Jn 19:30, When Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, It is finished! And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.
1 Jn. 2; 29 If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him.
I have often said that living the Christian life starts where Jesus says it is finished. When you become a Christian you are born into union with Jesus, and therefore according to Colossians 2:9 – 10, we have already been made complete in Christ. We are born again with all the equipment necessary to live the Christian life, but we grow in Christ likeness as we learn to by faith manifest what is already ours in Jesus. The words “It is finished” that Jesus spoke on the Cross were spoken just after it says in verse 28 that Jesus knew all things had already been accomplished. That phrase “It is finished” is really one word that can be translated “finished,” or be can be translated “fulfilled,” or “perfect.” Galatians 6:14 – 15 says, “But may it never be that I should boast, except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.” You see, the new creation, or the new self was completely and perfectly accomplished at the Cross, but only the moment that we receive Jesus does it become experientially true about us, that we are totally new creations in union with the life of Christ, because we were in union with his death burial and resurrection. If this is true then the old saying that “practice makes perfect “is just the opposite of whst is true for the believer. As a matter of fact, that old phrase is a perfect picture of trying to perfect yourself through the practice of self effort, (the law) but the glorious truth for the believer is that “perfect makes practice.” When Jesus said “it is finished,” he was saying more than just “paid in full,” concerning our sins, for He was also saying “it is finished” in the sense that God’s purpose in creating a new humanity had been perfected, and for those who would receive the free gift of salvation would become a totally new, supernatural self in Christ, therefore living the life of faith is taking that truth out for a spin and putting it “to practice.” You can’t be, in practice, what you have not already become, but because you have become a new self who is in union with the very life of Jesus Christ, you can now go and practice by faith being what you have become because of his finished work. PERFECT MAKES PRACTICE!!
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