Wale was the first person in his family to gain admission to a university. His father drove a danfo on the Oshodi to Mile Two route, and his mother sold pepper and tomatoes at the junction near their house. When the admission letter came, the whole compound gathered to read it. Then the celebration went quiet, because everyone knew what came next. School fees.
His uncle in Abuja settled the matter. He sent word that the fees had been handled and that Wale should simply go and study. Wale thanked him, packed his bags and went. But he did not quite believe it. Within a month he had taken a night job at a filling station near the campus gate. He worked from ten at night until six in the morning, three nights a week, and every naira he could spare went into an envelope at the bottom of his box. Each new semester he joined the long queue outside the bursary with his heart pounding, expecting to be told that something was outstanding.
By his second year his grades were sliding. He slept through morning lectures. He was thin and short-tempered, and a lecturer who had noticed his early promise called him into her office to ask what was wrong.
He told her. She looked at him for a long moment, then picked up the phone and called someone in the bursary. When she put it down, she wrote a few words on a scrap of paper and pushed it across the desk. All four years paid in full at registration.
Wale had been working himself into the ground to pay a bill that was settled before he arrived.
Many believers live exactly like that. They confess that Jesus died for their sins, yet they approach God as though something remains outstanding. A disappointing week sends them into hiding. A season of prayer becomes an attempt to make themselves acceptable again. They know the language of a finished work while carrying the burden of an unfinished debt. They are queueing at the bursary with an envelope of savings, wondering whether this will be the semester they are sent home.
One word from the cross
John’s account of the crucifixion slows down at the very end. He wants us to hear the last thing Jesus said before He died:
After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a spunge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.
In English, “It is finished” is three words. In the Greek of John’s Gospel it is one: tetelestai. It comes from a verb meaning to bring something to its intended end, to complete, to carry through to the finish. And it is in the perfect tense, which describes an action completed in the past whose result stands firm in the present. Jesus did not say, “I am finishing,” or “It will soon be finished.” He said, in effect, “It has been brought to completion, and it stays completed.”
Notice that John uses the same verb two verses earlier. “Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished” (John 19:28). That word accomplished is the same word, tetelestai. Before Jesus spoke it aloud, He knew it. The cry was an announcement, made by a Son who knew precisely what He had been sent to do and knew that it was done.
He had said the same thing to His Father the night before, in the prayer recorded in John 17: “I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do” (John 17:4). The work was given. The work was received. The work was carried to its end.
Some readers have pointed out that the word appears in ordinary documents from the ancient world, written on bills and receipts to indicate that an account was settled. Whatever we make of that background, the meaning in John is clear enough on its own. The Son who came to give Himself for the sins of the world has given Himself completely. Nothing in the offering has been left undone.
Look too at how He died. “He bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.” John does not say that His head fell forward and life was taken from Him. He says that Jesus bowed His head and gave up His spirit. Earlier in the Gospel Jesus had said of His life, “No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself” (John 10:18). Even at the moment of death, He was not a victim overtaken by events. He was the Priest completing His offering.
What was finished at Calvary
We need to let the Gospel define the announcement. “It is finished” is sometimes used as a slogan for anything a preacher wants to claim, and that is not fair to the text. It does not mean that every stage of God’s purpose has already become visible. John goes on to tell us about the empty tomb, the risen Lord breathing on His disciples, and the commission to go into the world. Jesus would rise. He would ascend. The Spirit would be poured out. The dead would yet be raised, and creation would yet be renewed.
None of those future events implies a defect in His sacrifice. They are not repairs to an incomplete offering. They are the unfolding of the purpose for which the offering was made. The resurrection is God’s vindication of the One who died, and His living ministry is the continuing fruit of a sacrifice that needs no supplement.
So what exactly was finished? The work the Father gave the Son to do in His suffering and death. The obedience He offered as the true Israel, the faithful Son who did what every other son had failed to do. The prophetic Scriptures that pointed toward a suffering Servant, which John repeatedly tells us were being fulfilled even in the small details of the crucifixion. And above all, the sacrifice for sin. The writer to the Hebrews will tell us that Christ “by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us” (Hebrews 9:12). Obtained. The verb is in the past. The redemption is eternal.
Isaiah had seen it coming centuries before. Of the suffering Servant he wrote, “He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied” (Isaiah 53:11). God looks at what His Son endured and is satisfied with it. If the Father is satisfied, who are we to treat the offering as insufficient?
That is the heart of the matter for daily life. The believer does not have to add another payment to make Christ’s offering adequate. Gratitude answers the sacrifice. Obedience answers the sacrifice. Love for one another answers the sacrifice. None of these become part of its price.
PunchlineGratitude and obedience answer the sacrifice of Christ. They never become part of its price.
The Priest who sat down
The letter to the Hebrews opens with one of the most majestic sentences in the New Testament:
God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.
Read the last line slowly. “When he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” Two things are said about the purging of sins. It was done by himself, without assistance, without any contribution from us. And when it was done, He sat down.
To feel the force of that, we need to know something about the priests of the old covenant. The tabernacle God gave to Moses was carefully furnished. There was an ark covered by the mercy seat, a table for the shewbread, a golden lampstand, an altar of incense, a bronze altar for sacrifice and a basin for washing. But among all the furniture God prescribed, there was no chair for the priest. His work was never done. There was always another sacrifice to offer, another lamp to trim, another loaf to set out, another worshipper at the gate with an animal on a rope.
The writer to the Hebrews draws out the contrast in two verses that belong side by side. “And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins” (Hebrews 10:11). Then: “But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God” (Hebrews 10:12).
Standing priests. A seated Priest. The difference has nothing to do with comfort. The priests stood because their sacrifices could not finish anything. Christ sat because His sacrifice finished everything it was meant to do.
The writer explains why the old offerings had to be repeated:
For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.
“In those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year.” Every Day of Atonement, the high priest went into the Most Holy Place “not without blood, which he offered for himself, and for the errors of the people” (Hebrews 9:7). The people would have been relieved when he came out alive. But the next year it had to be done again, and the year after that. The very repetition was a reminder that the problem had not been finally removed. Each year’s sacrifice preached a sermon: sin is still here.
Then notice the logic of verse 2. If the sacrifices had worked completely, they would have stopped, “because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins.” The goal of a perfect sacrifice is a worshipper who no longer carries a consciousness of sins standing between himself and God. That does not mean a believer becomes careless about sin, or never feels the sting of conscience when he does wrong. It means he no longer approaches God under the shadow of an unpaid account.
A believer who keeps offering his own sacrifices to make himself acceptable is, in a sense, re-entering the yearly cycle. His fasting, his vows and his religious exertions become a fresh remembrance of sins. Hebrews has a word for him. “For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14). And a few verses later: “Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin” (Hebrews 10:18).
No more offering for sin. There is no missing portion for your fasting to supply. No minister possesses a final payment that makes the blood effective. No ancestral accusation has greater authority than the Redeemer who has dealt with sin. A believer may genuinely need instruction, deliverance from deception or help in resisting destructive patterns, and those ministries are good. They serve Christ’s accomplishment. They cannot improve it.
Seated, and still serving
NuggetSomeone may ask: if Christ has sat down, is He now inactive? The answer is a joyful no. Hebrews holds two truths together, and we need both of them.
Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens; Who needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people’s: for this he did once, when he offered up himself.
“For this he did once, when he offered up himself.” That is the finished sacrifice. “He ever liveth to make intercession for them.” That is the continuing ministry. The offering is complete. The Priest who offered it is alive and active on behalf of His people.
His intercession is not an attempt to persuade a reluctant Father to accept what the cross failed to secure. It is the living presence of the One whose sacrifice has already been accepted, appearing before God for us. Paul puts it in a rising sequence of confidence: “Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us” (Romans 8:34). Died. Risen. Seated at the right hand. Interceding. Every phrase answers the accuser.
There is something deeply restful in this for a believer who struggles to pray. You may feel that your own prayers are weak and scattered. You may wonder whether you have prayed enough, or fervently enough, to stay in God’s favour. But your standing does not rest on the strength of your intercession. It rests on His. The Priest at the right hand of God has never once forgotten your name.
Hebrews also adds that He sat down “From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool” (Hebrews 10:13). The sacrifice is finished. The full display of its victory is still unfolding. Christ is seated, and He waits with the calm of One who knows that the outcome is not in doubt. We share that waiting. We pray, we work and we suffer in a world where evil has not yet been removed from sight. But we do so under a seated King, not a struggling one.
When the conscience tries to pay twice
Let me describe a woman I will call Aisha. She has been a believer for many years. One evening, tired after a long day, she speaks harshly to her younger sister on the phone and says something genuinely hurtful about the sister’s marriage. She knows immediately that it was wrong. She calls back the next morning and apologises. That was right.
But then she stays away from prayer for four days. She does not open her Bible. She feels she ought to be miserable for a while, to prove to God that she takes it seriously. When she finally prays, she begins by reminding the Lord of the good things she has done since: the extra hours at the church clinic, the money she gave to a widow, the morning she spent helping at the youth camp.
Aisha needed to repent, and she did. Her sister deserved an apology and changed conduct, and rebuilding that trust may take time. But her four days of self-punishment have no cleansing power at all. She has confused the necessary repair of a human relationship with the purchase of access to God. Without meaning to, she has been standing like an old covenant priest, offering her own sacrifices because she does not quite trust the One who sat down.
Hebrews directs the guilty conscience toward a different entrance:
Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.
“Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace.” Notice what the throne is called. It is a throne of grace, because the One who sits beside it has dealt with the sin that would otherwise make it a throne of judgement. And notice when we are invited to come: “in time of need.” The time of need includes the evening after you have said something cruel. That is precisely the moment you need mercy, so it is precisely the moment you are invited.
Aisha can come truthfully, without defending what she did and without dressing it up in a list of good works. The same grace that receives her will teach her to listen, to restrain her tongue, and to seek help if harsh speech has become a pattern. John says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Faithful and just. God forgives a confessing believer because it is just to do so. The debt has been paid. To demand payment again would be unjust.
Self-condemnation often looks serious because it is painful. But pain alone cannot tell us whether a response is spiritual. A person can feel terrible and remain entirely absorbed in himself. Paul distinguishes two kinds of sorrow: “For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death” (2 Corinthians 7:10). Godly sorrow turns toward the Father, agrees with His judgement about the wrong, and receives help to walk differently. Worldly sorrow circles around the self and calls its misery holiness.
When the accusation returns, answer it with what Christ has done. Do not argue that the sin was small. Do not search for a good deed large enough to balance it. Your assurance rests in the sufficient Saviour. Then attend to the obedience now in front of you. A settled sacrifice frees your attention for the person you need to love.
Living from completion
What does it actually look like to live from a finished work, rather than toward one?
It looks like prayer that begins with access instead of anxiety. You do not open with an apology for existing. You come as someone for whom the way has been opened, and you bring the real matters of your day: the difficult colleague, the child who has stopped speaking to you, the result you are waiting for, the temptation you are tired of.
PunchlineIt looks like service without a hidden invoice. A believer who knows the account is settled can serve in the children’s department for years without needing anyone to notice. He is not paying rent. He is expressing gratitude, and gratitude does not keep receipts.
It looks like spiritual disciplines restored to their proper place. Fasting, giving, early morning prayer and Bible reading are good gifts. But they were never meant to purchase what Christ has already purchased. When a believer fasts in order to make God love him again, the fast becomes a burden. When he fasts in order to seek the face of a Father who already loves him, the fast becomes a delight, even when it is hard.
It looks like freedom from spiritual merchandising. In many places, anxious believers are told that the work of Christ needs one more ingredient before it will work for them: a special oil, a costly seed, a particular minister’s prayer, a ritual to break something inherited from their grandparents. Some of those who offer such things are sincere and simply mistaken. Some are not. Either way, the believer who knows that Christ sat down can listen to sound teaching with gratitude and still say, quietly and firmly, that there is no unfinished payment for anyone to sell.
And it looks like rest that leads to work. Genesis tells us that when God had finished creation, “on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day” (Genesis 2:2). God was not tired. He rested because the work was complete. Humanity’s first full day began in that rest, and the work Adam was given in the garden flowed out of it. The same order holds in the new creation. We begin from the rest of a finished work, and then we work hard, from rest, toward the purposes God has prepared.
Hebrews never imagines that a settled conscience produces idle Christians. In the very passage where it speaks of the seated Priest, it goes on: “And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works” (Hebrews 10:24). Confidence before God becomes generosity toward people. A believer who is no longer trying to pay God has a great deal more energy left over for loving his neighbour.
The table that remembers
The Lord gave His church a continuing way of remembering His death:
For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: And when he had given thanks, he brake it , and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it , in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.
We return to the Lord’s table again and again. Some have wondered whether that repetition contradicts the finished work. It does not. The priests of the old covenant repeated the sacrifice. The church repeats the remembrance. We do not offer Christ again. We remember the Christ who was offered once, and we “shew the Lord’s death till he come.”
That difference matters a great deal. We come to the table because we need to remember, not because the sacrifice needs to be repaired. We come as people who forget easily, who drift back into old patterns of earning, who need to hear once more with bread in our hands that His body was broken for us. The table does not add to Calvary. It brings us back to it.
Notice also that the meal looks in two directions. It remembers a death in the past, and it waits for a coming in the future. “Till he come.” Even here, the accomplished offering and the future hope stand side by side. The work of atonement is finished. The story of redemption is still moving toward its final chapter.
And the table is shared. Paul wrote these words to a church where some members were eating well while poorer members went hungry. He was horrified. The table that proclaims a finished sacrifice cannot be used to reinforce human divisions. Come to it with that attention. Remember the Lord who gave Himself. Recognise the fellow believers who share His body. Let gratitude reach the relationship that has grown cold, or the person whose need you have overlooked.
Finished, yet still groaning
There is one more guard-rail we need. A believer who hears that everything is finished may conclude that he should never feel weakness, sickness or sorrow, and that any struggle must mean a lack of faith. Paul refuses that conclusion:
And not only they , but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit , the redemption of our body. For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it .
These are believers who possess the Spirit, and they groan. They are waiting for “the redemption of our body.” The finished sacrifice has not made bodily resurrection unnecessary. The cross has dealt with sin completely, and the full harvest of that victory, including new bodies and a renewed creation, is still ahead.
That means you can hold real confidence and honest weakness at the same time. You can know that your sins are fully forgiven and still need a doctor. You can rest in a finished work and still grieve at a graveside. You can be accepted completely by the Father and still feel tired, low or confused on a particular Tuesday. Present assurance and future hope belong together.
There will be mornings when your body is weary and your emotions offer little support. The announcement at Calvary does not need to be repeated because you woke up weak. Faith may express itself on such a day in a quiet prayer, a necessary hospital appointment, a faithful day’s work, or accepting help from another believer. None of those things is less spiritual than a shout of victory. They are what trust in a seated Saviour looks like in ordinary clothes.
Wale sat in the lecturer’s office with the scrap of paper in his hand for a long time. He told me later that his first feeling was not joy. It was something closer to grief: for the sleep he had lost, the lectures he had missed, the years he had spent afraid of a queue.
Then the joy came.
He handed in his notice at the filling station that week. He started attending morning lectures again. His grades recovered, slowly at first. He still worked hard, harder than before in some ways, but the work had changed its meaning. He was studying now, not paying.
And the envelope at the bottom of his box? In his final year he heard about a first-year student from his area whose family could not raise the acceptance fee. Wale took the envelope to the bursary himself, stood in the same queue he used to dread, and paid it. When the boy tried to thank him, Wale just said, “Somebody paid mine before I got here. Go and study.”
That is the shape of a life lived from Christ’s completed work. You stop paying for what has been paid. The energy you poured into earning becomes available for loving. Hear the word from the cross again, spoken by the One who knew what He had accomplished: It is finished. The Priest has sat down. Put away the envelope, and go and live.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- In what ways do you still approach God as though something remains outstanding on your account?
- How does the picture of standing priests and a seated Priest change the way you think about your own religious efforts?
- When you fail, do you tend toward godly sorrow or worldly sorrow? What does each usually look like in you?
- Which spiritual discipline in your life has quietly become a payment rather than a delight?
- Who could benefit from the energy you would have left over if you stopped trying to pay God?
This Week
Read Hebrews 10:1-18 at the start of this week, slowly, and underline every phrase that speaks of “once” or “for ever.” Then each morning, before you pray about anything else, say aloud, “It is finished. Jesus sat down.” If you fail during the week, refuse the habit of staying away. Confess it the same day, make whatever practical repair is needed with the person involved, and return to prayer immediately, through the open door Christ has made.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus, thank You that You finished the work the Father gave You to do. Thank You that You purged my sins by Yourself and sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. I confess that I have often tried to pay again for what You have already paid, and stayed away from You when I most needed Your mercy. Today I come boldly to the throne of grace. Teach my conscience to rest where You have placed its assurance. Let my prayers begin from access, my service flow from gratitude, and my energy be spent in loving the people around me. I live from Your completed work. Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.