times it has been interpreted as merely the last sign of ebbing
life: as if the meaning were, It is all over; this long agony of pain
and weakness is done at last. But the dying words of Jesus were not
spoken in this tone. The Fifth Word, we are expressly told, was
uttered with a loud voice; so was the Seventh; and, although this is
not expressly stated about the Sixth, the likelihood is that, in this
respect, it resembled the other two. It was not a cry of defeat, but
of victory.

Both the suffering of our Lord and His work were finishing together;
and it is natural to suppose that He was referring to both. Suffering
and work are the two sides of every life, the one predominating in some
cases and the other in others. In the experience of Jesus both were
prominent: He had both a great work to accomplish and He suffered
greatly in the process of achieving it. But now both have been brought
to a successful close; and this is what the Sixth Word expresses. It
is, therefore, first, the Worker's Cry of Achievement; and, secondly,
the Sufferer's Cry of Relief.

I.

Christ, when on earth, had a great work on hand, which was now finished.

This dying word carries us back to the first word from His lips which
has been preserved to us: "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's
business?" Even at twelve years of age He already knew that there was
a business entrusted to Him by His Father in heaven, about which His
thoughts had to be occupied. We cannot perhaps say that then already
He comprehended it in its whole extent. It was to grow upon Him with
the development of His manhood. In lonely meditations in the fields
and pastures of Nazareth it seized and inspired His mind. As He
cultivated the life of prayer, it became more and more His settled
purpose. The more He became acquainted with human nature, and with the
character and the needs of His own age, the more clearly did it rise
before Him. As He heard and read the Scriptures of the Old Testament,
He saw it hinted and foreshadowed in type and symbol, in rite and
institution, in law and prophets. There He found the programme of His
life sketched out beforehand; and perhaps one of His uppermost
thoughts, when He said, "It is finished," was that all which had been
foretold about Him in the ancient Scriptures had been fulfilled.

After His public life commenced, the sense of being charged with a task
which He had to fulfil was one of the master-thoughts o