It is finished.

A little while ago I was involved in an email exchange with an Evangelical Protestant that went on for hundreds, or possibly even more than a thousand, exchanges. One of the points he brought up a few times that I never really got around to addressing in those exchanges was how to understand Our Lord’s final words “It is finished” in St. John 19:30.

The claim was that the Greek word tetelestai (it is finished) was a legal term that actually meant “paid in full”. The idea being promoted by my interlocutor was that the word meant a strictly legal full payment of the debt for sin, leaving no room for us to “add” to our salvation through good works such as loving God and neighbour, receiving the Sacraments or obeying the Commandments.

The word tetelestai only occurs in one other place in Scripture, just two verses before in verse 28. Verse 28 reads:

After this Jesus, knowing that all was now finished (tetelestai), said (to fulfil the scripture), ‘I thirst.’

This passage does not make any sense if tetelestai can only refer to a strictly legal payment of a debt. It would mean that since everything that needed to be done was done, Our Lord then did something more to fulfil what needed to be done and said ‘I thirst’. Perhaps Our Lord was a poor economist?

Given that we probably aren’t going to dabble with the blasphemy that Our Lord, or the Holy Spirit who inspired St. John to write what he did, were really just dumb yokels who didn’t really know what They were doing when they said tetelestai in verse 28 we need to understand the expression tetelestai differently. What then does it mean?

Well, aside from the obvious immediate meaning – Our Lord’s life was about to come to an end – it has a deeper more profound meaning. Instead of understanding Our Lord’s words and actions as though they were technical arguments of an ancient Roman courtroom, we need to look at them in their real context – they come out of a Jewish liturgical culture. The Gospel of St. John begins by identifying Jesus Christ as God, the Word made flesh and introducing Him as “the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world”. Our Lord’s redemption comes out of this sacrificial “lamb of God” paradigm. The Jewish Passover ritual ends with the words “It is finished” – was the Passover lamb offered all those years beforehand a strictly legal payment?

For a fuller insight and explanation I invite you to check out http://www.the4thcup.com


David ObeidE-mail: david.obeid@gmail.com
Mobile: +61408248633
Skype: davidobeid
Blog: http://bit.ly/9ELFhg
TCF Blog: http://bit.ly/auwlEt
Twitter: http://bit.ly/aE7v86
Facebook: http://bit.ly/cIqVY4
MSN: mrobeid@hotmail.com
Youtube: http://bit.ly/cttUMd
For questions about the Catholic Faith: http://bit.ly/cgP03X
For information on my avatar: http://bit.ly/cyPMjH
To would be debaters: http://bit.ly/coTvGK