The Agony at Gethsemane

Refer Luke 22:39-46

“Then He withdrew from them…and knelt down and prayed. Saying, Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but [always] Yours be done…and being in agony [of mind], He prayed [all the] more earnestly and intently, and His sweat became like great clots of blood dropping down upon the ground.” – Luke 22: 41, 42, 44

Our Lord Jesus Christ, in His humanity, agonized with the reality He was about to face on the cross at Calvary. When He considered what lay ahead, Jesus knelt down in prayer asking that the cup be removed.

What was this cup to which Jesus referred? It is the same cup spoken of in Psalm 75:8, “in the hand of the Lord there is a cup of His wrath”, Isaiah 51:17, “the cup of [the Lord’s] wrath”, Jeremiah 25:15, “this cup of the wine of wrath”, and Revelation 14:10, “the cup of His anger”. Jesus was struggling with the thought of drinking the cup that contained all the unbridled anger that God reserved for sinful mankind.

Jesus’ intention did not lie in disobedience to the purpose for which He came but was merely an enquiry as to an alternative. Being a substitute for sinfulness when one is sinless, understandably, could not be easy to reconcile in one’s mind but Jesus was, by no means, about to shirk His task. He had accepted His role as substitute from the very beginning and was prepared to do the will of His Father. There was absolutely no doubt that He would drink, for He said to Peter in John 18:11, “Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given Me?”.

Jesus Christ took our place on that cross, drinking the cup of God’s anger down to the last awful dreg so that we would never have to. Jesus paid the debt that we could never pay ourselves. Jesus understood that it was about something bigger than His human self; He understood that God’s plan was the best plan and, strengthened in spirit by an angel from heaven (Verse 43), Jesus could now pray more earnestly, confident in the will of His loving Father. God had planned every detail of Jesus’ life.

Beloved, when we are in agony, anguish, struggling in our minds, we must remember the agony Jesus Christ faced on our behalf knowing that, like Him, God has planned every detail of our lives. With this in mind, let us look, beyond the agony, at the beauty of the Garden. Let us pray, confident that though we may not be delivered from suffering we surely will be strengthened through it.

Amen † 

The Agony at Gethsemane ©2013 Shelley Johnson 17-Mar-13