, so a bystander was commandeered to carry the cross-bar for Him. Simon was from Cyrene in North Africa, probably in Jerusalem for Passover.

The exact location of Golgotha is uncertain, Jerusalem having been destroyed and rebuilt many times over the centuries. The site presently attributed, because it has a vague resemblance to a skull, only looks that way because up till two hundred year ago it was a quarry.

Jesus was stripped naked and His hands nailed to the crossbar, which was then fixed to the upright post. His ankles were crossed and a single massive nail driven through them both, into the post.  This nail's purpose was to prolong a victim's agony: it meant they could briefly alleviate the suffocation caused by their ribcage being stretched by their body weight pulling on their arms.

As the soldiers were nailing Him, there would have been cries and groans from the other two men undergoing the same brutality.  But Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34).

At first, the two others cursed at Jesus; but after a while one of them realised that whilst they were being justly punished, Jesus was innocent. He asked Jesus to remember Him, when He came into His kingdom: in other words, he believed that Jesus would return to reign! Jesus reassured him that he wouldn't have to wait that long, nor just be remembered. “Today, you will be with Me in Paradise” (Lk 23:43).

Jesus spent six hours suffering on the cross, drinking the cup the Father had given Him, the judgement for our sin.

The first three hours were marked by intense humiliation, as all the passers-by, the Chief Priests, and the Roman soldiers poured scorn on His claims to be the Messiah, the Son of God. But from midday till three o’clock a supernatural darkness came over the land.  It could not have been a solar eclipse, for Passover always took place at full moon.

David prophesied many exact details of the crucifixion in Psalm 22: Jesus’s cry of dereliction (v1), His being despised and ridiculed (v6-8), His hands and feet being pierced (v16), His garments being allowed amongst the soldiers (v18), even His cry, ‘It is finished!’ (V31). Many believe that Jesus was meditating on this psalm throughout His suffering, for whilst it accurately describes His suffering, the second half prophesies the wonderful outcome of redemption.

Amongst these specific prophecies the psalm says, “Many bulls have surrounded Me; strong bulls of Bashan have encircled Me. They gape at Me with their mouths, like a raging and roaring lion.”  I believe this is describing Jesus being tormented by Satan's most powerful demons, during these three hours of darkness.

King of the Jews

Pilate’s inscription, “”King of the Jews”, on the placard nailed above Jesus’s head, caused intense irritation to the Chief Priests. Their' charge had been that Jesus claimed to be King of the Jews, not that He actually was!  Jesus had said that His Kingdom was not of this world: if it had been, He would have instructed His servants to fight against the Jews! (18:36).   But its wording was not accidental: Pilate had hand-written it (v19) and refused to change it (v22).

As we’ve previously seen, the Greek word translated 'Jews' didn't mean all those we would now refer to as Jews.   Rather, it referred to the Judaeans, as opposed to the Samaritans and Galileans. Of course the Galileans were also descended from Abraham, and practiced Judaism: so in John's hands, 'Jew' is not a racial or religious category.  

To further complicate things, John often seems to use 'Jew' to refer to the ruling classes in Judaea, rather than the Judaean population en masse. So to the Chief Priests and Sanhedrin. Pilate's wording implied that they had rebelled against their true King. 

King of the Jews’ was much more specific than ‘King of Israel’.  When Solomon's kingdom split in two, the northern ten tribes were known as Israel (perhaps because Israel had given the rights of the firstborn to Joseph) whereas the House of David (tribes of Judah and Simeon) were known as ‘Jehudim’ or Jews. Thus Rehoboam was technically the first ‘King of the Jews‘.

When the three wise men came looking for Jesus, they came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is He born to be King of the Jews?” They honoured Him with gifts fit for a King. But when the Roman soldiers made fun of Jesus, they pretended to do obeisance to Him and said, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ (19:3). Later, as He hung on the cross, they taunted, “If You are the King of the Jews, save Yourself” (Lk 22:37). And the Jewish rulers sneered, “He saved others; let Him save Himself, if He is the Christ, the Chosen of God” (Lk 22:35).

Jesus foretold this hatred by the Jewish leaders, in many of His parables.

• The wicked vinedressers kill the King’s son, in order to seize His inheritance (Mt 21:33:41).

• The King's invitation to His Son’s wedding feast, is spurned by the original invited guests; so He sends His servants out into the highways and byways to replace them (Mt 22:1-14).

• A nobleman goes to the distant headquarters of an Empire, to be appointed as King of his own country: but his citizens hate him and send a delegation saying, “We will not have this man to reign over us.” (Lk 19:12-14).

Of course, Jesus is the King of the Jews. He will return in glory, to reign in Jerusalem and sit on David’s throne. The day will come, when Israel as a nation will recognise Jesus as their true Messiah. But what does their hatred of His rule (as expressed at Calvary) teach us?

Firstly, it shows our human rebelliousness.  Just as Satan rebelled against God, fallen man by nature rebels.  Our flesh refuses Jesus to be our Lord. We may even accept Him as our Saviour, and yet in practice deny His Lordship.  We water down His commands, ignore His teaching, despise His ministers, reject His calling for our lives.

Secondly, as we look at the cross, the placard speaks to us:  Jesus of Nazareth is King of the Jews, and King of our lives also. He reigns, by virtue of His cross.  In it, He triumphed over all the rival principalities and powers that would seek to have control of our lives (Col 2:15).  He has been given the Name above all names, just because He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross (Phil 2:5-11).

The sign is written in Hebrew, the language of religion: Roman, the language of law; and Greek, the language of culture - its demand confronts us all.

The division of His clothing

If you were a Roman soldier, perhaps the only ‘perk’ of being assigned to crucifixion duty was the right to a share of the prisoner's clothing. We see here four men who have just completed the most horrendously brutal process of nailing a man to a cross, concerned only with who gets what from His ‘estate’.  Their eyes are not on Jesus, or even on the crowd, but only on how the lots will fall.  The contrast with the grief and compassion of Jesus’s women followers, is striking. How often we too are only concerned with what we can get from Jesus!

Jews commonly wore five items of clothing: a turban, sandals, a belt, an outer robe and a tunic. The tunic was not an undergarment as we would think of it, but the primary item of clothing. In Jesus’s case, it was made of a single piece of cloth, similar perhaps to our modern tabards. The other four items may have been apportioned according to the soldiers’ seniority, but the  remaining tunic was too valuable to tear into pieces: so they gambled for it.

This is the first of four ways (vss 24,28,36,37) in which, John says, the crucifixion exactly fulfils Old Testament prophecy.  Psalm 22,  written by King David around a thousand years earlier predicts each of these details.  Remembering that John’s gospel may well have been written primarily for a Jewish readership, this tying together of the Old Testament and the New, this proving that Jesus was the fulfilment of the Jewish scriptures, was essential. ‘These are written, that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son oof God’ (20:31)

Over the centuries, commentators have seen other meanings in the seamless tunic. For example, the Jewish High Priest’s robe was to be ‘woven skilfully’ (Ex 28:39), and Josephus describes it as being woven from a single length of thread. Some have interpreted Jesus’s tunic as symbolic of His hidden High Priesthood, or of the unity of the Church.

Jesus's care for His mother

Jesus being the eldest of Mary’s sons, would have been responsible for her care. His brothers at this point were not believers, as far as we know (7:5), and there is no mention of any of them being there to support Mary in her agony as she watched Jesus die. Though family ties usually took precedence over everything else in Jewish culture, for Jesus His disciples were His family (Mt 12:48-50). But even in the midst of His own suffering He was concerned for his mother to be looked after.

John is believed to have been Jesus's cousin: in the absence of Jesus's own family members, he was the obvious choice.  He was also ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’.  Tradition has it that John continued to look after Mary for the rest of her life, and that she went with him when he became Bishop of Ephesus.

There is something significant in Jesus’s words to Mary, and then to John: “Woman, behold your son!” and “Behold your mother!”. By these words He created a mother-son bond between them, much deeper than just dutiful care. Jesus can do that: He 'sets the solitary in families’ (Ps 68:6).  Whilst as believers we may find ourselves estranged from other family members, our duty of care to our parents remains. Jesus roundly condemned Pharisees who used the ‘corban’ loophole to wriggle out of providing for their parents.

The fact that John was present at the cross when Jesus died, suggests that he took Mary home immediately, and then returned to his vigil at the cross. This might explain why he doesn't record some of Jesus's sayings mentioned in the other gospels.

It is finished!

After John had taken Mary home, a three hour period of supernatural darkness ensued (Mt 27:45-46). Towards the end of this, Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”. This was the ultimate trial of faith, for One who had never known what it meant to be Fatherless. He had never known being utterly alone, even when the disciples had abandoned Him, because the Father was always with Him (16:32). But now, being made sin for us, He sensed that the Father had turned away.

How could this be? It is a mystery, that as both Son of Man and Son of God, He could be cut off from God. Yet this is the essence of spiritual death. Jesus refers to it as being ‘in the Outer Darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth’. This is the essence of Hell.  This is how Jesus knew that His work was finished. He had experienced what every one of us deserves, on our behalf. He had tasted death, the despairing death of one rightly cut off from God. He had de-fanged death (1Cor 15:55).

By now He was so dehydrated that His tongue stuck to the roof of His mouth (Ps 22:15). He knew He would need liquid, to be able to fulfil scripture by shouting the last line of the Psalm. So He said, “I thirst”. One of the soldiers fetched a sponge and soaked it with sour wine, then proffered it to Jesus on a reed (Mt 27:48-49): the others believed He was calling for Elijah, and wanted to see whether Elijah would come.  Perhaps though they were Romans, they knew the Jewish tradition that Elijah would come at Passover to announce Messiah’s reign; or that at the end of the Passover meal, a cup was filled with wine for Elijah.

Jesus's last two words come in quick succession. He shouts, “It is finished!”. . This was not the last whimper of a dying man, but rather, a victory cry!  Then He bows His head and says, “Father, into Your hands I commend My spirit” (Mt 27:50; Mk 15:37; Lk 23:46)

Jesus had earlier said, “My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and power to take it again.” (Jn 10:17-18).  He chose the manner and timing of His death.  In fact, Pilate was astonished when he heard that Jesus was already dead (Mk 15:44).

We have previously seen that Greek has three different words for life: ‘bios’ for bodily life, ‘psyche’ for soul life, and ‘zoe’ for spirit life. Jesus is here laying down His soul life as well as His bodily life; but committing His spirit into His Father's loving care.  Was this suicide?  No.  This was not Jesus choosing to die entirely of His own will, but a command He had received from the Father.

What was the ‘It' that Jesus was referring to, when He said, “It is finished” - or “It is accomplished”?

The most obvious answers are  that His suffering was nearly over, His life's work was done, and the New Covenant had been brought into force. He had taken our sentence of death (substitution), paid the full penalty (propitiation), and opened the door for us to boldly enter the Father’s Presence (reconciliation).  He had responded obediently to the Father's will, revealed the Father’s heart of love, and redeemed a people chosen by the Father.

The Book of Hebrews offers us a wonderful exposition of what this “It is finished!” means in practice for us:-

• We no longer need to strive to establish our own righteousness. We can enter into a ‘sabbath-day rest’, relying totally on what He has achieved, not on our own works (Heb 4:10)

• His sacrifice of Himself was so perfect in every respect, that it will never need repeating: it is once-for-all (Heb 9:12,14)

• He has become our sympathetic High Priest, whose endless life means He will always be there to intercede for us if we sin (Heb 4:14-15;5:9;7:16)

• His sacrifice cleanses not just our bodies but our consciences too, removing our consciousness of sins and enabling us to serve the living God (Heb 9:14;10:1-4). Guilt gone!

• His sacrifice removes the power of sin forever (Heb 9:26). He will never again remember our lawless deeds (Heb 10:17). It sanctifies and perfects us (Heb 10:14)! Can you believe this?

• It is by faith that we receive all this. Faith ‘is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of unseen realities’ (Heb 11:1,2)

• But there is no further sacrifice if we turn away (6:4-6, 10:26-29). How shall we escape, if we neglect so great a salvation (Heb 2:3)?

Not all ‘Christians’ believe that ‘it is finished’. For instance, Roman Catholics believe that Christ’s sacrifice is repeated time after time in the Mass: that the bread and the wine actually become the body and blood of Christ through transubstantiation, and that attendance at Mass is essential for the forgiveness of sins.  They also believe that whilst Christ's sacrifice pays the eternal penalty of sin, there is also a temporal penalty.  If we do not pay the latter during our earthly lives, either by our sufferings or by indulgences, we must pay  in Purgatory before we will be let in to heaven.

And we who say we believe Christ has fully paid for our sins, often still condemn ourselves if we fall back into sin. Scripture says, “There is now no condemnation for them that are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1).  Christ is not surprised when this happens: He taught us to pray, “Forgive us our sins”.  He immediately steps in as our Advocate with the Father, interceding for us (1Jn 2:1).  “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1Jn 1:9)

Let us make sure we have truly entered into the rest of knowing that ‘It is finished”!

The blood and the water

Men could take days to die from crucifixion, and Passover was due to start at sundown. Because Passover is the same calendar date each year, it falls on different days of the week. If it is not on an ordinary sabbath, whichever weekday it is is classed as a special sabbath (19:31).  So the Jewish leaders wanted Jesus not only dead but buried, before sundown.

When death by crucifixion needed accelerating, the easiest way was to smash the victim’s leg bones with a sledgehammer - so that they could no longer prevent themselves from suffocating under their own weight.  Once they were dead, the soldiers could then remove them to a communal grave for criminals.

Once Pilate had agreed, the soldiers proceeded to smash the legs of the other two men. But when they came to Jesus, they saw that He was already dead, so didn’t break His bones. Just to be on the safe side, one of them stabbed Jesus under His ribcage with a spear; and John watched with astonishment as both blood and water flowed out.

Given that Jesus died at three p.m. and sundown was at six, He can only have been dead an hour or two at most.  This is not long enough for blood to separate out into red cells and serum, and anyway blood will usually clot after someone dies. The likely explanation is that the flogging had caused Jesus to lose so much blood that He was acutely anaemic. This would fit with His stumbling under the weight of the crosspiece, and feeling thirsty - since the body realises it needs fluid replacement. If He was so anaemic, His heart would have been working overtime and that can cause a collection of fluid to build up within the wrapping around it - the pericardial sac. So a spear passing up through the diaphragm, through the pericardial sac and into the heart would produce a flow of blood and water (v34).

All well and good, but why does John make such a big thing of the blood and water?  

He underlines that he is giving eye-witness evidence, ‘so that you may believe’.
He then quotes two Messianic prophecies, predicting that
  (a) Messiah's bones would be unbroken, like the Passover lamb (Ex 12:46; Num 9:12; Ps 34:20), and
    (b) that He would be pierced (Zech 12:10).
So these two facts, establish Jesus’s identity as Messiah. But the prophecies make no mention of blood and water!

Later John returns to this issue in his first letter, saying that Jesus ‘came by water and blood’ (1Jn 5:6) and that along with the Spirit’s witness on earth, it is these two different fluids - blood and water - that prove Jesus’s identity (1Jn 5:8).  That letter was written to defend the central truth of John’s gospel, that Jesus was the eternal Word of God, who became flesh and dwelt among us.  So it seems that the true significance of the blood and water for John, is that it proves Jesus’s humanity; that He was God Incarnate, fully God but also fully Man.

One common interpretation of John's later  references to water and blood, is that they refer to Jesus’s baptism and crucifixion. Cerinthus, an early heretic, taught that Jesus was an ordinary man, born by natural means. He only became Anointed/Christ/ Messiah when the Holy Spirit came at his baptism; and the Spirit then left him just before the crucifixion. So according to this interpretation, Cerinthus was teaching that Jesus came by water alone: and John's reference to blood and water is designed to contradict that doctrine.

But John’s letter seems to be aimed not at the Cerinthians but at those who didn’t believe that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh (1Jn 4:2): in other words, that He was never truly human.  If so, this would imply that John saw the water as indicating Jesus’ divine nature (not His baptism) and the blood as indicating His humanity (not His crucifixion).

Jesus’s burial

Joseph, a senior member of the Sanhedrin and a secret disciple of Jesus, daringly went to Pilate and asked for the body.  Watched by Mary’s companions, he and Nicodemus took the body down, wrapped it in linen, and laid it in his own rock-hewn tomb.  Then they sealed the entrance by rolling a large stone across it. Though similar tomb designs have been identified, they seem to have been the preserve of kings and the ultra-rich.

While Joseph gave Jesus his tomb, Nicodemus brought the traditional mixed-spice ointment - In line with Jewish custom. However, the amount of spices was extraordinary; roughly equal to Jesus’s body weight. This was indeed a burial fit for a King!  How Nicodemus  obtained such a huge quantity in such a short space of time, we are not told.

Mary Magdalene and ‘the other Mary (?the mother of James, Mk 16:1) had followed the two men and seen where Christ was buried. Presumably they didn’t know what had gone on inside the tomb, for once the sabbath was over, they too bought spices with which to anoint Him (Mk 16:1)

Jewish law forbids convicted sinners being buried honourably, in a rich man’s tomb - and yet, Isaiah had prophesied 600 years earlier exactly how this strange burial would happen (Isa 53:9).  Jewish tombs normally held several bodies. The only reason Jesus could legally be buried there was because it was a brand new, unused tomb.

It happened to be in a garden right next to Golgotha, so was one of very few sites where they could have buried him given the time constraint of the imminent Passover sabbath (v31). Once they had finished their work, they would have hurried home in order to observe the feast.

And so we leave the scene, feeling the unbearable sadness of the women, the apostolic team scattered who-knows-where across Jerusalem, their hopes and dreams of Israel’s redemption in tatters. But somewhere buried deep within each of them, the faint memory that Jesus had said He would rise again!