Where does the resurrection fit in all this? That happened after it was “finished.” Is it not a part of this all?
When He said it is finished, it means he had fulfilled the law of Moses - every jot and tittle, as he said was required in His Sermon on the Mount. And once the curse of the law had been fulfilled, we were free to be saved.
Prophesied in the Old Testament, but it was prophesied, as well, in a sense, in the new, in John chapter 2 verse 19. "Jesus said this, 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.'"Jesus as prophet
The resurrection of Christ from the dead was a declaration of the Sonship of Christ.
Primarily what the resurrection proved was THE COMPLETION of the work of Christ and stamps "it is finished " with an exclamation point..1 Cor .."If Christ is not risen, then our faith is in vain. We are yet in our sins, and we are of all men most miserable."
So on Easter Sunday..we do not celebrate an incomplete salvation ...but a complete one
But the Passover meal was not yet over. The hymn that they sang was the Hillel. After this they were to drink the fourth cup. They did not do so. It was this fourth cup, which he would drink on the Cross, that our Lord referred to when he prayed to the Father in the Garden, "Father, if it be possible, take this cup from me…" Only when our Lord was at the point of death would he drink of the "fruit of the vine", the fourth cup. He then spoke the words "It is finished" which was the ritualistic conclusion of the Passover meal.
When Jesus gave the command, "Do this in remembrance of me," he was not just speaking of the sharing of bread and wine, but of the entire new Passover sacrificial meal. And this is what Catholics do at the Sacrifice of the Mass in obedience to his command.
Two different milestones are described by these events.
First, "IT IS FINISHED" refers to what occurred on the Cross. Secondly, the Resurrection manifests Jesus Christ was the First Fruits, a testimony that in His Human Body, He had received forgiveness and had eternal life free from Hades. 40 days later, at the Ascension, He would be raised up to seat at the right hand of God the Father.
The Cross was JUDGMENT (not forgiveness,..that comes later). At the Cross, all the sins of humanity, past, present, and future, were imputed to Jesus Christ in His humanity, and judged.
When He exclaims, "IT IS FINISHED", He manifests the JUDGMENT of all human sins had been completed. Sin is no longer the object being judged in the future. Nowhere at the Great White Throne Judgment, where those who are sent away to the Lake of Fire, are sins called into judgment. Instead the Books of Names and Works are opened.
While sins have already been judged, we as humans from the seed of Adam, are born with an old sin nature, are not sinless, and are condemned prior to salvation. Before any human can have salvation, they must be reborn in the spirit.
God is free to give us a reborn spirit by His GRACE, when we face Him through faith in what Christ performed at the Cross and confess our sins to Him.
When we are reborn, we now have a regenerated human spirit, but our souls are still scarred from our lives as sinners, from a worldly and carnal past and simply from acting independently from His Spirit. He then begins His work in us of Sanctification.
Before the Cross, the Perfect Sacrifice had not yet been made. No man was pure enough to enter into the abode of God in Heaven.
Sequence of events:
While on the Cross, all the sins of humanity were imputed to Jesus Christ, and His soul was JUDGED for those sins.
He then declared "IT IS FINISHED". He had not yet died in His soul, because He made the statement, and later exclaimed, My God, My God, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME!". Then he yielded up his human spirit to God the Father, and by his own volition, shoved His head forward, and the physical forces caused his physical death.
His soul departed His body while on the Cross at His physical death, and descended into HADES. His body was pierced manifesting He died on the Cross prior to the spearing, and His body was then taken to a prepared grave (the tomb) and guarded for three days. His spirit was returned to God the Father.
As the First Fruits, when He resurrected, we know all sins had been judged. We know He also paid the penalty of spiritual death when He exclaimed, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" (Matt 27:46).
In order to be resurrected, his body, soul, and spirit came back together. God the Father returned His human spirit to His body in the grave, and His soul returned to His body in the grave, and He was then Resurrected into a new Resurrected body.
God the Father was not free by His immutable essence to perform these things prior to the judgment of all sin, and their penalties paid.
So we know Jesus Christ fulfilled a substitutionary atonement of sin for all mankind; He redeemed mankind from the slave market of sin; and He manifests eternal life for the believer.