THE SIXTH SAYING—FINISH WHAT YOU START

THE SIXTH SAYING—FINISH WHAT YOU START 

In John 19:30 Jesus says, “It is finished!” (Gk., tetelestai). That is a triumphant pronouncement. The principle here is Christ died completing the work God gave Him to do.

It is one thing to end your life, yet another to finish it. To say your life is over may mean something far different than to say your work is done. I saw that principle in operation during the Los Angeles Marathon: everyone started and everyone stopped, but not everyone finished.

For most people life ends but their work is not done. When Jesus said, “It is finished,” He meant He had finished His redeeming work. He came into this world “to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself” (Heb. 9:26) and He did just that. He bore our sins in His own body and dealt Satan a blow to the head (Gen. 3:15). Just as Christ finished perfectly what God gave Him to do, so must we. We must be more concerned with the work God has called us to do than the pain the work takes us through. Jesus endured the pain because He could see the result (Heb. 12:2). That’s always the price of doing the work of God, to be able to move through the pain and through the difficulty to do the work. 

Paul faithfully followed Jesus’ example. Therefore at the end of his life he could say, “I have finished the course” (2 Tim. 4:7). Yet in the same statement Paul affirmed it wasn’t easy: he had to fight to finish. That’s the way we’re to live. Don’t live your life just until it ends; live to finish the work God has given you to do.