The Gospel of John

It Is Finished

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 67- 70

Genre:

Track: 065

Dictation Name: RR197AK67

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let us worship God. Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return unto the Lord and He will have mercy upon Him and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God we give thanks unto Thee that day after day Thou dost surround us with Thy mercies, Thy blessings and Thy protecting care. That Thou the ungodly rage and seek to destroy us, Thy people and Thy kingdom, we are ever in the hollow of Thy hands, in peace and in safety. Teach us therefore so to walk in that in all things we commit ourselves and our hopes, our fears, our want into Thine omnipotent and loving hands. Bless us in Thy service, in Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is from the Gospel of John 19:23-30. Our subject: It Is Finished. John 19:23-30.

“Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also his coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout.

24 They said therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be: that the scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, They parted my raiment among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots. These things therefore the soldiers did.

25 Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.

26 When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son!

27 Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.

28 After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst.

29 Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a spunge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth.

30 When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.”

In verses twenty three and twenty four we see the soldiers dividing amongst themselves the clothing of the naked crucified man.

These were normally few in number, four or five items only counting the sandals. There was a difference in the value of the several items, in particular in this case the coat was a seamless garment woven as one piece and therefore more valuable than such things as a belt. As a result the soldiers cast lots. With each cast the winner took his pick, the scripture referred to is Psalm 22:18, a song of David, and it refers to the casting of lots for one’s garment. Along those near the cross were Mary, Jesus’ mother and his mother’s sister Mary the wife of [unknown]. There was a question raised by many, does Mary and the wife of [unknown] refer to two or is it one person. The question is not important. These women stood close by the cross. When Jesus saw His mother He said to His mother ‘woman behold thy son’ and to John ‘behold thy mother’. We are told that John thereafter took Mary into his own home. In verses twenty eight through thirty we have two of the seven last words or statements from the cross. These seven are first ‘Father forgive them for they know not what they do’, this is in Luke 23:34. He prays ‘Father defer the charges against these soldiers for the time being for they know not what they do’. The biblical word forgive does not mean as our word does, I’m not mad at you anymore so let’s forget about it. It’s a legal term, a juridical term, and it means either charges dropped because satisfaction has been rendered or occasionally charges deferred for the time being and it is in this second use that our Lord here uses it.

Father forgive them for they, the roman soldiers, are ignorant of what they are doing. Then second ‘verily I say today thou wilt be with me in Paradise’. Words spoken to one of the two malefactors crucified with Him. Then third: ‘woman behold thy son’ and ‘behold thy mother’. Then fourth in Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34: ‘my God, my God why didst thou forsaken me’ and fifth: ‘I thirst’. Sixth: ‘It is finished’ and seventh almost in the same breath according to Luke: ‘Father into Thy hands I commend my spirit’. Of these seven sayings three are from John, three from Luke and one is cited by both Matthew and Mark. The fifth word ‘I thirst’ comes with His knowledge shortly before death that He has fulfilled His calling to make atonement for our sins. Crucifixion dehydrated a man, He therefore gave thought to His desperate thirst born of this radical dehydration. A sponge was soaked in vinegar we are told which in those days meant a sour cheap wine, placed on a hyssop stalk and held up to Him to suck on. A hyssop stalk could be two or three feet in length, hyssop was used in Passover ceremonies and John may have called attention to hyssop to remind us that Jesus was the perfect Passover sacrifice. Then we have the sixth word: ‘It is finished’ followed at once with the seventh: ‘Father into Thy hands I commit my spirit’. Together with I thirst these came shortly before His death.

Speech was for a crucified man very difficult. I thirst was no doubt a call for something to drink to make speech possible. Now the words ‘it is finished’ do not convey in English the meaning they do in the Greek. It means it is accomplished, my work is done. In Morgan’s words and I quote:

“It was not the voice of one defeated, it was the voice of the victor. It is finished, the Greek words mean far more than that something was over, it means that it was rounded out to perfection, whatever He went ot the cross to do was accomplished.” Unquote.

The agony and the horror of crucifixion cannot obscure this fact of victory. A new beginning in history was accomplished, the key to history would now be the fact of atonement but sin was atoned for, man made a new creation in Christ and the history would now see the beginning of a restored earth and God’s kingdom. In some respects the battle against God and His Christ would be waged more bitterly and intensely than ever before, the twentieth century is witness to that fact. But victory was now in view and the triumphant campaign was now underway. Because Christ’s atoning sacrifice ended the power of sin and death over man the resurrection was an inescapable consequence. Our Lord had destroyed the power of sin and death and therefore death could not hold Him. His death on the cross and His time in the grave made clear the grim reality of sin and death but His resurrection openly destroyed their power over Christ’s new creation.

Now normally the atonement is not discussed in this context because people at large, including too many church men, keep history separate from theology. But is this possible? Can I be seen as a person or known as one if my sex, race, nationality, family, faith and character are left out of the picture? Now this would be a purely materialistic view. This is the view that prevails in our world but am I not then simply stripped of my nature and being? For a Christian all life is theological, it has its meaning in terms of the triune God and His infallible word and we can never be understood except as God’s creation. To attempt to understand the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ apart from His incarnation and the atonement is to deny meaning. But the modern world does deny meaning as a given in favor of at least or at best a tentative, possible, evolving meaning which may end up as no meaning at all. In other words, things do not have meaning in themselves. Therefore nothing has any meaning in and of itself, it has meaning only because somebody gives meaning to it for a time. But it’s of no importance unless you give it meaning, now that’s the modern perspective. But Christian theology is not an abstraction about history but rather a declaration of what history is, has been and will be. It is what history is.

The atonement celebrates the new beginning, the power of sin and death are broken. So that by Christ’s regenerating power man is made a new creation. History is not limited to the physical fact of crucifixion or whatever event you are concerned with but it includes what that event accomplished, what it means. What God intended in that event. If man alone gives meaning to history then it is only man’s analysis and conclusion that counts. But if God alone gives meaning to all things than the meaning and the event are inseparable because the ordination and accomplishment thereof are God’s work. By separating history and theology in the gospel narratives the commentators have served the humanistic agenda. What does this mean? Well, historians when they apply this to history, let us say the War of Independence, will tell you it meant one thing to the English, it means another thing to Americans, but in and of itself it meant nothing. These events took place, its men who give meaning to them but the meaning can change. So there is no meaning inherent in the event. The same way there is no meaning in your life and mine, according to them. We try to give them a meaning, we put clothes on ourselves physically and we put meaning on ourselves physically. Now that is the modern perspective! But our Lord’s statement ‘it is finished’ or ‘it is accomplished’ is a theological statement. It states that there is a meaning in the events that has been brought to a conclusion.

If we separate history and theology we join the ranks of the culture despisers of Christianity and we separate ourselves from Jesus Christ. William Barkley reminds us that Jesus according to Matthew 27:50, Mark 15:37 and Luke 23:43 died with a great shout on His lips. It is finished. That’s the meaning. So the very words of the Bible tell us our Lord says it is accomplished, I’ve finished what I came to do and the meaning is that He shouted this out triumphantly because the word it is finished is one word in Greek, [unknown] and Jesus died with this shout of triumph on His lips. We cannot report of the meaning of that cry ‘it is accomplished’ without being theological because for us as Christians there are no brute facts, that is no meaningless facts. No facts with no possible interpretation. There are only God created and God interpreted facts. Facts without meaning do not exist, if we are ignorant of the meaning this does not mean they have no meaning. There are many languages I do not understand but this does not make them meaningless. As Cornelius Van Til pointed out so powerfully there are no meaningless or brute facts in all of God’s creation. In a television series of the 1960’s detective Friday was given to saying ‘just the facts ma’am’ but to assume that facts do not exist in a context of God given meaning is absurd. Just the facts? Well the woman reported in one instance to detective Friday that she had been robbed, her statement was full of presuppositions, of theology, for example. It presupposes that robbery is morally and legally wrong and that the man robbing her was a thief.

Her statement assumed that the police had a duty to perform and that they represented the law and so on and on. Men may refuse to believe in God but their words are meaningless without the God created context. I’m always delighted when I think of Marcell [unknown], a very evil man, in his day one of the leaders of the modernist school of painting, he held painting had no meaning, life had no meaning, nothing had any meaning, and he hated language. Because he was, whatever else he may have been, a highly intelligent man and he recognized that every word is a propositional truth. How then could he escape from God into a language that did not witness to God and to propositional truth? So he set out and spent years trying to create a language without meaning and he found it was absurd. He could not escape from God’s world of meaning so he spent the rest of his life apart from his degenerate sexuality playing chess and talking as little as possible to avoid admitting there was a God. Well, the world is a totally meaningful world. In hell God and theology are rejected by the inhabitants thereof therefore they deny all facts and all meaning. There is only an unending destruction of meaning for those in hell, hell has meaning for Christians because for them there are no brute or meaningless facts and hell is thus the futile rejection of meaning, God’s meaning and it is total impotence. Let us pray.

Our Father we give thanks for this Thy word. We thank Thee that our Lord came and died for us to make atonement for our sins, rose again from the dead to give us a resurrection and life in Himself eternally. Make us ever joyful in the heritage that is ours in Christ, we thank Thee that by the adoption of grace we are now and throughout all eternity Thy sons and daughters. Lord God how great Thou art and we praise Thee. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Question] How good of a journalist can you be without being a Christian?

[Rushdoony] A very good question, how good of a journalist can you be if you are not a Christian and I would say you are going to be a dishonest one, because you are going to evade the essence of meaning, God, and whatever God has ordained and put into the context of life. And this is the problem, you see if you deny God’s meaning you’re not going to be without a meaning. Marcell [unknown] found that out. So what will you do? You will create your own meaning and that becomes the truth. For example one of the candidates has been called in this current primary race a number of names including anti-Semite, of which there is not a shred of evidence, he’s been called racist, again without a shred of evidence and why not? Why not?

After all, if there is no universal meaning, no truth, what you say is as true as anything else! We know that as far back as George Washington’s administration one newsman, a thoroughly ungodly man, invented story after story after story impugning George Washington’s character, his actions, everything. They were ugly to the enth degree. He was more unrestrained then our contemporary writers are. Of course given his background you know he was a bastard, physically and spiritually. Now this is the kind of thing that’s going to mark the ungodly, truth has no meaning for them. And for journalists today even when they are accurate they are dishonest because they are given to denying the validity of any meaning but what they hold to because for them there is no absolute meaning. So journalism is not going to be good and as Augustine long ago saw if you have no faith a country and its government will be no different, to put it in modern language, then the mafia! They’re out to advance themselves and nothing more. Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes. What does it mean when they do that. The meaning they seek is an infemerial, temporal one, to be in with the crowd that is currently determining things. So they do it and its often very painful, the kind of thing they do, earrings in their ear and in their, I mean safety pins in their ear and in their belly button and on their lips, through their nose, and they are doing it because they want to be a part of those who are currently giving an infemerial meaning to what they do. So it’s still trying to find the meaning although a cheap one.

When the enlightenment began the influx immediately of certain ideas began. Men were no longer living in terms of the faith, they were living in terms of others. This first came in with the Renaissance and [unknown] in his book The Courtier advised people always to be on parade. If they were in battle to hold back and do nothing unless they saw the general or the prince nearby watching them and they were to charge and indulge in all kinds of heroism. And similarly they were to dress, to put on an appearance where there were people to observe them and whose opinions were important. Well this led to the extreme emphasis on fashion, you may recall seeing pictures of some of the hairstyles at the time of the French Monarchy in its latter years, they were so tall, a frame work above their head, that they could get top heavy if they leaned over too far. And the whole thing was this elaborate headdress around which their hair was woven, or false hair as the case might be, was to attract attention. To have people’s eyes focused upon them, of course members of the court. What gave meaning to their lives was what other people thought. Well what has happened in the past century or so is that this emphasis on meaning from the eyes of onlookers has come down to the masses, to ordinary people. So they now dress to be noticed and this is the meaning they get out of life and this is what these kids are doing. And this is why when say, our society in New York sees that their style is picked up by ordinary people they promptly abandon it, they’ve got to be ahead of the game. This all witnesses to one thing the breakdown of meaning in any true sense. So meaning is now derived from show, from a front, and young people if that front is punctured will actually in some instances nowadays commit suicide. Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] It’s all a part of what Genesis 3:5 means, ye shall be as god, every man his own god, knowing, which in the Hebrew has a force of determining for yourself, what is good and evil. You will set your own law and your own standard. Any other questions or comments? Well if not let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father we give thanks unto Thee for Thy word. It is indeed a light unto our feet and a light upon our way. Make us oh Lord ever more faithful to Thee, ever more joyful in our faith and ever more prompt in Thy service. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, Amen.