It Is Finished

“When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, ‘It is finished,’ and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” — John 19:30 (ESV)

Before Hudson Taylor believed anything, he doubted almost everything. He had grown up in a Christian home, watched his parents pray, and heard the Bible read — and it had left him cold. He had tried, more than once, to make himself into a Christian by sheer effort, failed every time, and quietly concluded that salvation simply was not for someone like him. So he went looking for a way out. He fell in with people who held sceptical, unbelieving views, and he took them up gladly, because if the Bible was not true, then the future it warned about was not true either.

But even as a doubter, Taylor was honest, and his honesty is worth copying. He noticed that the loudest argument against Christianity came from Christians themselves — people who claimed to believe the Bible while living exactly as they would have lived if it were fiction. And he made a private vow: if he ever did claim to believe this book, he would actually put it to the test. He would live by it, and if it failed him, he would throw it out entirely. Hold on to that. He carried that willingness to test God into the rest of his life.

The turning point came on an ordinary afternoon when he was about fifteen. His mother was away, he had nothing to do, and he pulled a Gospel booklet out of a basket purely to kill time. He fully intended to read the interesting story at the front and skip the sermon at the end. But one phrase snagged him: the finished work of Christ. Why finished, he wondered? And the words of Jesus from the cross rose up in his mind — “It is finished.” If the whole debt for sin had already been paid, in full, by someone else, then what was left for Hudson to do? Nothing. Nothing but kneel down and accept it.

That was it. Alone in a quiet warehouse, he gave his life to Jesus — not because he had finally become good enough, but because he saw that he never had to be.

Here is why this matters for you, especially if you are the doubting type. Taylor was not argued into faith and he was not scared into it. He was floored by one idea: that the most important work in the universe was already done, and done by someone other than him. Most people spend their lives trying to earn their way to being okay — okay with their parents, okay with their friends, okay with themselves, okay with God. “It is finished” cuts straight through that. Jesus did not say “It is started” or “Now it is your turn.” He said it is finished. You do not add to a completed payment. You receive it.

And notice this: your doubts are not disqualifying. Taylor’s scepticism did not have to be beaten out of him before God could reach him. In fact his refusal to fake belief was the very thing that kept him honest enough to be caught by the truth when it came. God is not afraid of your hard questions. He is only shut out by the pretending — either pretending to believe when you do not, or pretending you are fine when you are not.

One thing to do today: stop trying to earn what has already been paid for. Take five minutes alone, and instead of promising God you will try harder, tell him the truth about where you actually stand — your real doubts, your real state — and then say plainly that you accept the finished work of Christ as a gift, not a wage. Test it. Taylor did, and he never got to the end of it.