The Death of Jesus

STANDING by the cross were his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. The beloved disciple was there too. The shepherds have fled; the women remain. The faithfulness of the women is one of the most striking features of the passion narratives — present from the cross to the tomb while the men who swore allegiance are in hiding.

Jesus sees his mother and the beloved disciple. “Woman, behold your son. Behold your mother.” From that hour, the disciple took her into his own home. Even in the agony of crucifixion, Jesus attends to the needs of those he loves. He does not allow his suffering to make him indifferent to the care of his mother. The family of God is created at the foot of the cross. In the moment of his greatest work, he makes provision for the most ordinary of human needs.

“I am thirsty.” The word is a cry of genuine human need. The God who made the oceans and the rivers, the one who turned water into wine at Cana, is now dependent on the mercy of his creatures for a drink. The thirst is real, but it is also the fulfillment of Scripture: “They gave me also gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink” (Psalm 69:21).

John does not record the darkest of the seven words from the cross — Matthew and Mark do: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" It belongs somewhere in the silence between this pericope's verses, in the hours of darkness John mentions but does not narrate. It would be easier to let John's account stand on its own, all triumph and control, "It is finished" as the only word that matters. But the Gospels do not contradict each other here; they describe the same hour from different distances. Calvin refuses to soften the cry into performance: "it was unquestionably drawn from him by intensity of sorrow... he felt himself to be in some measure estranged from" the Father, bearing "not only the outward punishment of the flesh" but the full weight of what it means to stand as a guilty person before God's judgment, in our place. That is the conflict underneath this scene, even where John does not narrate it. And it is that same Jesus, having been forsaken, who then says with his last breath that the work is finished — not despite the forsakenness, but through it. The abandonment was not a failure of the plan. It was the price the plan required.

When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, “It is finished.” One word in Greek: Τετέλεσται (Tetelestai). The perfect passive — it has been completed, and the effect of that completion continues into the present. The debt is paid in full. The work is done. The sacrifice is complete. This is not the cry of a victim who has been overwhelmed by suffering. It is the declaration of a victor who has accomplished what he set out to do. He bowed his head and gave up his spirit. No one took his life from him. He laid it down of his own accord. The King bows his head, and the work of redemption is finished.