“When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, He said, It is finished: and He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost” (John 19:30).

“On the Seventh Day God ended His work which He had made” (Genesis 2:2). Furthermore, “everything that He had made . . . was very good” (Genesis 1:31).

And so is His work of salvation! “Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled . . . said, It is finished” (John 19:28,30). The emphasized words (“accomplished,” “fulfilled,” “finished”) are all the same in the Greek original.

When all the relevant Scriptures had been fulfilled and the price of reconciliation (“the blood of His cross,” Colossians 1:20) fully paid, He could finally shout the great victory cry (Matthew 27:50), “It is finished!” As the finished creation was “very good,” so is our finished salvation. The salvation which Christ our Creator thus provided on the cross is “so great” (Hebrews 2:3) and “eternal” (Hebrews 5:9), that the hope thereof is “good” (II Thessalonians 2:16).

Then, finally, having finished the work of redemption, Christ rested once again, on the Seventh Day. As He had rested on that first Seventh Day, now He could rest again, His body sleeping in Joseph’s tomb.

He had died quickly, and the preparations for burial had been hurried (Luke 23:54–56), so that He could be buried before the Sabbath. On the third day (that is, the first day of the new week), He would rise again, as He had said (Matthew 16:21, et al). His body rested in the tomb all the Sabbath Day, plus part of the previous and following days, according to Hebrew idiomatic usage, “three days and three nights” (Matthew 12:40)—but death could hold Him no longer. He arose from the dead, and is now “alive forevermore” (Revelation 1:18). HMM