redemption

It is Finished

/ EllieJ

How many people like me have read through the account of Jesus’ final days and hours thinking that the pinnacle of it all was the empty tomb, the resurrection?

To my surprise, it wasn’t.

Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.

john 19:30 (NASB)

The climax of the salvation story sits at the moment where Jesus uses His last breath to utter one last phrase. It is finished. Noah Webster said the word finished meant that something was polished to the highest degree of excellence. Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance gives several definitions that at face value seem to be at odds with one another:

Kalah (Hb. 3615): to be complete, at an end, finished, accomplished, or spent

Kaleh (Hb 3616): a failing

Kalah (Hb 3617): completion, complete destruction, consumption, annihilation

Kallah (Hb 3618): daughter-in-law, bride

Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance

To see each of these definitions together might cause some confusion until we start to put them in the context of the entire story of our redemption.

In a cursory reading, we can see the first definition (3615) without issue. Jesus said, “It is finished,” so it’s done. Whatever it is that He was hoping to accomplish was accomplished.

We can get stuck on that second one (3616). How does failing come into play while Jesus is on the cross? If you believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that He came to earth to make a way for humanity to return to a communion with the Father then of course we don’t want to consider the possibility of failure. But I don’t believe it was Jesus’ failure this term would allude to.

If the pinnacle of redemption took place as Jesus exhaled that last breath, then Satan had already failed. Though Jesus’ body would lay dead, there was nothing the devil could do after that moment that could turn the tide in his favour again. Ever. He failed. Wholly and utterly.

This leads us to our next term (3617) of annihilation. When it comes to the devil, darkness, sin, this is a great word to have in your repertoire.

ANNIHILATION: The act of reducing to nothing or non-existence; or the act of destroying the form or combination of parts under which a thing exists, so that the name can no longer be applied to it, as the annihilation of a corporation.

Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language

This is a good word. And it’s a good word to think about in reference to Jesus being finished. Satan has no power. Death and fear are only shadows. As Jon Foreman once wrote, the shadow proves the sunshine. Light exists. It’s a substance. It has cause and effect. Darkness is nothing. It can do nothing.

The last term (3618) might be the most important.

When he had sipped the sour wine, he said, “It is finished, my bride!” Then he bowed his head and surrendered his spirit to God.

John 19:30 (TPT)

The Passion Translation actually includes the bridal term in the scripture and it adds a completion to Jesus’ phrase that other translations miss out on. Jesus’ work was finished on the cross (not the resurrection). Satan failed. Sin and darkness and death were annihilated. All of this was so that the bride, the Church, could find a way back into communion with the Father.

Jesus’ death wasn’t as a runner breaking through the tape at the end of a marathon. His completion was once and for all. Nothing more was or is necessary. He doesn’t need to run another race.

The next time fear or darkness try to overtake you, remember Jesus’ words. It. Is. Finished. The fight isn’t ours. It was His. And He won. It’s not a continued battle. It’s over. Done. Complete.

It is finished.

It’s in His genes

/ EllieJ

“You are so much like your mother.” I’ve heard that phrase many times in my life. Back when my mother and I both worked for the same company, I’d answer the phone only to have the person on the other end of the line go into a long conversation about a department I had nothing to do with. Over the phone, I’ve even had my father call me sweetheart—a term reserved only for my mother. I sound just like my mom. I look like her, too. And she looks like her mom. Who looks like her mom. I know exactly what I’m going to look like if I reach my 101st birthday. It’s in my genes.

Jesus had something in his genes. Royalty, for one. After all, he was referred to as the son of David. He came from a heritage of kings. But Jesus had more than royalty in his lineage. He had redemption.

Long before Jesus, there was David. And long before David, there was a woman named Ruth. Ruth was from Moab, but she married an Israelite. When her husband died, she returned with her mother-in-law to the land of her husband.

In Israel, there was a law that stated if a widow was childless, the nearest male relative to her deceased husband would marry her to produce an heir. This man (usually a brother, but not always) was known as the go’el or kinsman-redeemer.

Ruth’s husband’s family had land in Israel. It was a part of the inheritance the family received upon entering the Promised Land. The land would forever belong to the family so long as there was an heir to receive it. Ruth needed an heir. So she offered herself to Boaz—a man of the same tribe as her late husband. After the next of kin declined his duty, Boaz purchased the right to marry or act as a redeemer for Ruth.

Then the elders and all those at the gate said, “We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel. May you have standing in Ephrathah and be famous in Bethlehem. Through the offspring the Lord give you by this young woman, may your family be like that of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah.”

Ruth 4:11-12 (NIV)

Who’s Perez? Not Hilton, that’s for sure. Perez was a son of Judah. Judah was also a kinsman-redeemer. When his daughter-in-law remained childless after having been wed to two of his sons, Judah became the man to produce an heir. While it wasn’t the most savoury of situations, Judah was still a redeemer. Judah, an ancestor of Boaz who was a redeemer. Boaz, an ancestor of Jesus who is The Redeemer.

Boaz took on a debt he did not owe by marrying Ruth and providing an heir for her deceased husband. It seems so small in comparison to the debt Jesus paid for us. He became our go’el, taking on himself that which overwhelmed us—our sin.

I don’t think it was by accident that these men in Jesus’ lineage were also redeemers. Without them and their actions, Jesus never could have arrived on scene. David’s line never would have even existed for Jesus to be a part of it. Redemption was in Jesus’ blood. Redemption was in his genes.

Read: Ruth 1-4, Luke 11:29-54

No plan B

/ EllieJ / Leave a comment

There are some things in life I like to have planned out. When I know I have to be somewhere, I plan my route. I know which roads I will take and, if there is an unforeseen backup, I’ll have a secondary plan. Plan B.

God had no such thing. There was no plan B in case His whole humanity thing went sideways—which it totally did. God is smart. He’s smarter than smart. He’s all-knowing. When He put mankind on the earth and told them not to eat from a certain tree, He knew full well that they were going to eat from that tree. And He also knew what He was going to do about it.

May grace and peace be yours from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. He died for our sins, just as God our Father planned, in order to rescue us from this evil world in which we live. That is why all glory belongs to God through all the ages of eternity. Amen.

Galatians 1:3-5 (NLT)

He died for our sins, just as God our Father planned. I’m sure that all of Jesus’ followers would have liked to have been in on that plan. I cannot imagine how they must have felt having the person they assumed would be their king killed for a crime he didn’t commit. We have the ability to read through both the Old and New Testaments and see a bigger picture. We can see how God’s plan for our salvation—which included the death (and resurrection) of Jesus—began with Adam and Eve.

You can look at God’s lack of forward planning two ways:

  1. He’s really not all that bright. Who works out a plan so grand without any backup measures whatsoever? That’s just crazy right? Everyone needs a plan B. But… we’ve already established that God is omniscient.
  2. He’s a genius. Before time even existed, He put into motion the greatest escape plan of all time. And it wasn’t even for Himself—it was for us.

God was so confident in what He started that He never worried about failure. He had one shot and He took it and let it play out for thousands of years. All so that you and I could be redeemed.

I can’t even get across town without a plan B. God rescued all of humanity.

Daily Bible reading: Song of Solomon 6-8, Galatians 1