We are all so used to hearing people say “Amen” at the end of prayers and saying it ourselves that we seldom think about the word, but the following points may show you that there is a lot about that small word you don’t know.

1) “Amen” doesn’t just mean “may it be so.”  Many people think of amen as a kind of spiritual punctuation mark – something we put at the end of prayers to mean “the prayer is over.” Those who understand the word better think of it as meaning “may it be so” and being a way of adding our agreement to what was said, but the word means much more than that and actually has a number of meanings.  Amen comes from a Hebrew root which in its various forms can mean: to support, to be loyal, to be certain or sure, and even to place faith in something. At the most basic level, the word can mean simply “yes!” as we see in Paul’s statement: “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so through him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God” (2 Corinthians 1:20). But the central meaning of the word has to do with truth, as we will see.

2) Amen was not usually used to conclude prayers in the Bible.  Although it is found many times in the Bible, its main use was to affirm praise for God (Psalm 41:13; Romans 1:25; etc.) or to confirm a blessing (Romans 15:33; etc.) –  either by the speaker or the hearers.  The “amen” found at the end of the Lord's Prayer in some manuscripts of the New Testament  affirms the expression of praise that concludes the prayer. Perhaps because of this, over the course of the centuries it became common practice to use "amen" as the conclusion for prayers.

3)  Amen is used as a characteristic of God in the Old Testament.  Although the English Bible translation you use may not show it, in Isaiah 65:16 the Hebrew text speaks twice of “the God of Amen,” and this clearly uses amen as a characteristic or even a title of God.  Because many translators feel this would be confusing in English, they choose to render the text as “the God of truth,” and although that is not a bad translation, it does somewhat obscure the original sense of what was written.

4)  Amen is used as a characteristic of Jesus in the New Testament. Just as God is referred to as the God of Amen in the Old Testament, so in the New Testament in Revelation 3:14 “Amen" is used as a title for Jesus Christ “These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God's creation.” The combination of Amen with “faithful and true witness” clearly shows the connection between amen and truth.

5) Amen was used uniquely by Jesus.  Jesus usually used the word amen at the beginning of his statements, and in those cases, it was sometimes translated by the Gospel writers into Greek as “truly” (Luke 4:25; 9:27; etc.).  The NIV translates this in turn as “I assure you …”   But a completely unique use of amen by Jesus in the New Testament is recorded by the apostle John, whose Gospel shows us that Christ frequently doubled the word at the beginning of particularly important statements. In the King James Bible this is translated “Verily, verily,” in the ESV as “truly, truly,” and in the NIV “Very truly.”   The doubling of amen was not only used by Jesus, however. In the early 1960’s part of a Hebrew legal document dating from the time of Jesus was found in which an individual declares “Amen, amen, ani lo ashem” meaning “Very truly, I am innocent.”  It is possible, then, that Jesus borrowed this doubled form of amen from legal language of the day.  But knowing that Jesus used this expression to signify important things he wanted to stress can help us see their importance in our own study of his words. The full list of occurrences of amen being doubled in John’s Gospel is: 1:51; 3:3, 5, 11; 5:19, 24-25; 6:26, 32, 47, 53; 8:34, 51, 58; 10:1, 7; 12:24; 13:16, 20, 21, 38; 14:12; 16:20, 23; and 21:18.

It is interesting that while the New Testament writers often left untranslated certain Hebrew or Aramaic words such as abba, “father,” but immediately followed the word with a translation into Greek, they invariably left “amen” untranslated in its Hebrew form. This could possibly have been because they felt the word amen was known and understood by all their readers, but it is more likely that they knew that the word represented a range of meanings and they felt it better to simply include the word and let the reader or hearer consider the possibilities. If this is the case, we can draw a lesson from the fact. That small untranslated “amen” we read in our Bibles can mean more than just “may it be so.” We can often profitably think about what it most likely means in a given context or the intended force with which the expression was used.  Finally, we should remember that “amen” certainly is not just a spiritual punctuation mark or a simple exclamation – wherever we use it we should think of it as a solemn affirmation that we are giving our personal guarantee that what was said is true! 

Most of us know what it feels like to finally accomplish something we have worked toward for a long time: a goal, a dream, a project to which we have dedicated time and energy. Even with relatively small-scale things, it can be a triumphant feeling. The larger the accomplishment, the greater are the emotions of triumph, thankfulness and deep happiness that come with accomplished plans and goals.

This feeling ties in to the story given in all of the four Gospels of the supreme sacrifice of the Son of God on behalf of humanity. That had surely been a project a long time in the planning – from before the world was even formed (1 Peter 1:20). It had been over thirty years of the physical life of Jesus in the actual making: growing, building, preparing, patiently working toward the eventual goal of the sacrifice itself.

The sacrificial death of Christ is a somber and heart-wrenching thing to ponder, yet it seems more than likely that even as he perished in excruciating pain, there was for the Son of God a feeling of triumph and thankfulness at the very end. We know that even beyond the physical pain Jesus bore, because of the human sin he had taken upon himself, he endured the terrible feeling of being cut off from the Father – as can be seen in his almost final words: “Why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34 – and see Psalm 22:1). But we must always remember these were not his final words.

Putting the Gospel accounts together, we find that the last recorded words of Jesus – three small words in English translation, spoken directly before he died – show a much more positive ending to the story of the physical life of the Messiah. Those words, according to John, were simply: “It is finished!” (John 19:30). In the original Greek of the New Testament the expression is a single word (tetelestai), but the sense is certainly that of the three English words – “It is finished!” The positive nature of the expression becomes clear if we look at it closely.

The Greek word tetelestai carries a number of related meanings. In the English New Testament it is translated as “finished” (as with a job), “fulfilled” (as with a purpose), “accomplished” (as with a task), “performed” (as with a command), “completed” (as with a goal), and in other similar ways. But the central idea in each case is a positive one. While it is natural for us, as we come to the end of the crucifixion story, to think of “it is finished” as a negative expression – we see it as a supremely sad ending, almost like an admission of defeat – nothing could be further from the truth. When we translate the word tetelestai in any of the other ways it could be rendered, the meaning is much clearer. “It is fulfilled!” “It is accomplished!” “It is performed!” “It is completed!” These are not three words of defeat, but three words of triumph!

Despite the pain, the humiliation, and the anguish of his own impending death, the Son of God knew that he had succeeded – he had accomplished the very reason for his human life in a victory that would touch all human lives throughout all time. To that point in history no single event had accomplished so much good or incorporated such a victory. The last words of Jesus – “it is finished” – were surely the three most triumphant words ever spoken. They were equaled only by another three triumphant words spoken a few days later: “He has risen” (Matthew 28:6).

The Triumph of Trust

Ultimately, the lesson we can draw from the story of the last words of Jesus is one of trust. Jesus trusted God throughout his life and ministry and even throughout a slow and terrible death. He trusted that God was fulfilling his purpose when he was in pain, when he felt cut off from God, even as he felt his very life ebbing away. Far from being an expression of defeat, his words “it is finished” were the final and complete expression of his trust. The last words of Jesus were, in that sense, the fulfillment of a prophecy contained in the book of Isaiah: “The Lord Almighty has sworn, ‘Surely, as I have planned, so it will be, and as I have purposed, so it will happen’” (Isaiah 14:24).
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When we see the final words of Jesus in context, with the sense they really convey, we can rejoice that they can – and will – apply to our lives also. Just as Job wrote of God “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him” (Job 13:15), the last words of Jesus remind us that we too can trust that despite any and all appearances, whatever may happen in our lives, if we continue to trust God he will complete his purpose in us. That is a tremendous truth that can underlie our desire to follow in the steps of Jesus and to strive to learn lessons from his sonship, signs, sermons, service and sacrifice.