What does “It is finished” mean?

When Christ cried out “It is finished”, those were not words of despair and departure. They are words of joyous victory and restoration.

When you live in the forgiveness of God you are living in His revealed glory, His actual sacrifice, His blood of forgiveness, His obedience to the Father His resurrection and His fathomless love for you.  All guided and maintained perfectly by the Spirit of Him who raised Christ from the dead, namely His Holy Spirit.  Forgiveness is not simply an altar phenomenon, one and done. Forgiveness is a constant state of being in which every one of the above continuously wash over you as if you were walking among the waves of the sea.  You cannot escape the presence of God’s forgiveness. You can only choose to live in deception to the notion that it is not there, or if it is there, that you simply do not want it to be so. You are precisely designed to be in perfect communion with God, reconciled to Him and forgiven. He did it flawlessly for you and it cannot be undone. You must choose a lie in order to remain dead in sin. “It is finished” states the plain truth, that man will never again be required to pay the price for his sin, our debt is cancelled.

The agony of the garden was due in part to the question of “Can the mortal flesh of a man filled with the Spirit of God withstand the full force of all the guilt of all the sin of all time and the horror of all evil, yet overcome its curse?”  The answer of the empty tomb is yes it can.  The entire focus of God and the kingdom of heaven were centered on Christ as he hung upon the cross. His righteous cry released such a torrent of forces that earth gave up its dead and the veil of the temple was torn in two. That veil had concealed the glory of God from man. The glory of God then was forever revealed on earth to man never again to be contained in a temple built by man, but in a temple built by God. You are that temple. The submission of Christ’s will in the garden in total accord and obedience to the Father’s will finalized the covenant to redeem mankind; it simply had to be walked out by Christ as agreed between them. Our determination to obey Christ and His word will seal the deal for us.  He will allow us to live in and share the glory of God on the earth as we obey Him, forgive others for their wrongs against us and reconcile those to God.

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