"It Is Finished!"

The sky was dark and brooding, as if responding to the horror happening below.  Three men had been hanging on their crosses for hours now, but in typical Roman cruelty, they could be there for days, twisting in agony, begging for mercy and gradually slipping away into death.  The middle of the three, Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee, had been beaten so badly by a Roman scourge that he had not even a palm-sized patch of skin without lacerations and bruises over his entire body.  He was sinking fast.  "I am thirsty" he rasped, and a soldier dipped a sponge in sour wine and held it to Jesus' lips. 

Jesus' thirst was physical, because he was fully human and was thirsty from the loss of blood and lack of water; but it was also a reference by Jesus to Psalms 42:1-2 and 63:1, where the writer has a spiritual thirst for God comparable to being physically parched.  Various commentators point out the irony of the Source of Living Water (John 4:14, 7:38-39) being thirsty in death.  The soldier's response was an unwitting fulfillment of the betrayal listed in Psalm 69:21, "they offer me sour wine for my thirst."  

"It is finished" was Jesus' final cry recorded in John 19:30.  The Greek verb "tetelestai" he used is in the form that means a completed action creating an ongoing state of being.  It's a similar word to "finished" and "fulfilled" in verse 28.  Here, Jesus didn't say "I am finished" to refer to his own condition, but "it is finished" an emphatic, triumphant statement of victory!  The grand plan of God becoming man -- to be one of us and to fully experience our humanity, then in one bold stroke to absorb all our sin, guilt and shame so there will never be any more barrier between God and us -- that plan had now been accomplished with complete success.  There was, and is, nothing left to do to rescue us and reunite us to our Father.  You are now reconciled to God through Jesus his Son (2 Cor. 5:18-19).  It's a done deal. 

Luke records Jesus saying "Father, I entrust my spirit into your hands" in 23:46.  It was time now, and okay now, for Jesus to breathe one last breath and die.  Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man, fully God and fully human, died.  If he hadn't been human, he couldn't have died for you; if he hadn't been God, he couldn't have died for you.   
 
But the story is not over...