I am so excited about my single "It is Finished.”
Not just because I get to release another song that God gave me into the world but because of what the song says, and how I hope it speaks to those who listen to it (and hopefully sing along!)
I am really big on the “content” of my songs. I feel strongly that what we sing should be founded on truth, and many of my songs are directly from scripture.
This song was birthed as I considered the paradox of Jesus. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I wrestle with this amazing God-Man. Everything about Him defies human comprehension. He was a nobody carpenter who became a controversial and largely misunderstood teacher, yet He was really the King of the Universe. The religious leaders and government leaders both feared He would topple their empires, and little children and beggars loved Him and found comfort in His embrace.
The uniqueness of Jesus is demonstrated no more profoundly than in his last day alive on earth and his resurrection.
He was a broken man, destroyed, bruised, wounded, and crushed by death, yet three days later, He would reveal Himself as the King of Life who had broken every rule and not only come back to life but was prepared to freely give eternal life to any who sought Him.
This is where this song was birthed from. As I thought about this enigma of a man, and all He did, the words of Jesus on the cross came alive to me in a new way "It is Finished!"
I am concerned that too many times, our Christian faith sees the cross as the end, the final destination of the journey of a weary and wretched soul who doesn’t deserve mercy yet obtains it. We see ourselves as helpless sinners that are saved by a powerful savior. Full stop.
While all that is gloriously true, I fear if we stop at the cross of salvation, we miss the fullness of what God has for us.
Jesus’ cry, “it is finished,” was not so that we could just get into heaven one day. The cross is not the end it is the beginning. Jesus was the door, and his death opened that door to a Kingdom and the family of God that will be together for all eternity.
That is where the bridge of this song came from.
One of my favorite quotes, partly because it challenges me every time I hear it, is the famous declaration of the Moravian missionaries. The account is that in order to bring the gospel to unreached peoples, some of them would literally sell themselves into slavery and leave the comfort of their lives to live and die seeking to bring God’s love to as many as they could. They boarded those slave ships knowing they would never return, and as they began to pull away, they said, “May the Lamb that was slain receive the reward of His suffering.” Wow.
I hear it echoing through the ages, and it undoes me.
The bridge of this song is the communication between two realms of the Kingdom.
In the eternal realm, heaven is declaring, “Worthy is the Lamb, for you have redeemed men to God by your blood out of every tribe and tongue.”
Then earth responds with that cry of the Moravians, that can be yours and mine today too, if we are willing to raise it. “May the Lamb that was slain receive the reward of His suffering.”
It is finished, God sent His son to restore the relationship with man, so we could partner with heaven to see every tribe and tongue worship this glorious Jewish God-Man now exalted above all.
And the best part. . . nothing can undo what He has done.
It is finished, once and for all.
