Time is but a little break in the course of the eternal ages, but in time God is working out His eternal counsels for the accomplishment of His purpose which He has purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord. The foundation upon which the completion of God's eternal purpose is laid is the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. From eternity, God looked forward to the cross as that which would give effect to all that was in His heart for His own glory and eternal pleasure, that which would manifest the glory of His Son and bring untold blessing to those who would be the companions of His Son for evermore.
We may view the cross as the very centre of the eternal ages, or as the centre, the meeting point of two eternities, for the cross is the most marvellous event of the ages. Nothing can excel the wonder of the Son of God dying on a malefactor's cross, even if man, blinded by Satan, is unable to discern anything of its glory and mystery. The darkness that enshrouded God's Son, from the sixth until the ninth hour, on that day of days, hid from the vision of men the awful agonies endured by the Son in the perfection of His obedience to the will of God while sustaining the divine judgment that our sins merited, and glorifying God in regard to every question that sin had raised in the universe God had created.
While upon the cross, the Lord Jesus spoke seven times, the last words being, "It is finished." He had committed the care of His mother to John; He had asked His Father to forgive those who crucified Him; He had assured the repentant thief of being with Him that day in Paradise; he had cried in the deep, deep anguish of His soul, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"; He had cried "I thirst" that the Scripture might be fulfilled; He had committed His Spirit into His Father's hands; and, according to Matthew and Mark, had cried with a loud voice the words quoted by John, "It is finished" (John 19:30).
John tells us that it was when Jesus knew that all things were accomplished that He cried "I thirst." It was necessary that every Scripture concerning His death should be fulfilled. But the last words, "It is finished," are filled with the most blessed meaning for those who believe on the Son of God. A glorious work was finished; all that the Father had given the Son to do on the cross was completed; so that He could now leave the world and go to the Father.
In anticipation, when speaking to His Father, in chapter 17, the Son had said, "I have glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do" (John 17:4). Without doubt, this spoke of all that the Father had given the Son to do throughout His earthly sojourn. He had come to carry out all His Father's will, to speak all His words, and accomplish all His works. Nothing had been left undone, for if all the things Jesus did were written, "the world itself could not contain the books that should be written." His holy life of perfect obedience and meek submission to God His Father had infinitely glorified Him, in every moment of His pathway; but there yet remained the cross, with all that it would mean for God and for His blessed Son.
Who can doubt that the Lord was speaking in spirit beyond the cross when He said, "I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do"? Already His soul had been troubled by the prospect of what lay before Him when He said, "What shall I say? Father save me from this hour: but for this cause came I to this hour. Father, glorify Thy Name" (John 12:27-28). He knew what Gethsemene would mean to Him, and what the cross would mean: but He could look beyond it as knowing that nothing could deter Him from accomplishing His Father's will even on the cross.
No tongue of man can ever perfectly tell all that was finished when the Lord cried "It is finished"; but we do know that the great work of atonement was fully done. All that had been foretold in prophecy regarding the cross; all that had been foreshadowed in the sacrifices of old, was now perfectly fulfilled. Many had been the types of Christ's death since Adam entered his deep sleep to procure Eve for his helpmeet, and now there was nothing more to do so far as this great work was concerned: it was for ever done.
How much this meant for God! It retrieved His glory in regard to sin, for He had made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin. If we think of the Sin Offering, we recall how the blood went into the holiest on the Day of Atonement, and was sprinkled on the mercy-seat, and before the mercy-seat; securing the glory of God's throne, and enabling God to have His people before Him in all the efficacy of the work of Him who shed His precious blood.
If we think of the Burnt Offering; it brings Christ before us as giving "Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour" (Eph. 5:2). How pleasurable to the Father was the obedience of His beloved Son, when He gave Himself for the accomplishment of His will, and when He reached the point where the work was completed so that He could cry, "It is finished."
How much it meant for the Son when all was over on the cross! The depths of divine judgment had been fathomed, and the "fierce wrath" exhausted. He had satisfied all the claims of the throne of God regarding sin, and His death had expressed the fulness of the love of God, and told out His own personal love for those the Father had given to Him to be His companions for ever, those who would form His body and His bride. Israel, that had refused Him, would yet be blessed through His death; not now on the ground of the Old Covenant, but on that of the New Covenant in His blood. What joy for His heart now to realise that every barrier had been removed between His own and the full blessing that God had purposed for them along with Him, and the fear of death for them had been taken away through His death.
What rest of heart there is in the cry for us! We have not to be burdened and heavy laden under the law, like Israel from Sinai; as sinners of the Gentiles we are not called upon to endeavour to make our way to God, for this we never could have done. Man, whether Jew or Gentile, has been proved incapable of doing anything to meet the righteous claims of God; but the Son of God has satisfied all God's claims, and finished the work that enables God to bless us through simple faith in Him who accomplished the work on the cross. Blessings untold now belong to those who believe in Jesus, who receive in faith that He died for their sins and rose again; and all these infinite, spiritual and eternal blessings are based on the work, of which He said "It is finished."
Twice in the book of the Revelation are these words found, in Rev. 16:17, and Rev. 21:6. The former relates to the completion of the judgments before the introduction of the millennial reign of the Lord Jesus, the latter to the bringing in of the new heavens and the new earth, when God makes all things new, and when all belonging to the old creation will have passed away.
In Revelation 5, the Lord Jesus as the Lamb takes the Book from the right hand of Him that sits upon the throne. The Book evidently contains the divine plans for the introduction of peace and blessing for this troubled earth. But before the blessing can be brought to men there must be the breaking of the seals that close the Book; and these seals on being broken unfold the providential judgments of God upon those who oppose His will.
After the seals there are the trumpets, the last three of which have special woes for men, the last bringing us down to the time when the kingdoms of the world become the kingdom of the Lord and of His Christ. The pouring out of the vials of the wrath of God also brings us to the close, for it is after the seventh angel pours out his vial into the air that the "great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne," says "It is done."
The subsequent verses bring out the judgments that come with the pouring out of the last vial of divine wrath. The "voices, and thunders, and lightnings." and the "great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great" tell in symbolic language of the terrible upheavals that will bring to an end all that men have prided themselves in in this world.
First, "the great city was divided into three parts." This probably tells us of the breaking up of the political system of western Europe, and the destruction of its central city, Rome. But Rome is not alone in this judgment, for "the cities of the nations fell." The cities, where men have heaped up their treasures, and in which they have found their pleasures away from God, are brought down in ruins in the judgments of that day. All the boasted achievements of men, their great works of art, their masterpieces of construction, their evidence of scientific progress and their organisations and institutions, will be found among the ashes of their cities when God brings them into judgment.
Babylon, the great religious system, spoken of in the next chapter as "Babylon the great, the mother of harlots," will have her special judgment, "the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath." She is seen by John "drunken with the blood of saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus"; but now she receives her righteous retribution. Professing to be the spouse of Christ, Babylon is exposed as a dreadfully wicked system, not only false, but persecuting those who truly belong to Christ.
There is the complete overthrow and break up of the whole world system, the isolated and the great being removed from their places, the judgment of God falling from heaven upon men; and in spite of it all, men "blasphemed God because of the plague" that falls upon them. With these different systems brought into judgment, we can understand the meaning of the great voice which said, "It is done."
How great is the contrast to all this is the exclamation "It is done" in Revelation 21, where John sees "a new heaven and a new earth," where there is no more sea. The judgments of Revelation 16 prepared the way for the millennial reign of Christ, but the final judgments of Revelation 20, where Gog and Magog and their followers are consumed, where Satan is cast into the lake of fire, and where all the dead are judged at the great white throne, prepare the way for the introduction of an eternal scene where "God shall wipe away all tears," and where "there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away."
Already, the true believer belongs to the new creation, for "if any man be in Christ, it is new creation." Even now, by faith, we have part in a new order of things where "old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new" (2 Cor. 5:17). This is a new spiritual order of which the man of this world knows nothing. Very soon, when man's day is over, and when the millennium is over, we shall reach the day of God, the day of eternity, when the first heaven and the first earth will have forever passed, and when God shall make "all things new."
That eternal scene of new creation will rest on the work of redemption wrought out by the Son of God upon the cross. Sinners who were far from God in their sins never could have had part in that new creation scene of eternal bliss had not Jesus died for them, and cried on the cross, "It is finished."