Have you ever struggled to understand why Jesus prayed the way He did in the Garden of Gethsemane? As He contemplated His death on the cross, He was greatly troubled and sorrowful to the point of death, and He asked His Father to let the cup of suffering set before Him pass by. Though Jesus did submit to His Father's will in the end when He asked that His Father's will be done, the petition of His prayer still stands: Jesus asked His Father to take the cross away from Him. And He pled with His Father not once, not twice, but three times to take the cross away with great passion and fear! Why?
Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, "Sit here, while I go over there and pray." And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, "My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me." And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will." And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, "So, could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." Again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, "My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done." And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. So, leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again. Matthew 26:36-44
Jesus didn't pray this way because of any human weakness, after all, there have been many Christian martyrs in church history who died boldly without any wavering. Jesus is more bold, more courageous, and more manly than any martyr who has ever lived. No, Jesus didn't pray this way because of weakness. Jesus prayed this way because of absolute, human perfection. This is how the perfect, holy, sinless, righteous Son of God must pray. Jesus prayed this way for at least three reasons:
1. A righteous fear; 2. A righteous hatred; 3. A righteous delight
A Righteous Fear
Jesus asked His Father to take the cup away from Him. What was the cup? It was the curse, judgment, fury, and wrath of God that Jesus would drink on the cross. In both the Old and New Testaments, we see that the content of the cup is the wrath of God:
Isaiah 51:17: Wake yourself, wake yourself, stand up, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the LORD the cup of His wrath, who have drunk to the dregs the bowl, the cup of staggering. Revelation 14:10: he also will drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of His anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur
The content of the cup is described well in Isaiah:
Isaiah 53:4-5, 10: Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His stripes we are healed . . . Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush Him; He has put Him to grief . . . .
The Father was angry with the Son on that cross. The Father turned His face away from the Son on that cross. In light of the wrath of God Jesus knew He would face on the cross, it was most holy and righteous for Him, the holiest Man Who ever lived, to pray with fear and trembling for another way – to seek a way of escape from this most terrible, cursed, wrath-bearing judgment.
Jesus perfectly feared Him Who can cast both body and soul into hell: In Gethsemane, Jesus was obeying with utmost perfection this command which He had given to others:
Matthew 10:28: And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
Jesus, more than any other, knew the fullness of the terrors of the wrath of Almighty God. Jesus feared God with a perfect, righteous fear, and He knew the horrors of coming face to face with this unquenchable wrath. For this reason, He pled to be freed from this dreaded curse on the cross.
A Righteous Hatred
Jesus also asked His Father to spare Him from the cross because He had an intense, perfect, righteous hatred of sin. The Bible teaches that the righteous hate sin and evil:
Psalm 97:10: O you who love the LORD, hate evil!
Proverbs 8:13: The fear of the LORD is hatred of evil.
Jesus, the most perfect and only sinless human being who ever lived, hated sin more than anyone else. And Jesus also knew that on the cross, He would be made what He so deeply hated - He would be made sin:
Isaiah 53:6, 12: the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all . . . yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors
2 Corinthians 5:21: For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
In his book, The Shadow Of Calvary, Hugh Martin wrote of the horror of being made sin:
From this we may see that the cup which the Father gave Him consisted substantially in the imputation to Him of a criminal's guilt, and the assignment to Him of a criminal's position and destiny . . . He assumes, therefore, at His Father's will, the sins which He is to bear in His own body on the tree and . . . thus by imputation makes Him out to be the chiefest and the most heavy laden of transgressors! Can there be any difficulty now in understanding generally what the nature and emphasis of His sorrow must have been? Think of Jesus coming into this terrible position towards the Judge of all – towards His Father and His God – towards Him whose . . . pleasure in Him were the light and joy of His life unspeakable! Think of Him consenting to have all the sins of myriads imputed to Him by His Father: to underlie, that is, the imputation, in His Father's judgment, of every kind and degree and amount of moral evil – every species and circumstance and combination of vile iniquity! . . . God made Him to be sin. God imputed to Him – the Father whom He infinitely loved – the judge whom He infinitely revered as one Who could not do but what is right – reckoned Him among transgressors.
Think of it!: All the sins of all those who would ever repent and believe in Him were imputed to or counted as Jesus' sins! Murder, adultery, rape, lust, child molestation, genocide, child abuse, homosexual acts, pride, idolatry, lack of contentment, porn use, lying, stealing, cheating, unbelief, & all other sins imaginable that redeemed sinners have & will commit were credited to Jesus and punished in Him on the cross! Jesus was made murder; Jesus was made adultery; Jesus was made rape; Jesus was made all your & my vile sins so that we could be saved!
When the holiest Man Who ever lived has this prospect placed before Him of becoming the vilest sin by the act of God's imputation, He cannot help but ask that this cup be taken away from Him. It was the holy, just, perfect, and righteous thing to do as He looked forward to that dreaded cross!
A Righteous Delight
Finally, Jesus asked His Father to take the cup away from Him because He had a passionate, righteous delight in His Father like no one who has ever crossed the horizon of this world, and He knew that
He would be forsaken by His Father on that cross.
Godly men throughout redemptive history have always had one greatest and chief delight above all others: God Himself:
Psalm 16:2: I say to the LORD, "You are my Lord; I have no good apart from You."
Psalm 16:11: You make known to me the path of life; in Your presence there is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
Psalm 42:1-2: As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?
Psalm 63:1-3: O God, You are my God; earnestly I seek You; my soul thirsts for You; my flesh faints for You, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon You in the sanctuary, beholding Your power and glory. Because Your mercy is better than life, my lips will praise You.
Psalm 73:25-26: Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Philippians 3:8: Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ . . . .
Commenting on Psalm 40, Augustine wrote:
Let the Lord your God be your hope. Hope for nothing else from the Lord your God; but let the Lord your God Himself be your hope. For many persons hope to obtain from God's hands riches, and many perishable and temporary honors; and, in short, anything else they hope to obtain at God's hands, except only God Himself. But seek after your God Himself: no, indeed, despising all things else, make your way to Him! Forget other things, remember Him. Leave other things behind, and "press forward" to Him . . . Leave all your loves. He who made heaven and earth is more beautiful than all . . . Let our God be our hope. He who made all things, is better than all! He who made what is beautiful, is more beautiful than all that is [beautiful]. He who made whatever is mighty, is Himself mightier. He who made whatever is great, is Himself greater. He will be to you everything that you love.
More than the Psalmists, more than the Apostle Paul, more than Augustine, and more than anyone else who has ever lived, Jesus Christ delighted in God His Father above all! His Father was His chief joy and greatest delight from all eternity!
Yet Jesus knew that on that cross, He would be forsaken by His Father - Who is His greatest delight. As Jesus prepared to go to Golgotha to be crucified, He knew this most prized possession, His most blessed fellowship with His Heavenly Father, was going to be cut off, and He would cry out: "My God! My God! Why have You forsaken Me?!" (Matthew 27:46). Therefore, Jesus had to, by necessity, pray that God would spare Him from the cross for this very reason – because of His intense love for and delight in His Heavenly Father. His was a most righteous delight! So He prayed for His Father to spare Him from losing His greatest joy and take the cross away.
Our Only Hope
Praise God that Jesus always ended His prayers to His Father with these humble, loving, and submissive Words: "Not as I will, but as You will."
Jesus did drink the fearful cup on that cross, He did submit to being made the sin which He so deeply hated on that cross, and He did accept His Father's will that He be cast out of His Father's presence on that cross so that we might be saved! Oh to boast only in the cross!
Jesus endured all of this because we don't fear God the way we ought, we don't hate sin as we should, and we don't passionately delight in the Father as He deserves to be delighted in! But Jesus did it all!
And because of this, God the Father loves His Son, delights in His Son, and raised His Son from the dead! And our only hope is to repent of our sins and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ so that we might be saved! Would you please trust in Jesus Christ today?!
A Prayer: Love Lustres At Calvary
Our Father, Enlarge our hearts, warm our [desires], open our lips,
supply words that proclaim '[We love Your Son] at Calvary.'
There grace removes our burdens and heaps them on Your Son,
made a transgressor, a curse, and sin for us;
There the sword of Your justice struck the man, Your fellow;
There Your infinite attributes were magnified,
and infinite atonement was made;
There infinite punishment was due,
and infinite punishment was endured.
Christ was all anguish that we might be all joy, cast off that we might be brought in,
trodden down as an enemy
that we might be welcomed as friends,
surrendered to hell's worst
that we might attain heaven's best,
stripped that we might be clothed,
wounded that we might be healed,
athirst that we might drink,
tormented that we might be comforted,
made a shame that we might inherit glory.
entered darkness that we might have eternal light.
Our Savior wept that all tears might be wiped from our eyes,
groaned that we might have endless song,
endured all pain that we might have unfading health,
bore a thorny crown that we might have a glory-diadem,
bowed his head that we might uplift ours,
experienced reproach that we might receive welcome,
closed his eyes in death that we might gaze on unclouded brightness,
[died] that we might forever live.
O Father, who spared not Your only Son that You might spare us,
All this transfer Your love designed and accomplished;
Help us to adore You [with our] lips and life.
O that our every breath might be ecstatic praise,
our every step buoyant with delight, as we see our enemies crushed,
Satan baffled, defeated, and destroyed;
sin buried in the ocean of reconciling blood,
hell's gates closed and heaven's [doors] open.
Go forth, O conquering God, and show us
the cross, mighty to subdue, mighty to comfort, and mighty to save! For Jesus' sake. Amen!
God And The Gospel
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