In light of this being the week of our Lord’s passion, it is interesting to note that one of the last things that he said before he gave up his Spirit on the cross was, “It is finished.” (τετέλεσται, John 19.30). With this powerful word, Jesus declared that his work on the cross in making full atonement for sin was completed, and “bowing his head, he gave up his spirit.” It must have been a powerful scene, and no more pregnant words have perhaps ever been spoken. However, the problem is that even though Christ finished his work, sin still seems to run rampant in this world. If it is finished, why, we might ask, is the world still broken, still full of pain and suffering and sin and death? Because of this, we might be tempted to suggest that his work is unfinished. Many Christians struggle to hold together what has already been accomplished and what still remains. However, what we must realize is that Christ’s work is finished; it is fully accomplished in its foundation, but not yet fully realized in its effects. In this post, I would like to consider this tension by offering just a few thoughts on what Christ accomplished in his first coming and what waits to be realized at his second coming.
In one sense, then, it is completely accurate to say that the work of Christ has been fully accomplished, and there are at least three aspects of his work that are completely finished. First, atonement has been accomplished. When Christ died on the cross, he made the full and final payment for our sin. In systematic theology, this is called penal substitutionary atonement. In other words, this means that Christ paid the penalty (penal) that we deserve (substitutionary) for our sin. (On the fact that this was Christ’s view of his death, see here.) He died the death that we deserve by dying in our place. But he did not stay dead; he rose again on the third day. This is the second aspect of Christ’s finished work, namely that victory over death has been secured. When Jesus walked out of the grave on the third day, he defeated death and disarmed Satan of his power. Death no longer has hold over those who are in Christ. We need not fear, we can have hope, even in the face of death. (On hope in the face of death, see here.) And lastly, by dying on the cross, Christ finished his work of establishing righteousness. In other words, his finished work on the cross is now the ground upon which God grants our justification, when we place our faith in Jesus. He lived a perfect life, he died an innocent death. And his righteousness is imputed to us by faith. We are made right, declared innocent, because of Christ’s finished work. This is the gospel. Nothing needs to be added to what Christ accomplished; his work is complete, sufficient, and final. It is not partial, not provisional. It is finished!
Moreover, his finished work on the cross inaugurated several important realities in which we now live. For one, the Kingdom of God has been inaugurated. Forty days after his resurrection, Jesus ascended into heaven to be seated at the right hand of the Father, and he is now reigning with all authority on earth as it is in heaven. (Matt. 28.18) He is not waiting to become King; he is already reigning as King. And he does this by his Spirit. This is the second reality in which we now live, namely that Christ has sent his Spirit to indwell his people. The Spirit mediates Christ’s real presence in and among his people. He is the down payment, the seal, and the guarantee of our faith. And he is actively working in us to make us more like Jesus. And lastly, but certainly not leastly, new life has begun. When we place our faith in Christ, the Spirit regenerates us. He brings to life what was once spiritually dead, and we are born again. In this way we are new creatures in Christ. The old has passed away, and behold the new has come. (2 Cor. 5.17) New creation realities are already at work in us through the Spirit. In these ways, the future has already broken into the present through the risen Christ, and we live in these future realities even now.
And yet, in spite of all of this, several aspects of Christ’s work remain unfinished. Perhaps most clearly, sin still remains in the world. We have been saved from the penalty of sin, but we have not yet been saved from the presence of sin. Our world is saturated and polluted with sin at every turn. People are burdened down with sin and its consequences. Our relationships suffer, bodies are diseased, conflict and turmoil abound at every level of our society. Sin continues its reign of terror nearly unchecked. In addition to this, death still operates in this world. This world reeks with the stench of death; it fills our nostrils everywhere we turn. Our loved ones get sick and die. Accidents and tragedy take lives too soon. Christ has been raised, and death has been defeated. But death still reigns in our mortal bodies, and we ache and groan for that day when death will be no more. Thirdly, the created order groans under the weight of humanity’s sin. When our first parents fell, the creation itself was subjected to futility and decay. The idyllic paradise of Eden was lost to the corruption of sin. And lastly, justice and restoration are yet to be realized. Injustice abounds in our society. From all appearances, the weak get weaker and the strong get stronger. There is no real justice; there is no real peace. Wickedness and evil seem to grow day by day. What is wrong is celebrated as right, and what is right is condemned as wrong. The world is turned upside down, and we long for the day when justice will flow like rivers and when peace will rest upon the earth. And we cry out with the Scriptures, “How long, O Lord? How long?”
In theological parlance, this tension between the finished and the unfinished work of Christ is often referred to by the shorthand phrase “already/not yet”. It simply means that God’s plan of redemption for the world has already begun, has already been inaugurated, but has not yet been fully consummated. The work of Christ’s first coming is finished. He died on the cross, he rose again the third day, he sent his life-giving Spirit. But we are still waiting for the work of his second coming, namely the resurrection of the dead, the final judgment, and the new creation. This is the tension in which we now live, and in this tension, we must avoid two extremes. First, we must avoid living as if nothing has been finished. We must learn to rest in the finished work of Christ. We have been forgiven; we have been indwelled by His Spirit. We can have peace. On the other hand, however, we must not live as if everything is already complete. We do live under the burdens of sin and death; we do long for justice and peace. And we can have hope. The work of Christ is finished in its accomplishment, but it is unfinished in its application to the whole of creation. And so, we wait faithfully as Christ has instructed us.
And this is the point, namely that this tension is not ultimately about stages of fulfillment, though that is certainly the best framework for understanding it. Ultimately, this tension is about Christ. His work is unfinished because his story is not over. (On my argument for the centrality of Christ in our eschatological reflection, see here.) In other words, the same Jesus who said, “It is finished” is the same Jesus who is coming again to make all things new. The same Jesus who died on the cross is the same Jesus who is coming again in glory. Or to put it another way, the second coming of Jesus is not a different work; no, it is the completion of the same work that he began 2000 years ago. The second coming completes what the first coming began, because Christ himself is the fulfillment of all our hopes. Our hope is not just about what Christ has done and will do; it is about Christ himself. It is about his presence. In John 14.3, Jesus promised that he would come again and receive us unto himself, that where he is there we may be also. And so, the unfinished nature of Christ’s work is not a failure of the first coming, but the promise of the second. He is our blessed hope.
And so, yes, we live in the middle of this tension; we live in between the already and the not yet. We are already forgiven, but we are still struggling. We are already alive, yet we are still dying. We are already redeemed, yet we are still waiting. We are waiting to be set free from the presence and the corruption of sin once and for all. This is the lived reality of the Christian life—caught between what has been accomplished and what has not yet been revealed. And I suggest that we must embrace this tension with open arms, because it is only when we embrace this tension that we will be able to hope without denying the pain of our sufferings, that we can be confident without giving into naive triumphalism, and that we can have patience without being paralyzed by despair. If we collapse this tension in either direction, we lose something essential. Either we deny the reality of our present struggle, or we forget the certainty of our future hope. This is the ground that we must stand on, the already and the not yet. We do not live as those waiting for Christ to begin his work, but as those waiting for him to complete it.
When Jesus said, “It is finished.”, he surely meant it. Christ’s work is finished, and yet, it is not yet finished completely. It is finished in its foundation, but it is unfinished in its consummation. We are waiting for the full glory of Christ and his work to be finally revealed on earth. And even in acknowledging the unfinished aspects of Christ work, we must affirm that the work of the cross is not undone; it is unfolding. The resurrection is not isolated; it is expanding. And one day, we will all be raised to meet him in the air, and from that point on, we will always be with the Lord. This is our hope, namely that the Christ who finished his work on the cross is coming again to bring it to final completion. Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus! Maranatha!
Faith seeking Understanding 