FINISHED!

Today every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ we can rejoice in His finished work … the work He accomplished on the centre cross of Golgotha. Our debt was fully paid. Our sin thoroughly cleansed. Our Salvation eternally secured by His own atoning sacrifice.

The Lord Jesus fully satisfied the righteous claims of a holy God against our sin. The work that He did back then on the cross was complete. Never to be repeated. Once for all time and eternally – “It is finished”!

Only a perfect man could accomplish all this, and so He did! The life that He lived for those few years in this scene of time was a demonstration of the character of God Himself. For thirty-three years on Earth He was the outshining of the glory of God. We have the honour and privilege to read in the Bible about some of the things He did.

For the last three and a half years of His short life we are told of the wonderful miracles that He did for people who were infirmed. There was a paralysed man that He thoroughly healed. There were lepers who were made whole by the Lord. A demoniac man was completely released from the demons. The Scripture tells us that as a result he was next seen “clothed and in his right mind”. The hungry multitudes were fed to the full and were satisfied. There was a sick woman who had tried in vain to find relief from her infirmity, and after twelve long years finally heard that the Lord could heal her. When she reached out to Him with the touch of faith she was made whole. He stilled a storm one day and there was a great calm in its place. The Lord even had the ability to raise the dead and restore them to their families again.

Account after account declares the wonderful works of the Lord Jesus, and not one of the miracles that He did was incomplete. All this He did for the pleasure and glory of God. The Lord Jesus Himself said in His own words:

All that the Lord Jesus ever did, all that he began both to do and to teach were always completed, even when He was interrupted, as in the case of the above mentioned woman with the infirmary who was healed after twelve years of suffering. After she went on her way rejoicing He resumed His mission to go at the request Jairus to tend to his sick daughter. But sometime during the delay the young girl had died! What could He do for her now? It was too late … or was it? Death was not a problem to Him, and when He arrived at the home He went to her and He took her by the hand restoring her to her parents again, alive and well! Not only so but He commanded them to given something to eat.

What comfort the broken hearted received in His day. It would have been a different if He had failed to do each miracle completely. But He did all things well and with absolute perfection; for He was the very essence of God for all to see. The very reason for His living and that, which sustained His earthly sojourn, was this: “To do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work”. John 4: 34

Ultimately the Lord’s mission was to go to the cross, and there “Lay down His life a ransom for many” Mark.10: 45.

There in His sacred body He bore sin’s curse and the awful wrath of God against it, once and forever!

In anticipation of the atonement He alone would accomplish, He prayed to His Father as if it had already been done: “I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do” John.17: 4.

We have the great honour, (one that we do not deserve) of being linked with a real Man in heaven. This Man in the glory is the same One who did all these wonderful works and accomplished our salvation, paying for it in full with drops of His precious blood.

No matter who we are, or from whatever walk of life. It doesn’t matter what our circumstances are, we who belong to Him are linked with the One who never changes: “the same yesterday, and today, and forever”  Hebrews.13: 8. And our salvation is entirely the work of God.

Take comfort, rejoice and: