Loving to the End

The Gospels describe Jesus’ final words in different ways. The Gospels of Matthew and Mark describe a cry of abandonment: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus’ final words are, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” And in the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “It is finished.”

Scholars point out that Jesus’ last words in John—“It is finished”—are connected to a comment John makes at the start of chapter 13:

It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

Jesus then takes off his outer garment and washes his disciples’ feet. The love begins to flow, and it keeps flowing. Jesus loves his disciples “to the end,” which culminates at Calvary. So when Jesus cries out, “It is finished,” he is describing this pouring out of love all the way “to the end.”

We tend to view “It is finished” through the lens of penal substitutionary atonement. When Jesus says, “It is finished,” we often hear him describing the completion of his work of sacrificial atonement. But the connection with John 13 highlights a different reading: what is finished on the cross is the gift of love, loving all the way to the end. To be sure, this does not contradict substitutionary understandings of the cross. In fact, they are wholly compatible. Jesus’ entire life was one of self-donation. He gives himself “for” us. And insofar as Jesus’ death spares us pain and separation from God, his death is a gift of sacrificial love.

Still, “loving to the end” and “finishing love” offer a different frame. Loving each other “to the end” is the vision of the Christian life. A life poured out for others. 

To come to the end of life and join Jesus in saying, “It is finished.”