It Is Finished: Creation Completed at the Cross
John tells the cross as the finishing of a new creation: the man Jesus finished the work the Father gave Him, and God will declare the new creation done.
Three other clusters build on this: Brought Forth, Hidden and Revealed: The Descending City and The Light of the First Day.
Scripture shows this in five steps:
It all comes together in Revelation 21:6.
“It is finished.” Most of us hear in those words that the debt is paid and the suffering is over. That is true, but it is not all. John wrote his whole Gospel in the words of the creation story. He begins where Genesis begins, and he ends where Genesis ends its first week. The cross is the finishing of a new creation.
Genesis 1:1
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”
Genesis 1:1
The first creation opens with “In the beginning.” And God creates by speaking: “And God said… and it was so.” His word makes the world. Remember these opening words, because one Gospel repeats them on purpose.
John 1:1
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
John 1:1
John alone begins his Gospel with the first words of Genesis: “In the beginning.” And he speaks of the Word, God’s own creating speech, as Genesis does. John is telling us: I am writing a creation story. The same God, by the same Word, is creating again. This time not a world, but a people.
Genesis 2:1
“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.”
Genesis 2:1
This is how the first creation week closes: finished. In the old Greek translation of Genesis, the word for “finished” is built on the root telos. It means the end, the goal, the thing brought to completion. Hold on to that word. John will close his Gospel with it.
John 19:30
“When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.”
John 19:30
“It is finished” is one word in Greek, and it is built on the same root, telos. The word that closed the first creation is the last word of Christ on the cross. So John’s Gospel runs just as the creation week runs: from “In the beginning” to “finished.” The cross is a creation completed.
John 17:4
“I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.”
John 17:4
The night before He died, Jesus said what He was finishing: the work His Father gave Him.
It was the Father’s work. And it was given to a man. A Son received a task from His Father and carried it all the way to the end. It is not God finishing something within Himself. It is the man Christ Jesus, the last Adam, doing what the first Adam gave away. Adam was given a work and walked away from it. I know that walking away. It is mine. Jesus did not walk away.
Revelation 21:6
“And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new… It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.”
Revelation 21:5-6
Here the chain is closed. At the cross the work was finished. At the end God Himself will say over the whole new creation: “It is done.” It is a different word, but the same declaration. And He says it together with “the beginning and the end,” the very two words John began and ended with.
So there are two completions. The cross finished the work that lays the foundation of the new creation. The throne declares the new creation done, when there is “no more death” (Revelation 21:4). The cross completes the work. “It is done” completes the world.
What this means
“It is finished” is more than a bill paid. It is creation language. The man Jesus finished the work His Father gave Him, and with it He laid the foundation of a new creation. One day God will say over all of it: “It is done.”
I could not finish that work. It was given to Him, and He finished it.
Connected chains
This cluster goes hand in hand with The Waters Above Are in the Highest Heaven, Thorns and Thistles, the Cursed Fruit, The Head Is the Saviour of the Body and Christ Carries the Father's Name.