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MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
After suffering on the cross for six hours, Jesus finally shouted, “It is finished!”
When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit (John 19:30).
“Finished” (tetelestai) – fulfilled, completed, accomplished.
What was finished?
• His SUFFERING
• His MISSION
Jesus knew that “all was now completed” (v. 28). Jesus had finished what He was sent to earth to do. “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” (John 4:34).
When former President George W. Bush was asked about regrets during his presidency, Bush answered that he regrets speaking in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner just weeks after the invasion of Iraq. Bush said, “To some it said, well, Bush thinks the war in Iraq is over, when I didn’t think that. But nonetheless, it conveyed the wrong message.”
“It is finished!” did not send the wrong message. It was a shout of triumph. (It was apparently the loud cry of Matthew 27:50; Mark 15:37; Luke 23:46.) Christ’s mission was accomplished!
John states in 19:31 that the day after the crucifixion was the Sabbath. Just as the Sabbath began after God finished His work of creation, so the Sabbath began after Jesus finished His work on the cross.
In this sermon series, we will examine four of Christ’s accomplishments on the cross:
• Substitution
• Redemption
• Propitiation
• Reconciliation
A SUBSTITUTIONARY DEATH
“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45; cf. Matthew 20:28).
“For” (anti) = instead of, in place of.
The view that Christ died as a substitute is sometimes called the theory of vicarious atonement. “A ‘vicar’ is someone who stands in the place of another or who represents another. Christ’s death was therefore ‘vicarious’ because he stood in our place and represented us. As our representative, he took the penalty that we deserve.” (Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, p. 579).
1. The OT sacrifices taught SUBSTITUTION.
a. The PROVIDED lamb (Genesis 22:6-8, 13)
Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”
“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.
“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together (Genesis 22:6-8; cf. v. 2).
Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son (Genesis 22:13).
b. The PASSOVER lamb (Exodus 12:21-23)
Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin and put some of the blood on top and on both sides of the doorframe. Not one of you shall go out the door of his house until morning. When the LORD goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe and will pass over that doorway, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your house and strike you down” (Exodus 12:21-23).
c. The SCAPEGOAT (Leviticus 16:20-22)
“When Aaron has finished making atonement for the Most Holy Place, the Tent of Meeting and the altar, he shall bring forward the live goat. He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites—all their sins—and put them on the goat’s head. He shall send the goat away into the desert in the care of a man appointed for the task. The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a solitary place; and the man shall release it in the desert” (Leviticus 16:20-22; cf. v. 10).
d. The SUFFERING Servant (Isaiah 53:5-7)
But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, do he did not open his mouth (Isaiah 53:5-7).
2. The OT sacrifices PREFIGURED the substitutionary death of Christ.
The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll—I have come to do your will, O God’” (Hebrews 10:1-7).
Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest [Jesus Christ] had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God (Hebrews 10:11-12).
a. Jesus is the PROVIDED LAMB.
The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).
Isaac asked his father, “Where is the lamb?” Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb.” John the Baptist declared, “Behold the Lamb of God” (KJV). “Of God” may mean “provided by God.” Jesus Christ is the sinner’s sinless substitute.
b. Jesus is the PASSOVER LAMB.
For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed (1 Corinthians 5:7).
Jesus was crucified during Passover (John 18:28, 39; 19:14). “To relate John’s passion chronology with that of the Synoptics, who quite clearly describe the Last Supper as a Passover meal, John times his passion narrative with reference to the official temple date of the Passover, our Lord and his disciples, following (it may be) another calendar, observed the festival earlier.” (F. F. Bruce, The Gospel of John, p. 279)
According to the ancient historian Josephus, it was customary in his day for the Passover sacrifices to be slain “from the ninth hour till the eleventh.” (The Wars of the Jews 6.9.3) “It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, for the sun stopped shining.... Jesus called out with a loud voice, ‘Father into your hands I commit my spirit.’ When he had said this, he breathed his last” (Luke 23:44; cf. Matthew 27:45; Mark 15:33). The ninth hour is 3:00 p.m. (The Jews counted the hours from 6:00 a.m.)
“These things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled: ‘Not one of his bones will be broken’” (John 19:36). “Do not break any of the bones” (Exodus 12:46; cf. Numbers 9:12; Psalm 34:20).
The Passover lamb was to be “without defect” (Exodus 12:5). Jesus is described as “a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Peter 1:19).
c. Jesus is the SCAPEGOAT.
For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous (1 Peter 3:18).
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).
d. Jesus is the SUFFERING SERVANT.
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed (1 Peter 2:24; cf. Acts 32-35).
3. Without the substitutionary death of Christ, our sins could never be FORGIVEN.
“For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life” (Leviticus 17:11; cf. Hebrews 9:22).
The blood of Jesus, [God’s] Son, purifies us from all sin (1 John 1:7).
RESOURCES USED
James Montgomery Boice, The Gospel of John, vol. 5
Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology
Craig Keener, The Gospel of John, vol. 2
Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross
Leon Morris, The Gospel according to John (NICNT)
Charles Ryrie, Basic Theology
