Restoring What Was Lost: The Work Started on Calvary (Part 4 of 16)

Series: Restoring What Was Lost, Part 4 of 16

Scripture Text: John 19:30

For three weeks, we have surveyed the damage. We have examined the inheritance Adam forfeited, the slavery into which humanity was sold, and the illegitimate rule of Satan over this fallen world. The picture has been grim, and intentionally so. You cannot fully appreciate the cure until you understand the disease. You cannot grasp the magnitude of redemption until you have reckoned with the depth of the fall.

But today, the story turns. Today, we arrive at the hinge of all history, the cross of Jesus Christ. And we hear the three most consequential words ever spoken: “It is finished.”

“It Is Finished”, Paid in Full

John 19:30 records the moment: “When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost” (KJV).

The Greek word Jesus used is tetelestai. In the first century, this was not merely a declaration of completion, it was a commercial term. When a debt was paid in full, the creditor would stamp the receipt with tetelestai: “Paid in full.” When Jesus cried out from the cross, He was declaring that the debt of sin, the debt that had enslaved humanity since Adam, had been paid completely, finally, and irrevocably.

This declaration marked the end of the Old Testament sacrificial system. For centuries, the people of Israel had offered bulls and goats, year after year, sacrifice after sacrifice, and none of it could permanently take away sin (Hebrews 10:1-4). Those sacrifices were shadows, pointers, prophetic markers directing the eyes of the faithful toward the One who would fulfill what they could only foreshadow. And on Calvary, the fulfillment came.

As Hebrews 9:11-12 declares: “But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us” (KJV).

The Foundation of Our Redemption

The cross was not an accident. It was not a tragedy that God turned into a triumph after the fact. It was the plan from before the foundation of the world. Isaiah prophesied it centuries before Calvary: “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:5-6, KJV).

This is what theologians call penal substitutionary atonement. Consider what it means:

• God is perfectly just. Justice requires that wrongdoing be addressed.
• Sin is so serious that it required death as payment.
• God’s holiness cannot tolerate sin, nothing unholy can stand in His presence.
• While our sin remains, we are separated from God.
• And yet God, in His infinite love, provided a way for justice and mercy to meet at Calvary’s cross.

Christ bore our sins in His own body on the tree. Peter writes: “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed” (1 Peter 2:24, KJV). And Paul adds: “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21, KJV).

The Just died for the unjust. The sinless One became sin so that sinners could become the righteousness of God. This is the foundation upon which every blessing, every promise, and every hope of the Christian life is built.

The Implications of the Cross

What Christ accomplished on Calvary has staggering implications for every believer. Colossians 2:13-14 puts it this way: “And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross” (KJV).

The cross cancelled the legal demands that stood against us. The record of our debt, every sin, every transgression, every failure to meet God’s holy standard, was nailed to the cross and blotted out. Jesus did not merely forgive a few sins; He forgave all trespasses. He did not merely reduce our debt; He eliminated it.

Furthermore, through His death, Christ disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities, making a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in the cross (Colossians 2:15). Satan’s power was broken. Death’s sting was removed. The grave lost its victory.

Paul captures the believer’s new reality in Galatians 2:20: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (KJV).

“It Is Finished”, But the Story Continues

Here is a critical distinction that sets the stage for the rest of our series. On Calvary, Jesus said, “It is finished”meaning the price had been paid in full. The debt of sin was settled. The legal basis for humanity’s redemption was established once and for all.

But the full application of that finished work has not yet been completed. Christ paid for our inheritance on the cross, but the full possession of that inheritance, the eviction of Satan, the restoration of creation, the redemption of our bodies, unfolds across the remainder of redemptive history and reaches its climax in the Book of Revelation.

Think of it this way: on Calvary, Christ purchased the property. In Revelation, He takes possession and evicts the squatters. The work started on Calvary. But as we will see in the weeks ahead, the work continues through the opening of the scroll, the sounding of the trumpets, and the pouring out of the bowls, until at last, the declaration rings out again: “It is done” (Revelation 21:6). What was paid for on the cross is finally, fully, and completely realized in the new creation.

Rest in the finished work of Christ today. The debt is paid. The victory is won. And everything that follows in God’s redemptive plan flows from this one, glorious, unshakeable reality: It is finished.

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This is Part 4 of the “Restoring What Was Lost” series by Dr. Peter J. Carter. Next week: “The Lamb Takes the Scroll.”