As a music pastor, this is probably the busiest week of my year and one of the weeks I look forward to the most throughout the year. Passion Week is a glorious time to tangibly look at the last week of Christ's life on earth and glory in the atoning sacrifice of Christ on behalf of His children. It's a week filled with more work for me, preparing for more services and choosing music that works cohesively for those services, but this is the kind of work that gets me excited, makes me want to do even more. In light of all this, I'm eagerly preparing for Beacon of Hope's Good Friday service. One of the songs we'll be singing specially for this service is called "It Is Finished" by Jimmy Needham. The song centers around that saying of Christ just before He died, both in the English "It is finished" and int the Greek Tetelestai. This is one of those words that I have always found beautiful and marvelous, and I want to take some time to unpack it a little as we move closer to Good Friday.
You'll have to forgive me now as I'm about to start analyzing the Greek, but this helps our understanding of the situation in which Jesus proclaimed this. Tetelestai is the perfect passive form of the Greek verb teleo. Here it is translated "to finish," but this word can also mean to complete, to accomplish, to bring to an end. Jesus didn't just mean that He was at His end and was about to die -- He was declaring that the work He had come to do was completed! Dr. John MacArthur puts it well when he writes: "Christ had fulfilled on behalf of sinners everything the law of God required of them. Full atonement had been made. Everything the ceremonial law foreshadowed had been accomplished. God's justice was satisfied. The ransom for sin was paid in full. The wages of sin were settled forever. All that remained was for Christ to die so that He might rise again" (taken from the Grace to You blog).
This was a loud shout of triumph from Christ. And it is the battle cry for the believer. Our lives have been forever changed because of Christ's atoning work on the cross. Our salvation has been bought for us; we cannot work to add anything to it. that is what Jimmy Needham's song encompasses. The work of salvation is done, and there is nothing that can be added to that. We live at rest in the grace of God. Our work in this life is done joyfully in response to that work on the cross. It is Christ's death that gives us new life.
This is what we celebrate on Good Friday. It was the darkest, most important day in the history of the universe. The perfect, spotless Lamb of God was killed in a fashion intended for each of us, the perfect consequence for our sinful nature. Jesus took that curse upon Himself and hung on a tree, thereby clearing His children (those who would believe in Him) of the guilt of sin. Haveing come to repentance and faith in Christ, we have received His righteousness. Now our lives are characterized by a passion to become more like Christ and to declare His goodness in all the world. This all stems from this one fateful day 2000 years ago. The work for our salvation was completed before we were even born.
There is so much more that could be said on this subject, and that will be said by other bloggers, preachers, teachers, etc. But I wanted to take some time to just relish in the completed work. For someone like me who is constantly working and finding new things to do with my job, even to the point where I can find it hard to sleep at night, it a comfort and a necessity to take some time and rest in the fact that I don't need to do anything to gain any favor with God. It is already done. Tetelestai.
It is finished, it is finished, Tetelestai
The beauty of the double-meaning phrase!
He ceased from His labor, and so have I
Now resting only in His grace.
The beauty of the double-meaning phrase!
He ceased from His labor, and so have I
Now resting only in His grace.