John 19:28-30,
After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.” 29 A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. 30 When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
On September 22, 1776, Nathan Hale was executed by the British army in New York City. He had joined the Continental Army just a year earlier at 20 years old, and by September 1776 he had volunteered to be an American spy behind enemy lines. He disguised himself as a schoolteacher and started collecting intelligence on the British army, but he got caught, and they immediately decided to hang him.
So he was in the gallows, with a crowd gathered around him, he had been humiliated by the British, and just before he died, he declared:
“My only regret is that I have but one life to lose for my country.”
Famous last words … Good last words.
It’s obvious that such a moment is loaded with power, and what he said lives on.
Then there’s also William Wallace.
In the movie, Braveheart, the greatest movie of all time, Mel Gibson plays William Wallace. He’s the Scottish hero up against the British (again), and this time the scene is in London. Wallace had been captured, and he was gonna be executed, but they were torturing him first and it was excruciating pain. The magistrate tells him that all he needs to do is beg for mercy, and they’ll stop the torture. The crowd is chanting for mercy, and then Wallace signals that he has something to say. The magistrate silences the crowd and says, “The prisoner wishes to say a word.” Everybody thinks he’s gonna beg for mercy, but instead, he cries out one word … y’all know what he says? “FREEDOM!”
A famous last word — a good last word.
These are amazing moments, but I wanna be clear: there is no example in history or in Hollywood that compares to the last word of Jesus Christ in John Chapter 19, verse 30.
In our English translations, it’s three words. Jesus says, “It is finished.”
But in the Greek, that’s just one word. It’s the word: tetelestai. (Teh-TEH-le-stie). Everybody say Teh-TEH-le-stie.
It was Jesus’s last word — and it’s not just full of power, but one Bible scholar says: “This one-word summary of Jesus’s life and death is perhaps the single most important statement in all of Scripture.”
And it changes everything. That’s what I want to show you this morning. I want to tell you three truths about Jesus’s last word. Here’s the first:
1. Jesus finished everything the Old Testament said.
What exactly did Jesus mean when he said “It is finished”?
Well, John actually starts to explain it to us in verse 28. Notice in verse 28, John tells us, after Jesus ensured the care of his mother in verse 27,
“After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.”
This makes clear again that Jesus is fully aware of what’s going on. Just like nobody takes his life from him, but he lays it down on his own accord (John 10:18), even in his suffering he’s doing everything ‘by the book,’ you could say. He’s doing everything according to plan, and so finally he initiates the fulfillment of Psalm 69:21.
Psalm 69 is a Psalm of David — and it’s one where David speaks in the voice of the Messiah — and he says in verse 21:
“They [his enemies] gave me poison for food,
and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.”
Now David wrote those words around 970 BC, and so Jesus, in the year 30 (about a thousand years later), to fulfill what David wrote, he says, “I thirst.”
And then John tells us in verse 29:
A jar full of sour wine stood there … [amazing!]
so they [Jesus’s enemies, his executioners, verse 29]
they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth.
And man, there are layers of meaning here. We could talk about a lot of different things, but I’m convinced that what John mainly wants us to see is that Jesus has finished the Old Testament.
John basically says that. In verse 28, the word for “fulfill the Scripture” is a different word than the one he typically uses. The root word here is the same as the word tetelestai (it is finished). They sound the same. John is telling us that Jesus said “I thirst” to “finish the Scripture.”
That’s pretty straightforward, but there’s another way John says this. It’s in the fact that they give Jesus the sour wine on a hyssop branch. They didn’t use a spear, they used a branch, and it wasn’t just a branch, it was a hyssop branch. Now why does that matter?
Well, remember it’s Passover. John has told us that.
The Passover is when the Jewish people celebrated their rescue from Egypt — this is in the Book of Exodus. The LORD passed through Egypt in judgment and he struck down the firstborn of every family, unless you had put the blood of the Passover Lamb on your doorpost (see Exodus 12:12–13, 23).
And back in Exodus 12:22, when Moses tells the people to do this, he tells them to put the Passover Lamb’s blood on their doorpost using a hyssop branch.
So let’s put two pictures side by side here:
First, let’s go back to the Exodus and take a snapshot here. Imagine this picture of a Jewish father, covering his door with the Passover lamb’s blood, using a hyssop branch. Hold that picture.
Now let’s go to the year 30, and see Jesus hanging on the cross, beaten and bloodied, and stretched out to his face is a hyssop branch.
This is deep poetry that John is doing here.
He wants us to know what he’s told us from the start of this Gospel: Jesus is the Lamb of God.
Jesus is the true Passover Lamb. And everything the Passover pointed to is now finished in him. And that’s not just true of the Passover, that’s true of the entire Old Testament.
Charles Spurgeon said something like:
From Genesis to Malachi, there’s not a single promise you will find, not a single prophecy, not a single type, and not the faintest allusion … which is not now fully worked out in Christ Jesus!
That’s the point.
Everything the Bible says about Jesus is true. All that was foretold by the prophets has come to pass, and all that remains promised will be.
When Jesus said “It is finished” he meant he has finished everything the Old Testament said.
Here’s the second truth about Jesus’s last word:
2. Jesus finished everything the Father gave him to do.
For this part, I wanna emphasize the relational reality of what Jesus is doing. There’s the fact of Scripture fulfillment, yes, but there’s also the fact that Jesus is being obedient to his Father.
Jesus has talked about this relationship to the Father all throughout this Gospel:
Back in John 4:34, he said: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.”
John 5:36, “… For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me.
John 6:38, “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.”
John 12:49, “For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak. … What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me.”
Do you see, there’s this glorious unity between the Father and the Son that’s on display in the Son’s mission. And Jesus makes this so clear in his high priestly prayer, in John 17. Jesus says to the Father:
“I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.”
Jesus prayed that just hours before he said on the cross, “It is finished.”
See, from before the foundations of the world, there has been an agreement within the Trinity about our redemption and how it would go: The Father purposed to redeem a people and the Spirit agreed to apply that redemption to us, and the Son willingly undertook the work of that redemption, The Father sent Jesus here to accomplish that redeeming work, and Jesus has now finished it.
When it comes to fatherhood, I’ve said before that it’s so important for dads to support their kids in anything that would allow them to say, at some point, “You did it.”
I was inspired here by a video years ago that made its rounds. It’s of a dad pitching batting practice to his young son at a baseball field. Just the father and son who are there. He throws a pitch and the little guy gets ahold of it, hits the ball over the fence. First time ever. He tosses his bat, and starts running the bases. And his dad is jumping up and down saying, “Yeah, yeah, home-run!” And then when his son touches home plate, he picks him up and says, “You did it! You did it!” It’s a moving video.
Years ago, I’m watching this thing, wiping tears, and I wondering: “Man, why is this so moving?” And I then realized, I don’t know if there’s anything more powerful a father could say to his son than “You did it.”
Now, look, yes, saying “I love you” is important. We should say it. And I love it when momma says “I love you.” But to hear your dad say, “You did it.” … this is deep poetry again.
And if that means something to us sinners with earthly fathers … Imagine the one-and-only perfect Son, having done everything the Father gave him to do … this not in the Bible, but it would make sense that before Jesus said “It is finished,” God the Father said to him, “You did it.”
Jesus finished everything the Father gave him to do.
3. Jesus finished everything needed to accomplish our redemption.
Now for this part, I want to go back one day from the crucifixion. Let’s go back to Thursday, which opens in John Chapter 13. John tells us in John 13:1,
“Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”
And that word for “end” is the Greek word “telos.” Which again is the same root word for “tetelestai.” And you can hear it: telos and tetelestai. It could translate: “the end” and “It is ended.” Or: “the finish” and “It is finished.”
We should see a connection between John 13:1 and John 19:30. What Jesus was determined to do throughout his whole ministry and when he washed his disciples’ feet on Thursday night, Jesus can now say on Friday afternoon, hanging on the cross, “It is finished.”
He had loved his own to the end. He finished it. He finished the definitive revelation of the love of God. Jesus finished everything needed to accomplish our salvation. Understand that when Jesus says Tetelestai! that’s not a cry of despair, that’s a declaration of victory!
No sin remains un-atoned, no debt is left unpaid, no burden stays un-carried, no wrath stands unsatisfied — Everything … everything … everything needed for our redemption has been finished.
Back in the late 1700s, there was a song that began circulating among Baptist churches in England. It was later credited to an English pastor named Jonathan Evans. He wrote this hymn meditating on Jesus’s last word. He writes:
“It is finished,” O what pleasure
Do these charming words afford
Heavenly blessings, without measure
Flow to us from Christ the Lord
“It is finished, it is finished,” saints the dying words record
“It is finished, it is finished,” saints the dying words record
Then my favorite stanza goes:
Finished all the types and shadows
Of the ceremonial law
Finished all that God had promised
Death and hell no more shall awe
“It is finished, it is finished,” saints from hence your comfort draw
“It is finished, it is finished,” saints from hence your comfort draw
So do we?
Saints, do we draw comfort from Jesus’s last word?
This morning, in closing, I want to challenge you toward this comfort. You must be comforted here!
I don’t know if anybody says it better than John Calvin in his commentary on this verse. It’s beautiful. Listen to this. He writes:
We ought to be content with Jesus’s death alone for our salvation, and we are not at liberty to apply for assistance in any other quarter; for he who was sent by the Heavenly Father to obtain for us a full acquittal, and to accomplish our redemption, knew full well what belonged to his office, and did not fail in what he knew to be demanded of him.
It was chiefly for the purpose of giving peace and tranquility to our conscience that he pronounced this word, It is finished. Let us stop here, therefore, if we do not choose to be deprived of the salvation which he has procured for us. (236).
Calvin is saying that when Jesus said “It is finished” he said it for you. Jesus said that word for your peace.
So then, stop trying to assist him in his salvation of you.
Stop thinking that you can be good enough or that you can work hard enough or that you can serve frequently enough so that he will save you.
Look, it’s easy to think this way. I hear it all the time. So many people assume that if they’re just a good enough person, Jesus will be good with them. But that’s not how it works.
To be saved by Jesus, you can’t add anything to what he’s already done. To be saved, we must stop where Christ is finished. That is faith.
It’s the empty-handed, open-handed receiving of what Jesus has done. Jesus does not need your help. Trust him.
And if you’re here this morning, and you’re not a Christian yet, you can become a Christian right now if you believe Jesus. Trust Jesus to save you because he has accomplished everything needed to save you.
And for all the Christians in the room, saints, be encouraged!
Take comfort in your Savior’s last word for you, “It is finished.” Tetelestai!
A famous last word — the best last word. That’s what brings us to the Table.
The Table
At this Table, when we eat the bread and drink the cup, we are taking comfort in the gospel of Christ. We are resting, not in what we’ve done, but in what he’s done.
And so, Christian, for those who trust in Jesus, I invite you to receive this table.
