John 19:17-37 What He Said

“No Roman citizen could be crucified,” my commentary said.  “It was reserved for the lowest kind of criminal, particularly those who promoted insurrection.”  Of course the Jewish leaders had tried to use that as their real excuse for having Jesus killed.  They even told Pilate he was no friend of Caesar’s if he tried to release Jesus!  As much as they hated Roman occupation of their land, they hated Jesus all the more for upsetting their little fiefdom within Roman territory.  They’d come to treasure their traditions, and those traditions trumped even their Messiah!

Pilate could see all of this, and when he wrote out the placard to be placed on the cross, he wrote, “This is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”  Oh, how the religious leaders hated that!  Pilate used it intentionally to insult and embarrass them, but God used it as a gospel tract that almost everyone could read in Aramaic, Greek, and Latin.

When Jesus was ready to dismiss His Spirit and die, he cried out, “It is finished!”  My commentary said the Greek word was tetelestai and the tense meant, “It is finished, it stands finished, and it always will be finished!”  In everyday life, it said the world would be used by a servant reporting to his master, “I have completed the work assigned to me.”  “When a priest examined an animal sacrifice and found it faultless, this word would apply … When an artist completed a picture, or a writer a manuscript, he might use it.”  “The death of Jesus on the cross ‘completes the picture’ that God had been painting, the story that He had been writing, for centuries … Perhaps the most meaningful sense was that used by the merchants:  ‘The debt is paid in full!’”

Jesus, thank You for being fully in charge of that situation, for completing Your Father’s assignment, for being the spotless Lamb of God, and for completing the picture of salvation for us.  Thank You most of all for paying my debt in full!

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford