Gbenga bought his plot of land off the Lekki-Epe expressway when the area was still mostly bush and sand. He paid the family who sold it, collected his receipt, his survey plan and his deed of assignment, and fenced the land with blocks. Two years later, another branch of the same family appeared and claimed that the people who sold to him had no right to sell. Young men came to the site and broke part of the fence. They told him to pay again or leave.
He went to court. The case took four years. There were adjournments, a judge who was transferred, a lawyer who fell ill and a file that went missing for eight months. Gbenga learned more about the High Court in Lagos than he had ever wanted to know. And at the end of the fourth year, the judgement was delivered in his favour. The court declared him the lawful owner and restrained the other party from interfering with the land. The time for appeal came and went. Nobody appealed.
You would think that would be the end of it. But for nearly a year after the judgement, Gbenga kept behaving as if the case were still open. When the young men turned up at the site, he would argue with them, then plead, then end up giving them a few thousand naira “to keep the peace.” When a man from the family phoned him, he apologised for the trouble and promised to “settle” them. He would lie awake wondering whether he really owned the land. His wife noticed that he spoke about it the way you speak about something you are still trying to get.
One afternoon he mentioned all this to his lawyer, a grey-haired woman who had practised for thirty years. She listened, then took off her glasses and looked at him. “Gbenga,” she said, “you won. Why are you talking like a man who lost? Every time you negotiate, you are telling them the matter is still undecided. Stop arguing about a case the court has already settled. Hold your judgement and say what it says.”
She had a certified true copy of the judgement made for him. He had it laminated. And something changed in the way he spoke.
This article is about speaking like a man who has read the judgement. Christ has finished the work of our redemption. The verdict has been delivered. Many believers still talk, pray and think as though the case were open.
What Christ has finished
Before we can speak in agreement with the finished work, we need to know what that work is. A phrase about “the finished work” can be repeated for years without any clear understanding of what was actually finished. So let us go to the cross.
After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a spunge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.
“It is finished.” In the Greek of John’s Gospel, it is a single word, tetelestai. It speaks of something brought to its intended end, a task completed, an obligation fully discharged. Jesus did not say, “I am finished,” as a dying man might. He said, “It is finished.” Something He had come to do was now done.
What was finished? The writer to the Hebrews answers by contrasting Jesus with the priests of the old covenant. They stood daily, offering the same sacrifices again and again, which could never take away sins. “But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God” (Hebrews 10:12). The priests stood because their work was never done. There were no chairs in the tabernacle. Jesus sat down because His work was complete. “For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14).
Paul describes the same accomplishment from another angle:
And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.
Look at the verbs and who performs them. He quickened. He forgave. He blotted out. He took it out of the way. He nailed it. He spoiled. He made a shew. He triumphed. Every decisive action belongs to God through Christ. We were dead. We did not contribute to our own resurrection.
“The handwriting of ordinances that was against us” is a vivid phrase. It pictures a written record of debt, a signed acknowledgement of what we owed. That record was blotted out, wiped clean, and then nailed to the cross, as if God had pinned the cancelled bill to the very place where it was paid. And the principalities and powers that used that record to accuse us were stripped and publicly displayed in defeat, like captives in a Roman victory procession.
This is the judgement in your favour. You have been forgiven “all trespasses.” Not most. All. You have been made alive with Christ. The accusing record has been cancelled. The powers have been disarmed. Paul says a few verses earlier, “And ye are complete in him” (Colossians 2:10).
PunchlineNone of this came into existence because we spoke it. It was accomplished at Calvary and confirmed in the resurrection. Our words do not create redemption. But our words can either agree with it or argue against it.
The meaning of profession
The book of Hebrews was written to believers who were under pressure to give up. Some of them were Jewish Christians who had suffered for their faith and were tempted to go back to the old system of priests and sacrifices, where things felt more familiar and safer. Again and again, the writer calls them to hold on:
Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.
“Seeing then that we have a great high priest... let us hold fast our profession.” The word profession here does not mean a job. In the Greek it is homologia, and it is built from two parts: homo, meaning same, and a form of logos, meaning word. To make a profession, in this sense, is to say the same thing. It is to speak in agreement.
Agreement with whom? With God. With what He has said about His Son and about what His Son has done. When you profess your faith, you are saying the same thing that God has already said. You are echoing a verdict that was given before you ever opened your mouth.
Earlier in the letter the writer has already told his readers to “consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus” (Hebrews 3:1). Jesus is the High Priest of our profession. He is the content of what we say. He is also the One who stands in the presence of God on our behalf while we say it. Later he repeats the call with even more urgency: “Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering” (Hebrews 10:23), and then gives the reason in the same verse: because He is faithful that promised.
“Hold fast” is a word for gripping something firmly and refusing to let go. It assumes that something is trying to pull it out of your hand. Pressure, suffering, accusation and delay will all try to loosen your grip on what God has said. Feelings, moods and the memory of a great meeting will not hold under that pull. What holds is a firm grip on the confession that agrees with God about Jesus.
And notice that the very next verses tie the profession to prayer. Because we have a High Priest who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, we come boldly to the throne of grace. Holding fast the profession and coming boldly in prayer belong together. A believer who keeps saying what God says about the finished work will find that he prays very differently from a believer who keeps reopening the case.
NuggetTo make your profession is to say the same thing God has already said about His Son. Your words do not create the verdict. They agree with it, and they refuse to let go of it.
The spirit of faith speaks
Paul gives us a further key. Writing to the Corinthians about the hardships of his ministry, he says something about the connection between believing and speaking:
We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. So then death worketh in us, but life in you. We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak; Knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you.
Look at the setting. Paul is troubled on every side, perplexed, persecuted and cast down. He is carrying about in his body the dying of the Lord Jesus. These are not the words of a man whose circumstances are comfortable. And right in the middle of all that, he says, “We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak.”
The quotation comes from Psalm 116. That psalm was written by someone who had been near death: “The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me” (Psalm 116:3). And it is in that context that he says, “I believed, therefore have I spoken: I was greatly afflicted” (Psalm 116:10). Faith spoke while affliction was still present.
Paul says he has the same spirit of faith. Faith has a voice. What the heart believes, the mouth eventually says. Jesus taught that “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” (Matthew 12:34). And Paul calls the gospel itself “the word of faith, which we preach,” a word that is “nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart” (Romans 10:8).
I want to say this plainly, because some believers have become so nervous about excesses that they have lost something precious. Speaking matters. God created the world by His word. Jesus healed by His word and cast out demons with a word. The saints overcame the accuser “by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony” (Revelation 12:11). There is real spiritual significance when a believer opens his mouth and agrees aloud with what God has said. When you declare that Jesus is Lord, that your sins are forgiven, that you have been made alive with Christ, that the powers have been disarmed, you are not performing a ritual. You are exercising the spirit of faith. Heaven agrees with those words because they began in heaven.
But look at what Paul believed and spoke in this passage. “Knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus.” His confession was anchored in the resurrection. He spoke what God had already done in Christ and what God had promised to do. The spirit of faith takes its words from God’s own Word, especially from the accomplished work of Jesus, and says them in the face of trouble.
When the accuser comes back to the site
Gbenga had his judgement all through that year. His trouble was that he kept responding to the young men at the site as though their claim still had force. Every time he gave them money, he was agreeing with them.
Believers do the same with the accuser. The enemy comes back to the site of an old failure and demands payment. Remember what you did. How can you call yourself a child of God? You need to suffer a bit more before you can come near Him. And many believers pay. They pay in weeks of staying away from prayer. They pay in self-punishment. They pay in vague, endless apologies that never quite settle anything.
Speaking in agreement with the finished work means refusing to add another sacrifice to the one that has already been offered. Our sorrow over sin is not a payment. Our service is not an improvement to the cross. We repent and obey because Christ has already opened a new and living way.
That does not mean we pretend we have not sinned. John writes, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). The word translated confess there is homologeō, the verb from the same family as homologia. To confess sin is also to say the same thing God says. When God says, “That was wrong,” you agree. When God says, “It is forgiven through the blood of My Son,” you agree with that too. Real confession agrees with God on both points.
So words that agree with His work can be completely honest about the wrong. I acted badly, and I need His mercy. I belong to Him, and this habit must be brought into the light. Those sentences hold assurance and responsibility together.
We should be careful, then, not to use declarations of identity as a shield against correction. If you have harmed someone, saying “I am the righteousness of God in Christ” does not excuse you from apologising, repairing what you can, and giving the injured person the care and time they need. The finished sacrifice gives you the freedom to face the truth. It does not give you an exemption from telling it. A man who knows the court has settled the land can afford to admit that his fence was built a metre over the boundary and move it. He is not afraid of losing the plot.
Words that carry reconciliation
The finished work does not only change what we say to God and about ourselves. It changes what we say to other people. Paul describes the message that has been entrusted to us:
And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.
“All things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ.” The reconciliation is accomplished. God was in Christ, not imputing their trespasses unto them. And then: He “hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.”
Notice that the finished work does not make proclamation unnecessary. Paul still says, “we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.” The appeal remains part of the message. We announce an accomplished saving act, and we invite people to receive it. The finished work is the very reason there is something to announce.
This should shape our tone. We do not need to portray God as reluctant to save, as though the sinner had to overcome divine hesitation. The cross reveals His gracious initiative. God made the first move. We can call people to repentance clearly while making the sufficiency of the Saviour equally clear.
And it should shape our everyday speech too. A person cannot rightly celebrate being brought near to God while treating his neighbours as though their dignity no longer matters. We are ambassadors. An ambassador’s words represent the one who sent him. We can name an injustice without reducing a whole tribe or group to an insult. We can correct false teaching without enjoying anyone’s humiliation. The truth loses none of its authority when it is spoken with the patience of the Lord it reveals.
The last verse of the passage is one of the most compressed statements of the gospel in the whole Bible. “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” That is the exchange. Our sin to Him. His righteousness to us. Every word of reconciliation we speak to anyone else rests on that one verse.
Truthful about the present
There is a misunderstanding that can creep in here, and we need to address it. Some believers think that speaking in agreement with the finished work means refusing to acknowledge anything difficult in the present. If the doctor gives a hard report, they will not repeat it. If the business is struggling, they insist that everything is fine. They fear that naming a problem will somehow cancel the work of Christ.
Paul did not think that way. Listen to how he places assurance beside an honest account of trouble:
What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
These are some of the most triumphant words ever written. If God be for us, who can be against us? It is God that justifieth. It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again. The finished work is the foundation of every line.
Yet only a few verses later, Paul lists tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril and sword. He even quotes a psalm: “For thy sake we are killed all the day long” (Romans 8:36). He does not protect his faith by refusing to name those things. He names them, and then declares that none of them can separate us from the love of God in Christ.
Truth about present circumstances does not undo truth about Christ. Both belong in a faithful account of life between His resurrection and the final renewal of all things. Romans 8 itself tells us that we are “waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:23). The saving foundation is finished. The full harvest of it is still to come.
That gives us a reliable way to speak. A medical report can be described accurately while prayer for healing remains earnest and expectant. A financial difficulty can be acknowledged while we seek and declare the Father’s provision. Grief can be expressed while resurrection hope stays clear. The facts of the present do not have the authority to cancel the cross. And a declaration about the cross should never be used to hide facts that people need for responsible action. If you have chest pains, confess the Word and go to the hospital. We honour the Lord by keeping the whole account truthful.
Nor should we treat every present limitation as proof that someone has failed to speak correctly. A believer who is still sick, still waiting or still grieving has not necessarily said the wrong words. The Spirit helps us in this in-between time. We pray and receive care. We obey and persevere. And our speech keeps remembering what is already settled in Christ while asking for the help we still need.
Learning to speak the verdict
PunchlineHow, practically, do you grow in this kind of speech? Here are some simple ways.
Start with the text, not with a slogan. Open a passage like Colossians 2 or Hebrews 10 and ask, “What does this say Christ has done?” Write the answers down in plain sentences. He forgave all my trespasses. He cancelled the record against me. He sat down because the work was done. Then turn each sentence into thanksgiving. Thank You, Lord, that You have forgiven all my trespasses. That is the beginning of a profession. You are saying the same thing God says.
Say it aloud. There is a reason Scripture so often joins the heart and the mouth. Something is strengthened in you when you hear your own voice agree with God, especially on the days when your feelings are arguing the other side.
Let it shape worship. We give thanks for a redemption already accomplished. We do not need to sing as though another offering of sufficient emotional intensity will finally persuade the Father to receive us. Christ has opened the way, and gratitude can answer Him freely.
Let it steady your prayer. You can ask for what you need today without reopening the question of whether Jesus has done enough for you to approach. Paul tells us, “For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us” (2 Corinthians 1:20). God says yes in Christ. We say Amen. That Amen is our agreement.
And when you help a new believer learn this, keep it simple. You do not need to give him a complicated vocabulary. Read a passage together. Ask what it says Jesus has done. Then let him thank God in his own words. Understanding gives a confession its substance. Sincerity does not need to sound like an imitation of the person who taught him.
The next time the young men came to Gbenga’s site, he did not raise his voice and he did not reach for his wallet. He took the laminated judgement out of the car, read out the suit number and the order of the court, and said, “This matter has been decided. If you have a complaint, it is with the court, not with me.” He had already given a copy to the police division nearby. The boys looked at each other, argued among themselves for a few minutes and left. They came once more after that. Then they stopped coming.
Gbenga told me the strangest part was what happened inside him. “For a year,” he said, “I was praying about that land as if I was still asking God to give it to me. The day I started speaking from the judgement, I started praying from it too.”
He still had work to do. The judgement did not lay a single block. He had to raise money, hire a builder, fight with suppliers and wait through the rainy season. But he did all of it as the owner. He put up a signboard at the front with the suit number painted on it, and the building rose behind it, floor by floor.
Christ has finished the work of your redemption. The verdict has been delivered. The record against you has been nailed to the cross, and the powers that accused you have been publicly disarmed. You still have a life to build on that ground, with real work and real waiting. But you do not have to keep negotiating with the accuser over a case that heaven has closed. Hold fast your profession. Say what the judgement says.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- In what areas of your life do you still speak or pray as though the case were open?
- What did Jesus mean by “It is finished”? List three things Colossians 2:13-15 says He has done.
- Hebrews calls us to “hold fast our profession.” What pressures are trying to loosen your grip on what God has said?
- How can you keep your confession of the finished work honest about present difficulties, such as illness, loss or debt?
- Where might you be using words about your identity in Christ to avoid taking responsibility for a wrong?
This Week
This week, read Colossians 2:9-15 each day. On the first day, write down every action the passage says God has done through Christ. On each of the following days, take one of those sentences and say it aloud as thanksgiving, morning and evening: “Thank You, Father, that You have forgiven me all trespasses.” When an old accusation returns, do not argue or bargain with it. Answer it with the sentence for that day. Then, if there is a real wrong you need to put right with someone, take one concrete step to do it.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus, thank You that on the cross You said, “It is finished,” and that You have sat down at the right hand of the Father because the work is done. Thank You that You have forgiven all my trespasses, blotted out the record against me and triumphed over every power that accused me. I hold fast my profession. I will say what God has said about You and about me. Give me the spirit of faith, so that I believe and therefore speak, even when I am troubled on every side. Keep my words honest about the present and full of confidence in what You have finished. In Your name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.