Saturday Morning Devotion
John 19:28-30
28 After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.” 29 A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. 30 When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
Reflection
The question lurks in the back of your mind, “Have I done enough to be confident that God accepts me and will help me? Or, have I messed up too many times (just this week!) to merit His favor?” Stop asking this question; it’s a dead end. Instead, emblazon these three words of Jesus across your conscience: “It is finished” (Jn 19:30)!
The Greek word translated as “finished” also conveys the sense, “complete.” Used here as the last thing Jesus says before he dies, “it is finished/complete” means something like this:
All that the prophets foretold (2 Cor 1:20), all that God sent Jesus to do (Jn 6:38), all that is necessary for you to be forgiven, hope-filled, joyful, accepted-by-God (2 Cor 5:21), everything needed to set everything that’s wrong, right (Col 1:20), has been accomplished by this one man’s life and sacrificial death.
And Jesus knew it. Which is why he asked for a drop of wine to loosen his tongue in order to muster the strength to address the question that we’re wondering late at night: “Enough has been done,” Jesus says, “by me, for you, to eliminate forever the question of whether or not God loves you.” Saint Paul might add, and “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things” (Rom 8:32)?
What is necessary for you and me to have peace with God, to know that he hears our prayers and is acting for our eternal best, in Christ, “is finished.”
Prayer
Daily, O God, my conscience worries that I have not lived well enough to merit your mercy and love. May the words of your son, “It is finished,” become the answer of my heart, any time I feel I have not lived sin-free long enough to know your care. And may these words of Jesus from the cross, forever remind me that my life with you is a gift, and may I be grateful for it.
CLICK HERE for the words to the song.
Artwork: Crucifixion of Jesus painting on Davaar Island,Scotland, medieval illustration from the Hortus deliciarum of Herrad of Landsberg (12th century), and Christ on the Cross from the Isenheim Altarpiece of Matthias Grünewald (Source)