It is Finished

Happy Easter!  What a wonderful season this is!  Spring temperatures, flowers, marshmallow peeps, and most important of all, an opportunity to remember the gift and sacrifice of our Savior!  Next week we will be blessed to be able to listen to the voices of Prophets and Apostles!  And this week we have a chance to reflect upon the great price our Savior paid for us!

The Pietà by Michelangelo

This morning as I was getting dressed, I listened to Elder McConkie's wonderful talk, "The Purifying Power of Gethsemane" and I was struck by one of the scriptures that he quoted from.  It informs us of the Savior's final words in mortality.  "[Jesus] said, It is finished: and he bowed his head and gave up the ghost" (John 19:30).  The Joseph Smith Translation corroborates this statement, telling us: "Jesus when he had cried again with a loud voice, saying, Father it is finished, thy will is done, yielded up the ghost" (JST Matthew 27:50).

It was the word "finished" that stood out to me in these verses.  The Savior still had people to teach and a work to organize in the Spirit World; the Resurrection to accomplish; Apostles, Prophets, and faithful saints to visit; a Restoration of the Gospel to accomplish; hearts to touch and souls to save.  And all of this was to occur before His triumphal return and millennial reign of glory, to say nothing of that time shortly before the Final Judgment when an angel shall sound his trump and proclaim to all the world, "It is finished; it is finished!  The Lamb of God hath overcome and trodden the wine-press alone, even the wine-press of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God" (D&C 88:106).  And even then,

"The works of God continue,

 And worlds and lives abound; 

Improvement and progress

Have one eternal round."

Hymn #284

What then does it mean to be finished and how do we come to that certainty that the Savior had in that moment that His offering had been enough?

As is usually my habit when I come across a word or phrase in the scriptures that I suddenly realize I don't fully understand, I decided to see how it was used in other places throughout the scriptures.  One verse in particular stood out to me.  In April of 1838, as the Saints were trying to reestablish themselves in Missouri, having been virtually expelled from Kirtland and their Temple, the Lord gave a revelation to the Prophet Joseph.  In this revelation, the impoverished and exiled Saints were commanded to "re-commence laying the foundation of [the Lord's] house" (D&C 115:11) at Far West, Missouri--a Temple yet to be built in these last days because of the expulsion from Missouri later that year.  And then the Lord gave them this instruction about this Temple: "Thus let them from that time forth labor diligently until it shall be finished, from the corner stone thereof unto the top thereof, until there shall not anything remain that is not finished" (D&C 115:12).

As I read that verse, it hit me: When the construction of a Temple is finished, it is then that it is fit to be dedicated to the Lord so that the real work can begin taking place in that Temple.  Finished does not mean that the work ends.  In fact, it often means that the real work has just begun.  Being finished in the godly sense means being ready to bless the lives and souls of those around us.

Of course the Savior's atonement had been efficacious and had been blessing the lives of our Father's children since before Adam, making it possible for Adam and Eve to immediately access the Savior's redeeming power from their first moments in mortality.  But by finishing His atonement, the Savior ensured that there would never be any doubts or questions.  It would work for every son or daughter of God who exercised faith in the Savior unto the repentance of his or her sins.

How did the Savior know it was finished?  We don't know, but there must have been some form of assurance from the Father that His offering was finished and acceptable; that His atonement was ready to do the full work of salvation and exaltation.  I believe that we too can be blessed to know when we have done enough and finished certain parts of our lives.  Like a baker, there may be times when we will check our cake only to find that the middle still needs a little more time, but I believe that when we have done all that we can do, the Spirit will let us know when are where we are to go and what we are to do there and who we are to bless.

Brett