And he says to them, My soul is full of grief even unto death; abide here and watch.
He is in the garden with His disciples, hours before the cross, and He puts His anguish into words. The verse raises two questions at once: what was pressing on Him so heavily, and why did He ask men to stay near Him at all?
Scripture speaks of the Lord in the same terms it uses of us. It names His body, His soul and His spirit. This verse names His soul.
Christ is Man, and so in every detail Scripture speaks of Him in language it would use of a man — always apart from sin, and holy by His very nature. It speaks of His body, as in Matthew 26:12 and Hebrews 10:5. It speaks of His soul, as in Mark 14:34 and John 12:27. It speaks of His spirit too, as in Mark 2:8 and Luke 23:46. All these speak of Him in Manhood, the Son having become Man.
The weight was not the prospect of physical pain. It was the power of death itself.
There all that was before the blessed One came upon His spirit. He began to be sorrowful and very heavy. He felt as man what He had to undergo. It was not mere pain or suffering. The power of death weighed upon His spirit. It weighed on Him as man, yet with a weight no man could measure. Yet with what calm simplicity He tells it out! We ought to know it, though it may be beyond our knowledge.
Commentators name what the cup was, and rule out lesser answers.
He did not shrink from death. The agony was not because of the physical sufferings He knew He would face. Nor was Satan, as some foolishly teach, ready to kill Him. All such statements are dishonouring to Him. He was not in danger of death in Gethsemane. What was the cup He dreaded? The Sinless One, who knew no sin, would soon be made sin for us. God's face, on which He had always looked, would soon be hidden.
The sorrow here is anticipation, not the thing itself.
In Gethsemane, He was anticipating the cross; at Calvary, He was actually enduring it. In Gethsemane, "there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him"; at Calvary, He was forsaken by all. There was no angelic ministry there. In Gethsemane He addresses God as "Father," and so enjoys the full communion of that relationship. But at Calvary He cries, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
Here He asks others to stay near Him in His suffering. He never asks it again.
When the cross came, there was no such call to disciples to watch with Him. He was alone, absolutely, essentially, for us — that is, for our sins — with none of men or angels in any way or measure near Him.
Note: Kelly follows Matthew's account of the same moment, which reads "watch with me." Mark records only "Remain here and watch."
The men He called to watch had already seen His glory before this night.
They had already been the chosen witnesses of His glories on the mountain. Now they are given the opportunity to share His sorrows in the garden. No one could share the actual forsaking on the cross. But in what He felt in His soul as the cross drew near, others can have a part, in their measure.
What He asked was small, and He did not get it.
When He comes to the disciples He finds them sleeping. Think of it! The Master praying, and the servants sleeping. In that moment of sorrow beyond compare, the Master is in agony before God, showing perfect human dependence. The servant is asleep. Such is human nature. Peter slept on the mountain where the Lord's glory shone out. Now he is sleeping in the presence of His sorrow.
He met death as our substitute, and the result reaches the believer's own dying.
For Him, as our holy substitute, death meant bearing the penalty of sin. That is why He can say, "My soul is very sorrowful, even to death." He has borne that penalty, and so He has robbed death of its terrors for the believer. Stephen can rejoice in the prospect of death, and Paul can say it is far better to depart and be with Christ.
- Soul. The words are those of a real man; Scripture names His body, soul and spirit exactly as it names ours, sin apart.
- Sorrow. What crushed Him was not the pain ahead. It was the power of death pressing on His spirit, felt as man, with a weight no man can measure.
- Cup. He dreaded being made sin, and His Father's face hidden. He did not dread death, and Satan was not about to kill Him.
- Alone. In the garden He could still say "Father," an angel strengthened Him, and He could ask men to watch. At the cross He cried "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" with no one near.
- Result. He bore the penalty of death, and so took away its terror for the believer. Stephen could welcome death, and Paul could call departing far better.
And, going forward a little, he fell upon the earth; and he prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass away from him.
Gethsemane is the garden where Jesus prayed on the night He was arrested, and this verse gives the plainest picture of what He did there: He moved away from His closest disciples, went down on the ground, and prayed. The question it raises is why the One who came to die would ask that the hour pass from Him at all.
Many sorrows pressed on Him that night, but one stood behind them all.
It was a deep sorrow to the Lord that the nation were plotting to put Him to death. One of His twelve disciples was about to betray Him. Another was going to deny Him. All of them would fall away because of Him. But in Gethsemane the Lord faces a far deeper sorrow: what He was about to endure at the cross, when, made sin, He would be forsaken by God. Faced with this great sorrow, as in every other trial of His perfect life, He gave Himself to prayer. But whatever relief prayer may bring, its first effect is to make the trial felt more keenly. Prayer brings every circumstance into the presence of God, where each one is seen for what it truly is.
Mark alone records the posture, and the other accounts add what he leaves out.
Matthew has told us that He prayed three times in Gethsemane (Matt. 26:38-44). For His position, falling on the ground, Mark's statement is the plainest testimony (Mark 14:35). Luke alone tells us of His sweat like blood and of the angel who came to strengthen Him (Luke 22:43-44). He knew the power of darkness in all its might, so He can now fully enter into the trials of His people.
The contrast with His followers that night was stark.
The Master praying, and the servants sleeping! The Master is in agony before God, showing perfect human dependence, in that moment of sorrow beyond compare, while the servant sleeps.
The prayer has an "if" in it. He prays to a Father who can do anything — so why was the hour not taken away?
Face down on the ground, He prays in trusting faith to His Father, with whom all things are possible. Yet He adds that the Father's will, not His own, should be done. So what was possible did not decide the matter. Of course He could have avoided the cross. But then the solemn question of sin could never have been settled, and sinful people could never have been saved.
So what made this hour unlike every other suffering He had borne?
He prays that the hour may pass from Him, if it is possible. He had borne every cup of suffering from the hand of sinners without complaining. His Father's favour was enough for Him! But this cup was to be made a curse. The just One would be made sin. He who had always been in the Father's bosom, the object of an infinite love, would find Himself forsaken by God. Because He was devoted to God, He wished to draw back from this if He could. But if we were to escape the penalty of sin, He had to bear it for us.
The shrinking and the submission are not in tension. Both belong to who He is.
It was part of His perfection to shrink from the cross. So He can say to the Father, "All things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me." But it was just as much part of His perfection to submit to the cross and carry out the Father's will. So He can add, "Yet not what I will, but what you will."
That He could pray this way at all says something about His humanity.
It would not have been perfection if He had not felt it in this way. It was impossible that He who was life could desire such a death from His Father — from God in wrath against Him. That would have been hardness, not love. He had a real soul, a truly rational human soul, not just a spark of life. He could not have prayed this if it were true, as some have claimed, that the divine nature in our Lord took the place of a soul. He would not have been perfect man had He not taken a soul as well as a body.
- Sorrow. Betrayal, denial and desertion were real griefs. The far deeper one was being made sin and forsaken by God.
- Prayer. He met that sorrow with prayer. Prayer brings everything into God's presence, so it made the trial felt more, not less.
- Ground. Mark alone records Him falling on the ground. It is the plainest picture of a dependent Servant, while the disciples slept.
- Possible. All things were possible to the Father. But avoiding the cross would have left sin unsettled and sinners unsaved.
- Perfection. It was perfection to shrink from the cup, and perfection to drink it. That is the prayer of a real human soul, submitted to the Father's will.
And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee take away this cup from me; but not what *I* will, but what *thou* [wilt].
This is Gethsemane, with the cross still ahead. His words here hold two things together: complete confidence in His Father's power, and a plea that His Father would take away what is coming.
The first word is not Greek. "Abba" is Aramaic, the everyday language of the region, and it stands next to the Greek word for Father. One writer explains where these two words appear together:
'Abba' appears three times in the New Testament, and 'Father' always follows it. Translators copied 'Abba' over instead of translating it; a translation would read 'Father Father.' In the Greek, the 'Abba' is Aramaic and the 'Father' is Greek... The only place where the Lord Himself says it is Mark 14:36. And the Spirit in the hearts of believers puts the very words He used into their lips. Some suggest that in the two words the Jew and the Gentile each say 'Father' in his own language.
One writer points out who records this word, and where the Lord's service had brought Him:
It is Mark who tells us that He said, "Abba, Father." Mark writes of Him as the perfect Servant. His path of service had brought Him to this dark hour... To whom could He turn? Only to Him whom He served with that holy and perfect devotion and in whom was all His trust. He put the whole matter into His hands... It describes a relationship in which knowing a perfect love draws out perfect trust.
He had suffered from men before without once asking to be spared. This cup was different:
In His life of obedience Jesus suffered the hostility of sinners. He never turned away from them, and He never demanded that such a cup be taken away from Him. Why this one, then? Because this was not just the cup of the sin of men, or of Satan's malice, but the cup of the wrath of God. In what He had to suffer before from men, He had the joy of doing His Father's will. But in this cup, the cup of wrath, there was not one drop of sweetness... And why could the cup not pass? Here is the reason. God cannot bear with sin. And since Jesus Himself was made sin for us, God's wrath had to fall on sin.
Some read His shrinking as weakness. One writer says the opposite. Not feeling it would have been the flaw:
It would not have been perfection if He had not felt it this way. It was impossible that He who was life could desire such a death from His Father — from God in wrath against Him. It would have been hardness, not love. He felt it perfectly, as before God His Father, and still He gives up His human will completely to the Father's... He had a real soul, not just a spark of life.
He states His Father's power as fact, and then asks. What the Father could do was not the deciding question:
Face down on the ground, He prays in trusting faith to His Father, with whom all things are possible. Yet He adds that the Father's will, and not His own, should be done. So what was possible did not decide the matter. Of course He could have avoided the cross. But if He had, the solemn question of sin could never have been settled, and sinful creatures could never have been saved.
The closing words show that He had a will of His own. That is not a crack in His perfection:
He was not one who had no will of His own, as people sometimes say. He had a will as a true man, but He subjected His will to the will of the Father. He never exercised His will in independence. He would not have been a perfect man if He had had no will.
The same two words appear twice more — no longer on His lips:
But — wonderful thought — it is no longer our blessed Lord Jesus who uses this word of closeness. It is those whom His precious blood has redeemed. It is those who have received the adoption of sons.
That cry says something about the Spirit, and about the Lord in that hour:
This shows what the "Spirit of His Son" is. It also shows that the Lord at that moment was consciously enjoying His relationship with the Father, whatever agony He was passing through.
- The cry — "Abba" is Aramaic, "Father" is Greek; the Lord says it once, in the garden, and hands the whole matter to the One He served.
- The cup — not human hatred, which He never asked to escape, but the wrath of God, in which there was not one drop of sweetness.
- The shrinking — to take this cup without feeling it would have been hardness, not love; His recoil shows a real human soul, not a failing one.
- The limit — all things were possible to the Father, but if the cup had passed, sin could never be settled and no sinner saved.
- The gift — He held a real will and never used it apart from His Father; now the Spirit cries "Abba, Father" in the hearts of those His blood has redeemed.
And he comes and finds them sleeping. And he says to Peter, Simon, dost thou sleep? Hast thou not been able to watch one hour?
Jesus comes back from praying and finds the three men He had asked to keep watch fast asleep. He speaks to one of them only, and the name He uses carries the rebuke.
The Lord had given this disciple the new name Peter. Here He goes back to the old one.
He and his two companions were only asked to watch for an hour. They could not do it. Yet the Lord spoke His gentle words of reproof only to Peter, who had been so boastful, and He used his old name of Simon. This was fitting, for at that moment he was not true to his new name. He was showing the marks of the old nature that was still in him.
The same three had slept once before, on the mountain where they saw the Lord in glory. Here all three sleep again, yet the Lord's question falls on one man.
The sorrows of the Garden were too deep for poor weak human nature, just as before the glories of the Mount were too great. On both occasions the disciples find relief in sleep. Peter had gone beyond the others in boasting of his devotion to the Lord. So the Lord speaks to him in particular when He comes to these sleeping saints and asks, "Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour?" Prayer expresses our dependence on God, and prayer alone will prepare us for coming temptation. Too often our natural self-confidence leaves us with little fear of temptation, and so with little sense of our need of prayer.
The garden sets two figures side by side.
When He comes to the disciples He finds them sleeping. Think of it! The Master praying, and the servants sleeping. The Master is in agony before God in that moment of unequalled sorrow, showing perfect human dependence. The servant is sleeping. Such is human nature.
The Lord asked for little. Missing it exposed the heart, not tired eyes.
They slept. They had not enough affection for Him to watch one hour. Peter, who was willing to face prison or death, could not watch one hour. This uncovers the selfishness at the bottom of our hearts. That selfishness is a stranger to the affections that make our hearts enter into the glory of Jesus, and into His sufferings too.
One writer sets Peter's night beside the Lord's, step by step.
How solemn is Peter's course in these scenes. It is recorded not so that we should dwell on his failure and belittle a devoted servant of the Lord. It is recorded so that we may learn the evil of our own hearts and take heed to ourselves. When the Lord warns Peter of his coming denial, Peter, in self-confidence, contradicts the Lord and boasts of his devotion. When, a little later, the Lord is watching and praying, Peter is sleeping. When, in the presence of His enemies, the Lord is silent, like a lamb before her shearers, Peter is actually striking with a sword. When the Lord is making the good confession before the high priest, Peter is denying the Lord before a servant girl.
The rebuke does not end in rebuke. One writer traces the calm behind it to where the Lord had already taken His own sorrow.
With what touching grace He calls the strange inconsistency to view. Where was the strength that was going through everything just now? Yet with what grace He warns, with what grace He excuses: "Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." … He was so perfectly with His Father about the depth of what lay before Him, and had taken it all to Him alone, that His free, unhindered grace could act in full liberty toward His poor, feeble, failing disciples. No weight lay on His spirit with them. He bore that with His Father.
Another writer adds that the disciples did not yet have the help that came later.
He sees these three disciples fast asleep. It is the very moment when He might have expected them to watch with Him in His sorrow, though they could not share it. He longed to have those He loved with Him. … And then He tenderly adds, "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." The day of the Holy Spirit had not yet come. Later they would have strength to suffer for Him in every circumstance.
- Name — He says "Simon," the old name, because at that moment Peter was showing the old nature, not the new name.
- Boast — The Lord speaks to Peter alone, because Peter alone had boasted of more devotion than the rest. The loudest promise met the smallest test.
- Hour — One hour was all He asked. Failing it exposed not tired bodies but hearts with too little affection to stay awake with Him.
- Chain — Sleep instead of prayer was the middle link: boast, sleep, sword, denial.
- Grace — He had carried the whole weight to His Father. So He came back with room to warn and to excuse: the spirit willing, the flesh weak.
Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation. The spirit indeed [is] willing, but the flesh weak.
The words come in Gethsemane. The Lord speaks them to three disciples who fell asleep while He prayed in deep sorrow. They are a command with a reason attached — and the reason is not an excuse.
The disciples were not indifferent to Christ. Sleep was their escape from a grief too heavy to carry. The same thing had happened once before, on the mountain where they saw His glory.
The sorrows of the Garden were too deep, as before the glories of the Mount were too great for poor weak human nature. On both occasions the disciples find relief in sleep… Prayer, which expresses our dependence upon God, will alone prepare us for coming temptation. Too often our natural self-confidence leaves us with little fear of temptation, and so with little sense of our need of prayer.
The Lord does not tell them to pray that trials will never come. He tells them to pray about one thing: not entering into temptation. One writer separates that from simply falling into it.
It is blessed to fall into temptation, but it is never blessed to enter into temptation. There is all the difference between entering into temptation and enduring temptation. And that was exactly what Peter had to learn most bitterly — to enter into temptation. Now the man that endures temptation is the man that prays before the temptation comes. He does not enter into it. When it comes he is blessed; he endures. Peter did not. Peter entered; that is to say, the entrance into temptation shows that there is a lack of any sense of danger — a lack of any sense that I need God, that I need God now.
The second half of the verse sounds like sympathy. One commentator says it is nothing of the kind. It is the ground of the command before it.
"The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak" is not given as a sympathetic remark about them, but as a reason for watching and prayer, and to mark its necessity. Do not rely on the readiness of your spirit. The flesh in which you walk is weak. So watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The Lord was also referring, with grace, to Peter's hasty promise to suffer with Him. Peter had not gone through it with God in spirit. So he would soon sink when he went through it with man.
Within hours Peter did the very thing the Lord warned against.
Peter was so confident of his own strength. He said, "Though I should die with you, I will not deny you." Yet he failed most strikingly. What brought him into the judgment hall? Why did he "enter into temptation" like this? — this was entering into temptation. He had not been told to do so… There he was at that moment. He had not judged the flesh but trusted it. Prayer and watchfulness were missing. A moral distance had come between him and Christ. He had entered into temptation and sought unholy companionship.
The Lord is not only warning others. He is walking the path Himself, and He treats every moment as one of two things.
But He can warn them, and warn them about what was just then going on. To Him it was now the path of obedience; but whatever was not that was temptation. So it is with everything: all we meet with is an occasion of temptation or of obedience… But this exchange with the disciples at this moment shows a depth and calmness in His path. That is divine perfection, though seen in man and in human ways. It is grace, and it calls for adoring recognition. We struggle or faint, or hide our sorrow in pride.
The verse is not left in the garden. One writer turns it on us.
In saying to Peter, "The spirit indeed is willing," the Lord acknowledged something in His disciples that He could appreciate and recognize. Yet "the flesh is weak," and Satan just then was terribly active, so that nothing but watchfulness and prayer would have met the situation. Let us take the word home to ourselves. As the end of the age approaches, Satan's activities are to become greater, not less. We need to be awake, with every spiritual faculty alert. We also need to be filled with the spirit of prayerful dependence upon God.
- Watch — sleep was the disciples' escape from sorrow. Self-confidence leaves us with little sense of danger, and so little sense of our need to pray.
- Pray — the one who endures temptation prays before it comes. Prayer is our dependence on God, and it alone prepares us.
- Enter — being tested is not the danger. Entering is, and it shows no sense that we need God. Peter entered, and fell.
- Weakness — a willing spirit is no cure for weak flesh. It is the very reason to watch and pray.
- Grace — the Lord's own path was calm and obedient, and out of it came a warning full of grace for the disciples who failed Him.
And going away, he prayed again, saying the same thing.
The Lord finds His closest disciples asleep, then goes back to the Father with nothing new to say. Why would the Son repeat Himself? And what does it mean that He brought the same prayer a second and a third time?
Jesus had warned against empty repetition in prayer. Yet here He asks the same thing three times over. So the warning must mean something narrower:
Our Lord does not forbid frequent repetition. What He forbids is "vain repetition." He Himself, blessed be His name, prayed the same thing three times over in His agony in the garden. That is enough to prove that repetition can be very far indeed from being "vain." A person praying alone, or many Christians gathered together, may press a matter earnestly, fervently and urgently, again and again, when it weighs heavily on the heart. No one can call that "vain repetition."
The "same words" are the ones recorded a few verses earlier. Both halves of that prayer belong to His perfection — the shrinking and the surrender:
He submitted completely to the Father, even in the bitterest trial anyone could imagine. This cup was the cup of wrath because of sin. If He had not said, "Remove this cup from Me," it would have shown that He did not feel what that cup was. But our Lord was perfect in everything. So He said: "Remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will."
He prayed the same prayer again because what He faced had not changed. He was going over before God what lay ahead:
He now reviews in spirit before God what He is to suffer in drinking the cup of the wrath of God. Jesus was holy, and He had lived in the love of the Father. He alone understood what the holiness of God was, and what His love cost. That is why He, more than anyone, could understand how horrible sin was, and how dreadful the wrath of God was.
Trouble usually pushes people away from prayer. In the garden it did the opposite:
The more He felt the depths of that dreadful cup which He was to drink, the more earnestly He prayed. With us, too often, the trouble that fills our minds turns us away from God; but "He prayed more earnestly." The agony brought Him to God, and that is just the right thing.
The disciples show the reverse. Their sleep came from a confidence in themselves that felt no need to pray:
Prayer expresses our dependence upon God, and prayer alone will prepare us for coming temptation. Our natural self-confidence too often leaves us with little dread of temptation. So we feel little need of prayer.
The cup did not pass from Him — yet God heard His prayers in the garden. The key is what He asked for:
The great moment came in the garden of Gethsemane. There He came face to face with the sorrows of death, and God heard His cries. He was heard "because of His reverence," or, "for His piety." His personal perfections as Man required that God hear Him. He asked to be saved out of death — the force of the word here is "out of" and not "from." Death did not pass Him by. God heard Him and brought Him out of death by resurrection.
The praying and the sleeping produce two different men when the betrayer arrives:
They had missed the chance to watch with the Lord, and they had proved their own weakness. So the Lord has to say, "It is enough." The time for watching and praying had passed. The time of trial had come. The betrayer was at hand, and the One who had watched and prayed can now say, in confidence and dependence upon God, "Rise, let us be going."
- Again, not vain. Jesus never condemned repeating a prayer. He asked the same thing three times. A heavy matter may be pressed again and again when the heart is in it.
- Again, the same cup. The same words held two things: a shrinking from the cup of wrath, and full surrender to the Father's will. Feeling its horror was as perfect as accepting it.
- Again, toward God. The deeper He felt that cup, the more earnestly He prayed. Trouble turns us away from God. It drove Him toward God.
- Again, while they slept. Prayer is dependence. Self-confidence sees no danger, so it feels no need to pray. That is why the disciples slept, and then failed.
- Again, and heard. God did not spare Him death, but brought Him out of it by resurrection. The One who had watched and prayed rose from the garden and walked straight into the hands of sinners.