How Complete is Complete?

“It is finished”--John 19:30

“It is finished.”  Everything foretold about, and necessary for our salvation is complete! With reference to the attainment of the promised eternal salvation, no works, no penance, no blood, no money, nothing!- is necessary unless one does not believe what “finished” means. As comforting as it is to believe that Jesus has paid the full price for our salvation when He died upon the cross, how sad is it when people remain comfortless and burdened because they believe that they have to complete what Jesus already called complete.

Our Savior Jesus Christ said to His disciples, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled.”  “It is finished” tells us that Jesus is true to His Word. We, the redeemed who believe the Word of Christ, and trust in His once-for- all completed atonement are numbered among those to whom Psalm 22 makes reference.  “Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn— for he has done it.”

Wilhelm Besser wrote in The Passion Story,  “They who waste their energy in labor designed to add to or complete the work of Christ, they who, instead of accepting in faith the work of God that justifies the ungodly, they create a Savior according to their own fancy who is to make the virtuous more righteous, or to make penitent sinners gradually purer. They destroy for themselves the blessed message: 'It is finished!'" 

 

The faith that saves is not built upon personal effort, however sincere.  To pridefully try to complete what Christ called complete, as if Christ actually did not complete what He said He did, is calling Jesus a liar. Being people of flesh and blood who “daily sin much” the penitent sinner relieves an accusing conscience, not by trying harder to do what he can never do or even has to do, but by simply believing  “It is finished!” In believing Christ's words, the child of God respects the Word, and gives Christ and His cross due honor.

In this context Luther said, “ My penitent tears do not justify me. Christ alone has taken my sins away. He cast them into the sea of forgetfulness. This is my defense, a defense which rests upon: ‘It is finished.’”

People who appreciate art do not add another brush-stroke to the painting of a master. It is unthinkable. Why then should the sinner for whom Jesus died, and in whose behalf He declared, “It is finished,” even entertain the idea that the accomplishment of His salvation calls for an addition to what the Master has declared complete?

“For it is by grace you have been saved through faith and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast.  Thanks be to God!  It is finished.