(The Final) Gold Nugget 382 - "It Is Finished!"

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      It was about the sixth hour.  The noonday sun should have been pouring its full light upon Jerusalem.  But there was a horror of great darkness – a darkness that could be felt.  It might well be so.  He was hanging on the cross by whom all things were made.  He was dying who upholdeth all things by the word of his power.  So stupendous an event, the death of him who is the Life of the world, must be attended by wonders, by strange and awful signs. 

      That fearful darkness was a stern rebuke to the cruel brutal mockers.  Nature was mourning for the Lord of nature, whom man, his noblest creature, was thus maltreating.  The supernatural blackness of the sky figured the black wickedness of that fearful crime.  The great darkness wrapt the dying Lord like a funeral pall, hiding from unsympathizing eyes that most awful spiritual conflict by which the loving Saviour wrought out our salvation.  It seems to warn us that we may not pry too curiously into the mysterious secrets of his atoning work.  It is his work; he alone can accomplish it. “I have trodden the winepress alone: and of the people there was none with me”.  We stand afar off, and beat our breasts in the consciousness of great sin and utter unworthiness, and adore the most gracious Redeemer, who loved us with that exceeding love which passeth knowledge. …

      The ninth hour was almost come.  The Lord’s last moments were now very near, when an exceeding loud cry pealed through the encompassing darkness.  The Lord’s holy human soul was emerging from the awful struggle.  He had been bearing, we may reverently and sorrowfully believe the extreme burden of the sins of the whole world.  They had been pressed upon him, in all their horror and loathsomeness, in that hour when he was made “to be sin for us, who knew no sin.”  The Lord looked back in clear consciousness upon the fearful strife.  “My God”, he said.  He quoted that wonderful twenty-second psalm, in which, ages before, he had by his Spirit depicted his own future sufferings.  He teaches us by his own example to use the blessed words of Holy Scripture in our distress, in our death-agony.

      “My God.”  The Son of God never lost his trustfulness in his heavenly Father.  Never for one moment could there be a darkening of the perfect love, of the ineffable communion, of the Father and the only begotten Son; and then came those mysterious words, “Why didst thou forsake me?”

      Did these words relate to some strange awful experience of the Lord’s human soul?  Was that soul left as it were alone for a while in the presence of sin – the sin of the whole world?  Had that blessed soul to bear … the guilt of my sin, and to feel that horror of great darkness when the face of God is hidden from the sinner?

      We cannot but ask ourselves these and such-like questions.  We cannot answer them.  It is a subject less suitable for words than for prayer and solemn meditation.  But if it is most awful, it is also full of precious comfort.  In the extreme anguish of spiritual depression the Christian soul is not cut off from Christ.  There is no sorrow so great as this; and sometimes God’s holiest children seem very severely tried by it.  Yes, in those saddest hours when we seem well-nigh hopeless, when we have lost heart, and there is no joy, but only darkness all around, even then let us draw closer to the cross, and strain our eyes to see the Crucified One, and think of the great darkness that hung around his cross, and listen to his dying words.  Let us say, “My God, mine ever in gloom and spiritual dryness and chill joyless depression – my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”  Only let us trust him, and we shall know at last, even in that bitterest of sorrows, that “whom he loveth he chasteneth.”  We shall hear at last in our inmost hearts the words of comfort, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” …

      A strange dread came upon the souls of the surrounding multitude; there was no mockery now, but awful expectation.  They thought that the Lord had called for the great prophet Elijah, the prophet who was to appear before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.  Would he come? They said to one another, in excited whispers.  And now there was some sympathy, perhaps springing from fear, for the dying Lord.  One of them gave him to drink.  The Lord did not refuse the vinegar as he had refused the medicated potion.  He received it in gracious condescension.  He had nothing of that haughtiness which prompts men to reject acts of kindness from those who have wronged them.  There was a solemn hush among the crowd, a stillness of awe, such as we fell sometimes when a great darkness comes over the heavens at the approach of some tremendous storm.  Would Elijah come? They whispered one to another.  He came not.  The Lord needed him not; he was giving his life for the love of souls. …

      The Lord cried again with a great voice.  Perhaps that cry was the word of triumph recorded by St. John, “It is finished!”  He had finished the work which the Father had given him to do; he looked back upon his finished work, and summed it up in that one loud cry of victory.  That loud cry from the cross peals through the world; still its echoes fall upon our ears.  It calls for our devout contemplation of that finished life of holiness and beauty.  It call upon each Christian so to live, in the imitation of that perfect life, that he too may, through the grace of the Holy Spirit and the cleansing power of the precious blood, look back in some poor measure on a work in some sense finished, when his last hour is come.

      That loud cry spoke not of exhaustion; but at once, when his work was finished, the Lord bowed his head, and yielded up the ghost.  The physical antecedent of his death was probably a broken heart; the true cause was his own sovereign will.  He yielded up the ghost; he let his human soul pass from the body.  It was his act, his will; none took his life from him; none could take it from him; he laid it down of himself.  The holy body hung lifeless on the cross; the holy soul passed into Paradise. …

      The cross is the central fact in the world’s history.  Let it be the central motive in our hearts.  The Lord suffered cruel pain.  Let us lift up our hearts to him in our anguish.  He is King of the Jews.  Let us take him for the King of our hearts.  He was cruelly derided.  Let us take insults patiently.  He died.  Let us learn of him how to die.

 

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“Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?  Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.  For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:  Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.  For he that is dead is freed from sin.  Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him.  Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him.  For in that he died, he died unto sin once; but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.  Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. … For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  (Romans 6: 1-9, 23)

 

The Pulpit Commentary, Matthew II p. 310-312, Matthew 27: 35-50, (B. C. Caffin)

See also:  Isaiah 63:3

 

Gold Nugget 382

“It Is Finished!”