Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. But on account of this have I come to this hour.
Some Greeks had just asked to see Jesus, and He answered by speaking of a grain of wheat that must fall into the ground and die. His trouble follows at once, and it raises a hard question: is "Father, save me from this hour" a prayer He makes, or one He refuses?
The arrival of these Gentiles — non-Jewish visitors — opened up before Him glory as Son of Man, reached only by way of death.
The coming of the Gentiles had opened out before Him a scene: the rejected Christ passing into the wider glory of the Son of Man. But that meant the grain of wheat must fall into the ground and die. This brings before His soul the true and necessary path of His glory — death, and all that death meant to His soul. And He looks for deliverance. He could not wish for the forsaking of God and the cup of death He had to drink. Nor could He fail to fear them. He was heard because of His godly fear. That was truth, and true devotion to God, as He faced what His soul had to pass through.
The weight was not simply dying. It was death as God's judgment, and the forsaking that came with it.
The Lord has urged us to take the path of death to this world, leading to life and honour. But before the believer can take this path, Christ had to face death as the judgment of God against sin. He knows the solemn weight of being forsaken by God at the cross. So He has to say, "Now is my soul troubled." Even so, will He say, "Father, save Me from this hour"? Was it not for this very cause — to be forsaken so that His people might never be forsaken — that He had come to this hour?
Some fear that a troubled soul makes Him less. The opposite is true: this is exactly what a perfect man would feel here, and both halves of the verse belong together.
The reality of His manhood, and the glory of His Godhead, in no way hindered His sorrow. His being Who and what He was, and perfect in everything, only gave Him infinite capacity to feel and fathom what He endured. He would not have been perfect man if His soul had not been troubled, so that He felt, "What am I to say?" He would not have been Son of God as man if He had not prayed, in that trouble of soul, "Father, save Me from this hour." He would just as surely not have been, if He had not gone on to say, "But for this purpose I have come to this hour," crowned with, "Father, glorify Your name."
Commentators differ here. Darby and Kelly read the words as a real prayer that was heard. Another writer reads them as a plea He raises only to set aside.
Yet His rejection by man was not even a shadow of the sorrow none could share — His being forsaken by God. No, He would not say, "Father, save me from this hour," while still letting us know that His soul was troubled. "Father, glorify Your name," spoken in the shadow of the cross, is simply the completion of the thought formed in the brightness of the eternal glory — "I come… I delight to do Your will, O my God."
What He says here He would face again in the garden, and then endure in fact.
It is worth remembering that Gethsemane still lay ahead of the Lord at this time… Death, as the judgment of God, the thing that lay upon us, was before Him there. He went through it in anticipation in Gethsemane. He went through it in fact, in all its dread reality, in the dark hour of Calvary.
The trouble does not have the last word. Even here, one thing mattered to Him more than the cost.
He knew full well what the dreadful hour of the cross would mean to His holy soul. It meant sufferings beyond all creature knowledge. It meant all that the evil heart of man, driven by the power of Satan, could devise, and all that the powers of darkness could gather to attack Him. It meant the wrath and judgment of a holy God against sin, when He would be made sin and bear our sins. Looking ahead to all this was awful, and the drinking of the cup of wrath would be awful too. Yet one thing mattered to Him above everything else: the glory of the Father's Name.
- The hour — the Greeks' arrival opened up glory as Son of Man. The way there ran through the grain of wheat falling into the ground to die.
- The trouble — not dying as such, but death as God's judgment, and the forsaking that came with it.
- The manhood — a troubled soul does not make Him less. Only a real man would feel it, and only He could fathom it.
- The choice — commentators differ: is the plea prayed, or raised only to be set aside? Either way the verse turns on one hinge: He came for this hour.
- The end — the trouble ends not in escape but in "Father, glorify Your name." That was the one thing worth more to Him than the cost.
Father, glorify thy name. There came therefore a voice out of heaven, I both have glorified and will glorify [it] again.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.