"It is finished" (John 19:30). Thus Christ, while hanging on the cross, cried with a loud voice before He gave up the ghost. The agony of the crucifixion was over—the awful suffering first under the heat of the sun, and then in the darkness which God drew like a curtain about Calvary. He had hung there, racked with pain. He had been mocked and insulted. Now the time of release was come. Into His Father's hands He commended His spirit and died (Luke 23:46).

But more was finished than the physical suffering. Redemption's work was done. He had finished paying the penalty of sin. He had finished the task which would make sinful man acceptable to a sinless God. He had completed the work of salvation. There was nothing more which could be done. He had suffered, the Just for the unjust (1 Peter 3:18).

Some men do not realize how completely it was finished. There are those who still try to work out salvation for themselves. They are trying to make themselves acceptable unto God by good deeds. When they sin, they seek to counter-balance that by an act of righteousness, hoping that God will take account of the good and overlook the bad. They labor fruitlessly, seeking to accomplish that which cannot be done "for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified" (Galatians 2:16). They seek to do what has already been done—the work of salvation. Christ on the cross finished that work.

Our salvation depends not upon what we do but upon what He has done. When we personally believe that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, and come to Him as a repentant sinner, we are saved. "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up [on the cross]: That whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:14,15). All of the believer's sins were atoned for when Christ died, and "His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24). He is thus forever free from their guilt. Nothing remains to be done about them. Jesus took care of every sin when he died. Forever and eternally "it is finished"!

—Selected