It Is Finished

On the cross, as Jesus breathed his last, he proclaimed, “It is finished.”

What was finished?

Many believe it was the law that was finished.  But is that true?  If so, why did his followers, even after the giving of the Holy Spirit that illuminated the Scriptures for them, still practice Judaism?

So I had to ask, what exactly was finished?

If we go back to Genesis, we see the curse that was brought about by Adam and Eve’s disobedience to a direct command.  God said do not eat, and they ate.  So death and the separation from God, the penalty for disobedience, came into the world.  

God had a simple standard in the garden: be fruitful and multiply, and do not eat from the one tree.  Adam and Eve enjoyed face to face fellowship with the Creator of all things.  But that wasn’t enough for them.  (And before we go pointing our fingers at them, we need to look in the mirror and see that we would do the same thing given the same choice.)

Paul says in Romans 6:23 that the wages of sin is death.  Sin has been defined as missing the mark – not completely living up to God’s standard of right living.  But Jesus, the perfect, spotless Lamb of God, lived out a perfect, righteous life that hit the mark of God’s standard of righteousness, of right living.

So what was finished? The curse separating man from God was finished.