When Christ Jesus declared from the cross, “It is finished” (John 19:30), he was proclaiming far more than the end of his personal suffering or the close of his human life. These words marked the triumphant conclusion of his mission to demonstrate that material laws have no real power over man because life is not in matter.
Jesus would soon rise from the grave, proving that life is deathless, and thus clarifying that man lives in eternity. He knew that the belief of finite life—beginning in birth, comprising human pleasures and pains, and ending in death—was utterly false, and he had come to expose and overcome this lie.
In the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy writes, “He came teaching and showing men how to destroy sin, sickness, and death” (p. 6). Based on the Bible, especially the words and works of Jesus, Christian Science explains that the Master’s crucifixion and resurrection were not events meant to glorify suffering or death. Rather, they served to demonstrate the eternal, indestructible nature of Life, God, and of man made in God’s image. When Jesus said, “It is finished,” we could say he was affirming that the work assigned to him—the unveiling of man’s true, spiritual selfhood—was fully accomplished.
