Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 378
“It is finished!” John 19:30. THERE never existed but one Being who in Truth could affirm of His work—“It is finished!” Incompleteness and defect trace the most vast, elaborate, and accomplished products of human genius and power. That brilliant volume of history, at a period of thrilling interest, falls from the death-struck hand of its author, fragmentary and incomplete. That magnificent work of art fades before the glazed eye of the painter and the sculptor, at a moment when the pencil is pointed, and the chisel upraised to impart the last and perfecting touch. That splendid edifice, the conception of a master mind, with all its architectural skill and beauty, is but a monument of human forethought and power, blinded and cramped in its range. Thus, contemplate man’s noblest achievements—the intellectual and the physical—the touch of human imperfection and incompleteness mars and traces all. The great truth, then, stands out like a constellation flaming in its own solitary orbit, that there never was but one Man who could gaze with complacency upon His work and, with His expiring breath, exclaim, “It is finished!” That man was the God-Man, Mediator, who, as the Son, and yet the Servant of the Father, relinquished His Throne for a Cross, that He might accomplish the Redemption, work out the salvation of His Church—the people given to Him of God—and who, on the eve of that Redemption and with all the certainty of an actual Atonement, could thus breathe His intercessory petition to Heaven, “I have finished the work which You gave Me to do.”
We summon you this evening around the Cross of Calvary, to listen to the words now breathing from the quivering lips of our dying Lord—“It is finished!” And believing, as I do most firmly and solemnly, that no Scriptural Doctrine, no revealed Truth, will ever be able to confound the infidelity of the present day, we meet to explode the many errors and heresies, fearful and fatal, which are inseparable from this age of licentious thought, unchecked utterance and freedom of opinion. We summon you this evening to proclaim the one remedy—the simple, full, unreserved exhibition of the ATONEMENT, the SACRIFICIAL, and FINISHED WORK of the Lord Jesus Christ! I am the more anxious and earnest on this important and impressive occasion to bend upon it your especial, devout, and solemn attention. Oh, that our modern theological controversialists—the men who are desirous of contending earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints—who are putting on their armor and furbishing their weapons for the approaching conflict, might learn the secret of their might, wherein their great strength lies! It is not in accumulating around the Cross the stores of ancient and modern love; it is not in a strife of arms, dazzling and distinguished by profound intellectualism, learning, and eloquence—but in a simple, bold, uncompromising presentation of the Atoning and Finished Sacrifice of Christ—the lifting up, in its naked simplicity and solitary, unapproachable grandeur, of the Cross of the Incarnate God, the instrument of the sinner’s salvation, the foundation of the Believer’s hope, the symbol of pardon, reconciliation, and hope to the soul; in a word, the grand weapon by which error shall bow to Truth, and sin give place to righteousness; and the kingdoms of this world long in rebellion against God, crushed and enthralled, shall yield to Messiah’s specter, spring from the dust, burst their bonds, and exalt in the undisputed supremacy and benign reign of Jesus!
And believing, too, as I firmly do, that so large an amount of corroding doubts, and gloomy fears, and painful forebodings, which so essentially and so widely impede the religious progress, invade and cloud the spiritual joy and hope of the Lord’s people, is mainly traceable to imperfect, crude, and dim views and apprehensions of Christ’s complete work, of the Savior’s finished salvation which He has worked for His Church—not distinctly seeing that all is done—the great debt paid, the mighty bond cancelled, the full Atonement made, sin all and freely forgiven, I am still the more desirous of placing this great, this cardinal and precious Truth prominently and broadly, as the Lord the Spirit shall help me, before the present assembly, trusting and believing that, in answer to prayer, there will be tonight the Presence and power of the Holy Spirit descending, invisible and noiseless, upon your souls, sealing upon your hearts this grand, this essential, this saving Truth—the FINISHED WORK OF CHRIST. “It is finished.” Let us consider these memorable words—
I. As THE CRY OF A SUFFERER. And what a Sufferer! Contemplate for a moment the Divine dignity of the Sufferer. Here was no ordinary Sufferer, my Brothers and Sisters. We approach the scene of the Crucifixion, and we behold three individuals alike suspended upon three different crosses, two on either side and One in the center. They all suffer— all languish—all die. But the sufferings and death of One is attended by circumstances so strange, and events so unparalleled, by prodigies so miraculous and sublime, that we are led to exclaim in wondering awe, “Who is this?” And the voice of Prophecy replies, “This is He of whom I spoke—‘Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd and against the Man who is My Fellow, says the Lord of Hosts; smite the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered.’” My dear Hearers, if throughout the life of Christ I could fasten upon no other event confirming the Doctrine of the Godhead of Christ, I would be willing and satisfied to predicate my argument in vindication of His essential dignity upon the closing scene of the Cross—the last moments of His parting life. If His life were destitute of fact, His death alone would supply the evidence that He who died upon Calvary was none other than the Son of God! Hold fast the Doctrine of Christ’s essential Deity, for upon it, as upon a rock, reposes the entire and stupendous fabric of the ATONEMENT.