It Is Finished
Have you ever had a debt paid in full by someone else? I mean, they learned that you were in trouble and unable to pay a bill that had gotten behind, and they just took care of it and cleared it for you?
Jesus paid a debt we could not pay. Jesus cleared us of all wrongdoing. Jesus made us into something we had never been before, and Jesus established us in a right relationship with God the Father. Jesus did all this for us. We did not do anything to earn any of it.
Colossians 2:6 And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow Him. 7 Let your roots grow down into Him, and let your lives be built on Him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness. 8 Don’t let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ. 9 For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body. 10 So you also are complete through your union with Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority. 11 When you came to Christ, you were “circumcised,” but not by a physical procedure. Christ performed a spiritual circumcision—the cutting away of your sinful nature. 12 For you were buried with Christ when you were baptized. And with Him you were raised to new life because you trusted the mighty power of God, who raised Christ from the dead. 13 You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for He forgave all our sins. 14 He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. 15 In this way, He disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross.
If anyone tries to say that what Jesus did for us is not quite enough and that we need to come under the law to make certain it is complete, they are teaching error.
Galatians 2:17 But suppose we seek to be made right with God through faith in Christ and then we are found guilty because we have abandoned the law. Would that mean Christ has led us into sin? Absolutely not! 18 Rather, I am a sinner if I rebuild the old system of law I already tore down. 19 For when I tried to keep the law, it condemned me. So I died to the law—I stopped trying to meet all its requirements—so that I might live for God. 20 My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die.
What Jesus has done took care of everything required to make us the very righteousness of God and put us in right relationship with God. We are at our clearest, purest best when we stand in faith in what Jesus has done and trust fully in Him for all that is required to be right with God. When Jesus said from the cross, “It is finished,” He wasn’t speaking metaphorically. It was literal. Some get nervous about this kind of teaching. They have more confidence in self-management based on keeping the law and moral initiatives than they do in the supernatural work of Christ. Thus it makes them uncomfortable to hear such things as what I am saying here. But there is no denying the power of God on display in Christ at the cross and in His resurrection and ascension!
We are complete in Jesus! Jesus eliminated the ability of the powers and principalities to shame us and condemn us by taking the charges against us due to the law and its perfection, and He nailed those charges on His cross, taking them upon Himself on our behalf. He took them out of the way, and by doing so, He disarmed our enemies! We need to become more aware of what Jesus did than we are of what we are doing. We need to be more persuaded of the completeness of His work than we are of our ability to undo it. We need to take to heart what He spoke from the cross when He declared, “It is finished.” I encourage you to rest your hope on the fact that it is finished, and in Christ, you are complete.
