John 19:30 – When Jesus had received
the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head
and gave up his spirit.
In John’s
Gospel, the last word Jesus spoke on the cross before dying comes to us in
English in three words: “It is finished.” This says a lot to us as it is, but in
the Greek New Testament, it is just one word: tetelestai. Greek is such a precisely nuanced language, that every
verb can be conjugated hundreds of ways to provide the exact meaning needed,
and tetelestai does that.
Its perfect
tense means an action was completed one time. Greek has a separate tense for
ongoing actions in the past (imperfect) and another for unspecific timing and
duration of past actions (aorist). Jesus’ death was a onetime event, and it was
the only sacrifice necessary and required to pay the price for the sins of all
mankind.
The core of tetelestai is the root telos. This gets translated as finished,
complete, mature, or perfect in its adjective and noun forms. What Jesus did
through his death was perfect. It was sufficient for all of us, and it was the
end of sin for all who believe in him.
Tetelestai is in the indicative mood. That means
it tells us what happened. There is no speculative uncertainty there would have
been with the subjunctive mood. We can know the price was paid.
Another aspect
of Greek verb conjugation is voice. With active voiced verbs the subject does
the action. This is passive. The “it” that was finished was finished by
another: Jesus.
What is that “it”?
We find hints in the two remaining aspects of the verb telestai. It is third person singular. That means it is not “I” or “you”
or even “we.” It was something else. That it that was finished the first Good
Friday is the consequences of the wrong each of us has done. It is the eternal
price that Jesus paid, so that whoever would believe in him would have eternal
life. If you have not yet believed, there is no better time than today to do
so.
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