It Is Finished Means It Is Finished

The deepest appeal of Rome and Orthodoxy, beneath the incense and the vestments and the chanting, beneath the moral seriousness and the structured spiritual life, is the claim of historical continuity. Rome says: the Church that Christ founded is the Church governed by the Bishop of Rome, in unbroken succession from Peter, and if you want the real thing, you must come to the source. Orthodoxy says: the Church that Christ founded is the Church that preserved the faith of the seven ecumenical councils, unchanged and uncorrupted, and if you want the real thing, you must come to the East. Both traditions look at Confessional Lutheranism and see a sixteenth-century breakaway, a protest movement that left the ancient Church and forfeited its inheritance. The implicit argument is devastating in its simplicity: older is truer, and you cannot be the original if you started in 1517.

That argument deserves a serious answer, and it will get one. First, though, follow the body of Christ to the place where the entire question is settled.

At noon the sun stopped shining. Darkness covered the whole land until three in the afternoon. This is not a weather event. This is the judgment of the Father falling on His Son. In Gethsemane, Jesus prayed that the Father would remove the cup. The Father did not remove it. Now Christ is draining that cup to its last drop. The darkness that covers the land is the outward sign of what is happening between the Father and the Son. The sin of the world, every act of rebellion from Adam to the last day, has been laid on Christ, and the full weight of God's wrath against that sin is being poured out on the only man who never committed any of it.

Luke records that the curtain of the temple was torn in two. That curtain separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple. It stood between the presence of God and the people of God. Once a year, one man, the high priest, could pass through it, and only with the blood of a sacrifice. No one else. The message was plain: sin keeps you out. Now the curtain is torn from top to bottom. God tears it, not man. The barrier that sin erected between God and His people is destroyed in the same hour that Christ bears that sin on the cross.

Christ's flesh is torn and the curtain is torn with it. The way to the Father is open. Not partially open. Not open for those who have completed the program. Not open for those who have cooperated sufficiently with grace. Open. The blood of Jesus did what no amount of human effort, institutional authority, or spiritual ascent could ever do: it removed the barrier permanently.

Then Jesus cries out with a loud voice:

These are the words of Psalm 31, a psalm of trust in the midst of affliction. Jesus does not die in despair. He does not die cursing His enemies or begging for relief. He dies placing Himself into the hands of the Father who sent Him on this mission. That trust is not blind hope. It is the confidence that the Father's wrath against sin has been fully satisfied, that the cup has been emptied, that the work the Father gave Him to do is complete.

Having said this, He breathed His last.

A Roman centurion stands at the foot of the cross and watches Jesus die. Luke records his response: "Certainly this man was innocent!" Once again, a pagan speaks the truth about Jesus that the religious authorities refused to admit. This soldier has watched men die before. He has never seen a man die like this. The prayer on Christ's lips, the authority even in His final breath, draws this confession out of a Roman soldier's mouth. The crowds who came to watch the spectacle go home beating their breasts. They came for entertainment. They leave with their consciences struck.

A man named Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the council who had not agreed with their decision, asks Pilate for the body. He takes it down, wraps it in linen, and lays it in a tomb where no one had ever been laid. The women who had followed Jesus from Galilee watch Joseph lay the body in the tomb. Then they go home and rest on the Sabbath according to the commandment.

The body of Jesus lies in the tomb. This is not defeat.

When God finished the work of creation, He rested on the seventh day. He did not rest from exhaustion. He rested from completion. The work was done, and the rest declared it so. Now Christ's body rests in the tomb on the Sabbath, and the rest declares the same thing. The work is done. Sin is paid for. Every last cent of the debt that mankind owes God has been covered by the death of His Son. The curtain is torn. The way to the Father is open. There is nothing left to add, nothing left to earn, nothing left to do.

The entombed body of the Son of God is the quiet confidence of a finished work.

Now return to the question of historical continuity, because the torn curtain and the sealed tomb answer it.

Rome claims to be the original Church, and that claim rests on institutional continuity: an unbroken chain of bishops from Peter to the present pope, a Magisterium that speaks with authority on faith and morals, a visible structure that has endured for two thousand years. The claim is impressive. It is also irrelevant to the question that matters.

The question that matters is not "which institution has the longest pedigree?" The question is "what does the institution teach about the work of Christ, and does that teaching match what happened on Calvary?"

Rome teaches that the sacrifice of the Mass is a re-presentation of the sacrifice of Calvary. Rome is careful to say that it is not a repetition; Christ does not die again. The sacrifice is made present, sacramentally, on the altar, and the faithful participate in its benefits through their attendance and devotion. The practical implication, however, is that Christ's sacrifice must be continually made present through the priestly action of the Church. The Mass is not merely a delivery of what was won at Calvary; it is a making-present of Calvary itself, performed by a priest acting in persona Christi, offered to God for the living and the dead. The work of Calvary, in Rome's system, is never simply received. It is perpetually re-enacted.

Add to this the doctrine of purgatory: the teaching that most souls, even those who die in a state of grace, require further purification before entering the presence of God. Christ's death did not fully settle the temporal punishment due to sin; that punishment must be satisfied either in this life (through penance and indulgences) or in the next (through purgatorial suffering). The treasury of merit, built up by the superabundant good works of Christ and the saints, can be applied to the souls in purgatory to shorten their suffering. The system is elaborate, internally consistent, and completely at odds with a finished work. If the debt is paid in full, there is no remainder to be purified. If the curtain is torn, there is no barrier left to pass through. If Christ rests in the tomb on the Sabbath because the work is done, then the work is done.

Orthodoxy does not have purgatory or indulgences in the Western sense, yet it arrives at a similar functional conclusion through theosis. Salvation is the gradual participation of the human being in the divine nature, accomplished through a lifetime of liturgical participation, ascetic effort, and synergistic cooperation with divine grace. The process is, by definition, never complete in this life. The ascent toward the infinite God is itself infinite. There is always more climbing to do, always more cooperation to render, always more transformation to undergo. The Orthodox believer does not rest on a finished work. The Orthodox believer climbs, sustained by grace, toward a destination that recedes as he approaches it.

Both systems, in their different ways, keep the work open. Something always remains to be done: another Mass to attend, another indulgence to obtain, another purgatorial debt to pay, another rung on the ladder of theosis to reach. The curtain, in effect, is mended. The barrier that Christ tore down is quietly rebuilt, not out of malice, but out of the persistent human conviction that the work cannot really be finished, that something must still be required of the creature, that God cannot possibly have done it all.

Confessional Lutheranism is not a sixteenth-century invention. It is a sixteenth-century reassertion of the apostolic Gospel that Rome had obscured. The Augsburg Confession of 1530, the foundational document of the Lutheran Church, states explicitly that the Lutherans teach nothing contrary to the Scriptures, nothing contrary to the universal Christian Church, and nothing contrary to the Church of Rome as known from the writings of the Fathers. The Reformers did not leave the catholic Church. They insisted that Rome had left the Gospel, and they called Rome back to it.

The liturgical tradition of Confessional Lutheranism is not a modern construction. It draws directly from the Western Catholic liturgy that predates the Reformation by centuries. The historic lectionary, the church year, the vestments, the chanting, the altar-centered worship: all of this was inherited, not invented. A Confessional Lutheran parish that observes the historic liturgy is worshiping in a form that is older than most of the distinctive practices that Rome now treats as essential (the rosary dates to the medieval period; the doctrine of papal infallibility was defined in 1870; the Immaculate Conception was defined in 1854; purgatory received its definitive formulation at the Councils of Lyon and Florence in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries). The young man who thinks he must go to Rome or Constantinople for historical depth has not yet walked into a Confessional Lutheran church that chants the Introit, prays the Collect, hears the Epistle and Gospel, confesses the Creed, and kneels at an altar to receive the true body and blood of Christ in bread and wine.

The difference is not depth versus shallowness. The difference is not ancient versus modern. The difference is whether the work is finished.

Every lie a man has ever told himself about being good enough dies on the hill called The Skull. Every deal a man has ever tried to strike with God dies there. The Son of God hanging lifeless on a Roman cross is the measure of how dead every human being actually is without Him. That is not someone else's debt being paid. It is yours.

Church attendance does not satisfy God. Charity does not satisfy God. Good behavior does not satisfy God. A reputation as a decent man does not satisfy God. Fasting does not satisfy God. Ascetic discipline does not satisfy God. Submission to a pope does not satisfy God. A lifetime of liturgical participation does not satisfy God. The death of His Son satisfies God. That death has already happened. The satisfaction is complete.

The darkness that covered the land is the darkness that sin deserves. The wrath that fell on Christ is the wrath that was earned by every person who has ever lived. The torn curtain is the destroyed barrier. The centurion's confession is the truth the religious authorities would not speak. The linen wrapping is the dignity given to the body that was given for sinners. The sealed tomb is the silence of a finished work.

This series has followed the body of Christ from the table to the tomb. The body first given in bread and wine to unworthy disciples in the Upper Room. The body handed over to suffering in the Garden where everyone else failed. The body delivered to the will of the mob in a courtroom where the innocent was condemned and the guilty walked free. The body nailed to a cross between two criminals, where a dying thief with empty hands received paradise on the strength of a single promise. The body now wrapped in linen and laid in a tomb, resting on the Sabbath, because the work is done.

That same body is given to you every time the Church gathers at the altar. The same blood that ran down wood is poured into the cup. The same Christ who said "given for you" to Judas, who prayed "not my will, but yours" in the Garden, who took Barabbas's place at the trial, who spoke paradise to a dying criminal, who cried "Father, into your hands" with His last breath, is the Christ who comes to you in bread and wine, in water, in the spoken word of absolution. He is not distant. He is not waiting for you at the top of a ladder. He is here, at the altar, with the same body that rested in the tomb, alive now and forever, holding out the same gift He has always held out: Himself, for you, for the forgiveness of your sins.

The work is finished. The curtain is torn. The tomb is sealed, and the Sabbath has come.

Rest.