"When he had
received the drink, Jesus said, 'It is finished.' With that, he bowed
his head and gave up his spirit." (John 19:30 NIV)
Why did Jesus say right when he was dying: "It
is finished"?
I seriously doubt He was telling us that His
crucifixion was over. Rather, when Jesus said, "It is finished," He was
referring to the fact that the innocent, sinless One had been killed,
that He had given up His life for anyone who would follow Him. He was
referring to the fact that sin is now "finished". And Hebrews 12:2 tells
us He did it for joy: "For the joy set before him he endured the cross…"
(NIV). He did it for the joy that is born out of His love for you, for
me, for everyone on this earth. Jesus made the choice to suffer and die.
He made that choice out of His love for us, so that His grace could flow
to us. He made that choice out of joy!
Now we have a choice as well. We must choose
what we will do to access that Salvation.
We can decide to try and save ourselves by
attempting to keep the law, by trying to follow the teachings of
churches or pastors or priests. The problem is, it is clearly written in
the Bible that we are not saved by anything we can do. We are
not saved by our works or our good deeds, for our "good deeds"
are but filthy rags (See
Is. 64:6). We are saved by grace: "For it is by grace you have been
saved, through faith--and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of
God--not by works, so that no one can boast." (Eph. 2:8-9 NIV).
What does this mean?
It means our priest or our pastor cannot save
us. It means that keeping the law will never be able to save us. It
means that only the grace of God, accessed through surrender to Jesus
Christ, can save us.
And thus, we can decide to accept Jesus'
sacrifice and ask Him to be our Lord and our Saviour.
Remember: There is only One who has never
sinned, and that One died for us. We must accept Him into our hearts. We
must follow Him wherever He leads us.
When Jesus was crucified, most of the apostles
were hiding. They were afraid that the authorities would try to kill
Jesus' followers as well. Even though Jesus had tried to explain to them
that He was going to die, they didn't understand and they didn't know
what to do.
On Sunday morning, Peter and John ran to
Jesus' burial place. John ran faster than Peter, but he didn't enter
first. After Peter had entered, John entered as well, and the Bible
records: "He saw and believed." (John 20:8 NIV). He didn't question. He
knew Jesus had risen.
Jesus did this for all of us, if we want to be
saved. He is the only One who can do that!
During the second to last school year before I
retired, I had students who didn't understand math. They admitted that
during their first few years in school, they hadn't learned very much
math, and they hadn't understood what little they had been taught. The
students knew that during their upcoming year, they would be required to
take an important province-wide test on their math skills. They wanted
to do well, and they asked me to help them learn math.
Of course I jumped at their request. I wanted
to instill in them a love for math. The only problem was, the principals
I had during those last school years were certain that the only way for
students to learn math was to play math games. Of course, I was pretty
sure that this was the reason these students didn't understand math
concepts to begin with, and so I went against my principal. Oh, I let
them play math games, but I also taught them the important math
concepts. They were like sponges, soaking it all up, and the next year,
when they took their standardized math test, these students scored in
the 95th percentile for all students in our province.
What would have happened if I had let kids
play during math period as I had been instructed to do? They would not
have learn math at all. It hadn't worked for the four previous years,
and it wouldn't have worked during my year with them. But because they
wanted to learn, they did well. I was so proud of them.
Many churches also encourage "playing" with
God. They say: Follow the law and you will be saved. Instead, we have to
surrender ourselves to Jesus. We need to humbly admit we have sinned. We
need to be genuinely sorry for our sin. We need to throw off our efforts
to save ourselves through our works and admit that we can't live good,
sinless lives on our own. We need to admit that we need Jesus. He is our
Saviour, no one else!
Don't forget that my students had to work hard
to learn all the math concepts that they had missed up until they were
in my classroom. They willingly did it, however, because they truly
wanted to succeed. When we put off our efforts to earn our Salvation and
humbly accept the gift of Salvation that Jesus offers us, we will notice
a change in us. We will be so grateful for Jesus' gift that we will want
to follow His will. Sure, we will still sin, but we will begin to hate
our sin. We will begin to desire for God to guide us towards a sin free
life. We will learn to rely on His help, His strength to say 'no' to
temptation; but when we slip up, we will have that assurance that our
sin is forgiven because of Jesus' sacrifice at the cross.
Don't forget: Grace came down in the form of
Jesus Christ. He is our Saviour. The law will not save us, only Jesus
can save.
Rob Chaffart