"It is finished"

In the first chapter of Genesis we read, "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." This is the underlying, all-pervading fact of creation, the unity of good. Jesus the Christ knew this as no one had ever known it before and therefore he spoke "as one having authority, and not as the scribes," who believed that evil was as real, and therefore as powerful, as good.

To Jesus the meaning of the words, "It is finished," had all the depth and beauty of a positive truth, which nothing could reverse, alter, or deny. God's work is finished and it is very good. Jesus knew there could only be one great First Cause, and that causation was positive and divine, that effect therefore must be positive and divine. This standpoint enabled him to claim the unity of good persistently and triumphantly. He knew what our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, knew, when she wrote in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 304), "This is the doctrine of Christian Science: that divine Love cannot be deprived of its manifestation, or object; that joy cannot be turned into sorrow, for sorrow is not the master of joy; that good can never produce evil; that matter can never produce mind nor life result in death." When the false witness, corporeal sense, declared that Bartimaeus was blind, Jesus, knowing that God, divine Love, alone was causation, and that God had said, "Let there be light," and that there was light, said to the blind man, "Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole," and immediately Bartimaeus received his sight. Had Jesus for one moment thought that God's work was unfinished, imperfect, or marred, he could never have destroyed the false testimony which denied the unity of good. Jesus said, "I knew that thou hearest me always," and he raised Lazarus from the dead, healed the sick, and forgave the woman taken in adultery. He saw always what his heavenly Father saw, "and, behold, it was very good," the finished, perfect product of divine intelligence.

No amount of sense testimony that might try to reverse effect or to separate it from cause could ever deceive Jesus. He claimed man's oneness with God, and declared, "The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." Jesus absolutely repudiated all suggestions of separation from God. He knew that Truth is absolute, almighty, divine, omnipresent substance, against which no false witness can prevail. The only separation he acknowledged was the separation of creation from all sin, sickness, and death. It was because of this wonderful understanding of Truth which Jesus possessed that he could say when on the cross, "It is finished." He knew before he entered the tomb that Life alone is real and can never be negatived, that Love, the great First Cause, has never created anything capable of destroying Life. He knew that Life is God, and because he dwelt in the bosom of God, because he clung persistently, honestly, and tenaciously to the unity of good, and refused to believe suggestions which would belittle the divine nature, he came forth triumphant from the tomb. "His disciples believed Jesus to be dead while he was hidden in the sepulchre," Mrs. Eddy writes on page 44 of Science and Health, "whereas he was alive, demonstrating within the narrow tomb the power of Spirit to overrule mortal, material sense. There were rock-ribbed walls in the way, and a great stone must be rolled from the cave's mouth; but Jesus vanquished every material obstacle, overcame every law of matter, and stepped forth from his gloomy resting-place, crowned with the glory of a sublime success, an everlasting victory."