Dr. Harold McNabb

The last words we hear Jesus speak from the cross are "It is finished. Into your hands I commit my spirit." And he gave up his spirit and died.
Jesus had been able to say that the work God had given him to do was finished. And with that he surrenders his spirit into God's hands.

In the play we presented on Friday, I had Joseph of Aramathea wondering if everything that Jesus had taught and done was really finished. Was it really the end?  When Jesus was going to be arrested, Joseph had voted against it, but was over ruled. He was a follower but all he could do for Jesus was to loan him his own tomb and bury him with dignity. Was doing what was right and believing in God really nothing in the face of determined and powerful forces that were determined to obliterate it. On Friday, when Jesus died, it really seemed as if Judas, the high priests, Pilate and the rest had won. They succeeded in putting Jesus to death.

And in his own death, Jesus says, " It is finished."
Was it over?
In one way it was. Jesus earthly job was complete. His mortal body was dead. Dead and buried.
In that way, it was over.
In another way too.
He gave up the . . .

The next day the great crowd that had come for the Feast heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem.
They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, “Hosanna! 
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”
John 12::12,13

Writer and preacher, Stuart Briscoe tells of a time he was in Scotland:

I was in Edinburgh about a year ago speaking at Charlotte Chapel, and a delightful young lady gave her testimony. She had come back from Kabul, Afghanistan, where she was a missionary nurse. She said how she was really enjoying the work she was doing there, and then she'd met a young man and fallen in love. He'd asked her to marry him, but she had said, "I made a commitment to my church back home to serve on the mission field. If I were to marry you, that might change everything. So before I can give you an answer, I need to talk with the leaders of the church." And so that was why she was home. She'd flown home all the way from Afghanistan to talk to the leaders of the church.

As I was looking at the congregation, I noticed a fellow sitting in the front row who had the weirdest look on his face. So when she was through and sat down next to me, I said, "Who is that fellow? Do you know him?" She said, "That's the young man." I said, "I thought he was in Kabul." She said, "He was. He heard I was flying back to Scotland to talk to the leaders of the church, so he said he wanted to talk to them as well. So he jumped on the next plane."

You can always tell lovers: they don't give up. They "come after," as a lover comes after the beloved. And that's the picture that Jesus gives: "If you're going to come after me, it's because you love me because I . . .

For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.
He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit
1 Peter 3:18

John Muir, famous explorer and naturalist,  tells an amazing story in his book, Travels in Alaska of the Thlinkit and Sitka tribes, two tribes that readily accepted the preaching of the gospel in Alaska in 1879. He writes:

The Thlinkit tribes give a hearty welcome to Christian missionaries. In particular they are quick to accept the doctrine of the atonement, because they themselves practice it.... As an example of their own doctrine of atonement they told Mr. Young and me one evening that 20 or 30 years ago there was a bitter war between their own and the Sitka tribe, great fighters, and pretty evenly matched. After fighting all summer, fighting now under cover, now in the open, watching for every chance for a shot, none of the women dared venture to the salmon streams or berry fields to procure their winter stock of food. At this crisis one of the Stickeen chiefs came out of his block-house fort into an open space midway between their fortified camps, and shouted that he wished to speak to the leader of the Sitkas.

When the Sitka chief appeared, he said: "My people are hungry. They dare not go to the salmon streams or berry fields for winter supplies, and if this war goes on much longer most of my people will die of hunger. We have fought long enough; let us . . .