Day 34, April 8

“It is finished.” –John 19:30

A jar of sour wine was sitting there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put it on a hyssop branch, and held it up to his lips. When Jesus had tasted it, he said, “It is finished!” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. (John 19:29–30 NLT)

At the end of the final battle in the feature film adaptation of C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, director Andrew Adamson had Aslan speak a phrase that was not in the original book. This in itself is not unusual; any adaptation from one medium to another will result in minor—or even major—alterations. In the movie, after Aslan kills the White Witch he looks at Peter and says, “It is finished.” Adamson, who is not a follower of Jesus, states he was unaware that Jesus said these same words from the cross, that the parallel was unintentional. The director only wanted a line where Aslan conveyed to Peter that the war is over and there was nothing more to fear from their enemy.

The death of Jesus on the cross marked the beginning of the end of the war between God and Satan, a war whose outcome was never in doubt. The final ending will take place in the end days, but in the meantime the enemy is on borrowed time. To the glory of God, we have now been given every spiritual gift we need to defeat the enemy’s purposes of destruction; we have nothing more to fear from him. We no longer need to live under the influence or authority of sin and death because they were conquered on the cross through Jesus’s death and resurrection, a feat that could only have been accomplished by God Himself. Sing a hymn of praise to celebrate the victory of the cross and the God who has conquered sin and death, something like “Nothing but the Blood of Jesus.”

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