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In this episode, Trent examines Protestant claims that when Jesus said, “It is finished,” this invalidates Catholic teaching on salvation and purgatory.
Narrator:
Welcome to the Council of Trend Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Council of Trend Podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers Apologist and Speaker Trent Horn. And today, we’re going to talk about a biblical urban legend related to the last words that Jesus said on the cross before he died, which I think is appropriate for us to discuss because Good Friday will be here before we know it. So I think it’s helpful to engage some of the arguments related to this particular passage from scripture. But before we do that, if you could help me out by liking this video and subscribing, I would greatly appreciate it. So all right, let’s take a look at the passage in question. John 19:30 records the last words Jesus Christ spoke on the cross, at least according to the Gospel of John as it is finished, which in Greek is one word, tetelestai.
Now, some Protestant apologist say that Jesus’s declaration should be translated, “It is paid in full.” According to them, by saying it is finished, Jesus is saying that nothing else must be paid or done because of sin. The Protestant anthropologist Ron Rhodes writes the following in his book, Reasoning from the Scriptures with Catholics, he says, “It is highly significant that the phrase, it is finished, can also be translated, paid in full. The work of redemption was completed at the cross. Nothing further needed to be done. He had paid in full the price of our redemption.” Apologists like Rhodes claim that this means there is nothing a person must do after making an act of faith in Jesus in order to be saved since, “Nothing further needs to be done to pay for our sins.” Moreover, no believer undergoes purification after death through purgatory because there’s no payment we must make in regards to our sins. And this would include any kind of temporal punishments related to sin.
Dave Hunt says in this context related to purgatory, “There is nothing left for sinners to pay in order to receive the pardon offered by God’s grace. The debt has been paid in full, it is finished. Christ cried in triumph just before he died upon the cross. To suggest otherwise is the most serious heresy.” So how should Catholics understand what Jesus said in John 19:30? Does it mean that all we must do in order to be saved is just believe in Christ and there is nothing else we must do because Christ essentially said that our sins were paid in full when he said it is finished? Well, Catholics agree with Protestants that human beings can never remit the eternal punishment of sin. We can’t save ourselves. The catechism says, “With regard to God, there is no strict right to any merit on the part of man. Between God and us, there is an immeasurable inequality for we have received everything from Him, our creator, paragraph 2007.”
And paragraph 2010 goes on to say, “Since the initiative belongs to God in the order of grace, no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification at the beginning of conversion.” So there is nothing we can do to satisfy God’s justice for the offense caused by our sins. Only Jesus Christ, who is fully God and fully man can satisfy God’s justice and remit the eternal punishment of sin. In fact, Jesus didn’t just pay for our sins or the sins of people who believe in him. Christ paid for the sins of those who don’t believe in him, and even of the sins of people who will never believe in Jesus Christ. That’s why you can tell any person you meet that Christ died for you.
First John 2:2 says of Christ, “He is the expiration for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” The fact that Christ’s death paid for or atoned for our sins does not mean everything is finished regarding our salvation. In fact, our Lord himself did things for our salvation even after the crucifixion, since the Bible says that Christ’s resurrection justifies us. Romans 4:24 – 25 speaks of, “Jesus, our Lord, who is put to death for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” St. Paul says, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.” This shows that our justification, even the act of remitting our sins was not finished when Jesus said it is finished on the cross. We were justified at the resurrection. We also have to do something in order to be saved because if Christ paid for all of humanity’s sins, then the difference between those who are saved and those who are damned can only be found in something the believer chooses to do.
That’s why some Calvinists say that Christ only died for the elect. So they speak of a limited or a particular atonement, not a universal one. If you summarize it in a bumper sticker, it might say, “Calvinism, Jesus might have died for you.” But if you believe that Christ atoned for every human being sins, then there must be something a believer does to have that applied to their souls such as by being baptized and remaining in communion with Christ until death. John’s Gospel records these truths when Jesus says in John 3:5, “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God,” and again, in John 15:6 when Jesus says, “If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned.”
Christ sacrifice the tones for all sins, but the Bible says that this sacrifice can have no effect if we reject God through disobedience. That’s the point of the parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18. So in that story, Jesus told a king graciously forgave a servant’s debt, which would mean the king would’ve to incur the cost himself. He would pay the debt in full instead. But even though the king essentially declared it is paid in full by forgiving the debt, the unforgiving servant threatened to jail another servant who failed to repay him a much smaller debt. So in response, the king revoked his payment and had the unforgiving servant imprisoned until he paid his debt, which was so large that biblical scholars say he could have never actually repaid it. The lesson is clear. God has atoned or paid for all of our sins, but if we refuse to cooperate with God’s grace, then the debt can be reinstated.
That’s why Hebrews 10:26 - 27 says, “If we sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment.” Speaking of Hebrews, by the way, the author of Hebrews reminds his listeners that, “All discipline seems painful rather than pleasant. Later, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” Hebrews 12:11, “Painful discipline is another word for punishment.” And so the author of Hebrews makes it clear that beloved children of God can be disciplined. And when God disciplines us, this yields the fruit of righteousness. But since children of God do not receive the eternal punishment related to sin as discipline, this discipline can only refer to the temporal punishment of sin rooted in the disordered attraction we have to sin because of how venial sin damages our relationship with God, even if it doesn’t destroy it.
So we’ve seen that we can agree with our Protestant friends that Christ fully paid for all of our sins, indeed Christ paid for everyone’s sins on the cross. But this doesn’t mean there is nothing more we must do to cooperate with God’s gift to salvation. It also doesn’t mean that we don’t pay a temporal penalty for our sins through God’s discipline of us just because Christ paid for the eternal consequences of our sins. All right. So what did Jesus mean when he said, “It is finished,” on the cross? First, he did not literally mean it is paid in full. That can be a truth we glean from the passage, but Rhodes is wrong when he says we can translate to tetelestai as simply paid in full. That’s not what the word means. It’s a form of the Greek word teleo, which just means to end or finish or complete.
The idea that it means paid in full is something of an urban legend in biblical exegesis. It came from scholars who noted that receipts from around the time of the New Testament had the Greek word, tetel, stamped on them, meaning it’s paid. But tetel is an abbreviation, and there are five different Greek words that begin with these letters. Tetelestai is one of them, but another is tetelenotai, which is a different word than tetelestai. Tetelenotai literally means tax or paid as taxes, and it could be found on dozens of receipts where it refers to a tax that has been paid, not a debt that’s fully paid. The word tetelestai, on the other hand, is used in ancient Greek sources to talk about finishing art or sculptures or pieces of cloth, not the paying of debts. In the New Testament, the root word teleo is only used for payments in Matthew 17:24 and Romans 13:6 where it doesn’t talk about paid in full. It just talks about paying taxes.
According to one academic article on the subject, the expression to tetel is followed by an abbreviated form of dia puls, through the gate, suggesting that these are receipts or records of toll payments. So if Jesus did not mean paid in full, then what did he mean when he said, “It is finished?” It could mean Christ’s passion had now come to an end, his ordeal on the cross was now finished. Or as many scholars note that Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah were now fulfilled or finished through Christ’s sacrificial death. Look at the proceeding verses which describe what happened after Jesus entrusted his mother to the Apostle John. After this, Jesus knowing that all was now finished, tetelestai, said, “To fufill,” teteleothe, “To fufill the scripture, I thirst.” A bowl full of vinegar stood there. So they put a sponge full of the vinegar on Hisa and held it to his mouth.
When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. John 19:28 is the only other place where tetelestai is used in scripture. And when it’s combined with the related word teteleothe, we see the context as related to finishing, completing, or fulfilling the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament, especially those related to the death of the Messiah. Jesus could also have been referring to the finishing of the Last Supper. The Catholic theologian, Scott Hahn has proposed this hypothesis in his book, The Lamb Supper, and in more detail in his 2018 book, the Fourth Cup. Hahn notes that Jesus conspicuously did not drink from the fourth cup of the Passover meal. Instead, Jesus refused to drink wine until he came into his kingdom and then before dying, Jesus drank sour wine on the cross.
Hahn says, “It was the Passover that was now finished. More precisely, it was Jesus’ transformation of the Passover sacrifice of the old covenant into the eucharistic sacrifice of the new covenant.” And so now that the Passover was completed, Jesus, the Passover lamb that had been sacrificed, would now be received by his followers or eaten just like the old Passover lamb was through the Eucharist.
This last word of Christ could include all of these meanings and even others that have not been explored. However, we do know that Jesus did not mean that our sins had been paid in a way that removes any obligation on our part to cooperate with God’s grace in order to remain in communion with Christ. John 3:36 puts it well, “He who believes in the Son has eternal life, but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God rests upon him.” Well, thank you guys so much for watching this video. I hope this is helpful to show that when Catholics and Protestants engage scripture in many cases, there is significant overlap and agreement that we have on what the scripture means. And so it’s important to emphasize that, but also to point out when there are aspects of scripture where the interpretation goes far beyond what the original text says in a way that contradicts what the Catholic Church teaches. So thank you guys so much, and I hope you have a very blessed day and a blessed Lent.
Narrator:
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