What does "It is finished" (tetelestai) mean?
Tetelestai (τετέλεσται) is Jesus’ cry from the cross, "It is finished" (John 19:30). It is a perfect-tense verb meaning "it has been completed and stands completed", and it was the word written across a paid debt: paid in full.
What the text states
Teleō means to complete, to finish, to pay. The perfect tense means a finished act with an abiding result: done, and it stays done. Papyri receipts of the era are stamped with this very word for a debt discharged, “paid in full.” On the cross it declares the work of atonement complete, nothing left to add: not “I am finished” but “it is finished,” the work. This is the ground of both the free offer (the price is fully paid, so it can be offered to all) and eternal security (a finished work cannot be un-finished).
Go deeper
Checked 2026-09-29 by Darren. 45 Scripture citations verified against the KJV rows. Every Strong's number in the wave-3 notes resolved against our own strongs_greek / strongs_hebrew and the lemma matched the form in the file. Wave 3. 45 quoted fragments table-passed against the verses table, all pass. 21 Greek and 3 Hebrew Strong's entries cross-checked against strongs_greek (5,523 rows) and strongs_hebrew (8,674). Three notes, none a form mismatch: (1) G2434 hilasmos is glossed in our table as 'atonement... an expiator', usage 'propitiation', so Strong's own wording is softer than the answer's 'not merely expiation'; Thayer and BDAG carry the propitiation sense and the KJV renders it so. (2) G728 is spelled arrhabon in our table (double rho) against the file's arrabon; the same word, a transliteration convention. (3) our table derives skenoo (G4637) from skenos (G4636), while the answer says it is built on skene (G4633); the three are cognate and skene is the LXX's tabernacle word. One reference in the wave-3 verification notes did not exist: Rev 22:24 (Revelation 22 ends at verse 21). Ruled by Darren 2026-09-29 a typo for Rev 22:17 and corrected in the source file. The hilasmos gloss discrepancy was ruled the same day: the answer stands and is not softened.
wsb.bible/answers/tetelestai