Based on John 19:28-30 (New King James Version)
“After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, ‘I thirst!’ Now a vessel full of sour wine was sitting there; and they filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on hyssop, and put it to His mouth. So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, ‘It is finished!’ And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit.”
There are times that we think that the more words we use to express a thought, the more meaning we think things have. In the same manner, many people think that if they use difficult or eloquent words to say something, that whatever it is they are saying becomes even that more special. But, in the end, what matters most about words is the “Who” says them, and the “What” they were doing. The most significant words of the Lord’s ministry were these very short phrases, like the ones we read today: “I thirst” and “It is finished”.
The first phrase we will see is: “I thirst”. What does this mean? Well, the first thing, and what should be quite obvious, is that the Lord was completely human also. Even though He was (and is) God, He took on our form with all of its weaknesses, frailties, and needs. Shortly after the Lord was preached in many places, a heresy began surging that involved saying that Jesus was only a spirit, and that He was not manifested in the flesh. It is believed that one of the main reasons for John writing this gospel was in response to heresies like these. The truth is that Jesus lived and suffered everything with our same form. He lived through the sacrifice for our sins with all of our human condition. He felt the scorn and the lashes. He felt the extreme pain and exhaustion when carrying the weight of the wood on which He would be hung. He felt the crown of thorns on His head. He experienced the pain of being nailed to the cross. He felt the pain of hanging for all the time He did while His lungs were being destroyed because of the torture of the crucifixion. And moments before breathing His last breath, He said these few words: “I thirst”, because He was in fact thirsty. He could not go much longer. And of course, the worse thing you can give someone that is thirsty is vinegar. And when this happened, the prophecy written in Psalm 69:21 was fulfilled, which says: “They also gave me gall for my food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” When He experienced the entire horror of the cross and its process (because it was meant to be a death with a long process), as God and as a human being, there was nothing left unfulfilled. The Lord suffered it all, to pay for all of our sins.
And this takes us to the second phrase: “It is finished”. As it was said before, there was nothing left undone nor to be suffered through. The Lord fulfilled the entire sacrifice so that nothing would be left incomplete. He fulfilled the sacrifice perfectly. Every word was fulfilled. Every prophecy was realized. Nothing that was supposed to be done was left undone. And of course, the only one that could have done this was God, because a human being is not capable of controlling things in such a manner. There is no human that could have fulfilled things that began showing themselves since the fall of man, hundreds of years before He was born into this earth, like the sacrifice that God Himself did for Adam and Eve to cover their sin, their evil, and their shame, by killing an innocent victim so that they could have skins to cover themselves. That was the beginning of everything the Son of God would come to fulfill, that the Holy One, the Perfect One, the Lamb of God would come to pour out His blood and die for all of the guilty sinners which we all are.
The following prophecy describes everything the Messiah would suffer for us: “Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; and when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgressions of My people He was stricken. And they made His grave with the wicked—but with the rich at His death, because He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong, because He poured out His soul unto death, and He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” Isaiah 53. This passage is what shows the culmination of the “It is finished” in the life of the Lord.
And finally, the reason for why the Lord suffered all of this was simply because of love. There was no other reason. As we all know very well: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16. So then, today, by seeing these very simple words, but with these extremely significant actions, the following question must be asked (because a challenge should always be made when the Word of God is shared): “How will you correspond to the “I thirst” and “It is finished” that God fulfilled for you, so that you could have the forgiveness of sins and eternal life?” Lord bless! John