Then he says to them, My soul is very sorrowful even unto death; remain here and watch with me.
In the garden of Gethsemane, hours before His arrest, the Lord tells three of His closest friends what is happening inside Him. He asks them to stay awake with Him. Two questions follow. What sorrow could crush a perfect Man like this? And why did He want company in it?
The words are not a figure of speech. Scripture speaks of the Lord's body, soul and spirit in the same language it uses of us. This verse is one of the places where it names His soul.
It speaks of His body, Matthew 26:12; Luke 23:52; John 20:12; Hebrews 10:5. It speaks of His soul, Matthew 26:38; Mark 14:34; John 12:27; Acts 2:27, 31... All these speak of Him as Man — the Son having become Man. Scripture says the same of us: in the make-up of our manhood we have spirit, soul and body (1 Thessalonians 5:23). It uses the same words of Him as it uses of us.
What came upon Him in the garden was more than pain, and He said so plainly.
He takes Peter, James and John, who had also been with Him on the mountain where His glory appeared; and there everything that lay before the blessed One came upon His spirit. He began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed. He felt as man what He had to go through. It was not mere pain or suffering: the power of death weighed on His spirit. It weighed on Him as man, yet with a weight no man could measure. Yet He says it with such calm simplicity! We ought to know it, though it may be beyond our knowledge... His need was there, and He told it to hearts that should have felt it and kept earnest watch, taken up with Him.
The agony here is anticipation, not the thing itself. One writer draws the line between the garden and the cross by three sharp contrasts.
What was the difference between Christ in Gethsemane and Christ at Calvary, if He were a sin-bearer all His life? There was a real difference! And it is because He was not a sin-bearer all His life... 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, everyone forsook Him. No angel came to strengthen Him there. In Gethsemane He calls God "Father," and so enjoys the full communion of that relationship; but at Calvary, He cries, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
This was not calm. And where the sorrow came from made it deeper.
The garden shows us not holy calm in the full knowledge of all that awaited Him and His disciples, but anguish to the very limit, and death felt in all its horror as before God... More than anyone else, He went through the pressure of death on His soul before it came — death as the power of Satan. He felt it perfectly, and He felt it more deeply because He took it from His Father's hand and not from the enemy's. When the cross came, there was no such call to disciples to watch with Him. He was alone — utterly alone, alone in the very nature of it, and alone for us, that is, for our sins — with no one, human or angel, near Him in any way at all.
Notice the exact shape of what He asks for.
He is God over all, yet still and thoroughly a man. Yet, as another has said, He never asked them to pray for Him; but says, "Remain here, and watch with me."... When He asked His disciples to watch with Him, He knew the world was against Him. He turned to those He had been with most, that they should be with Him. But He received nothing... They were asleep, deceived; asleep in the presence of the glory of the kingdom on the mount, asleep in the garden!
The disciples slept through what He asked. A reader today can answer Him as they did not.
A stone's throw away are the sleeping disciples. But, beloved reader, let us not sleep as others do. Let us watch with Him one hour even now. Let the privacy of our own hearts be the Gethsemane of our souls... There let us look with holy horror at the dreadful cup, full of our sins and God's wrath, which He would drain so soon on Calvary's cross.
- Soul. Scripture uses the same human words of Him as of us — body, soul, spirit. A real Man suffered here.
- Weight. Pain and dying were not what crushed Him. It was the power of death pressing on His spirit, with a weight no one else can measure.
- Anticipation. In the garden He is facing the cup; at the cross He drinks it. In the garden He still says "Father," and an angel strengthens Him. He is not yet forsaken.
- Alone. In the garden He asked for company. At the cross He asked for none: He made atonement alone, with no one beside Him.
- Watch. He did not ask for prayer for Himself. He asked for people near Him — and they slept. We can still answer what He asked that night.
And going forward a little he fell upon his face, praying and saying, My Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me; but not as *I* will, but as *thou* [wilt].
Hours before the cross, in the garden of Gethsemane, the Lord Jesus falls to the ground and asks His Father to take the cup away. Three questions press in here: what was in that cup, why did He draw back from it, and what kind of will did He lay down?
Everything turns on one phrase: "this cup." One writer weighs what was in it, and what refusing it would have cost us.
He looked into the cup and measured its contents. It was all God's judgment against sin. If He drank it, God must forsake Him and cast Him off on the cross. It was not only the physical suffering and sorrow that man could give Him when they nailed Him to the tree. It was the unavoidable sense that God and He must part company. So as He looked at that cup, He said, "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done." He knew that if He did not drink that cup of judgment upon the cross, you and I would have to drink it in eternity.
The shrinking is not a flaw in Him. It is proof of what He is.
The Lord held the place of the perfect Son of Man. He could not forget what rested on His bearing that name — even the question of guilt. But how was it possible, if He were perfect, for Him to think it an unimportant thing for God to hide His face from Him? He would not have been perfect if He had not shrunk from this one thing alone. He did not shrink from the temptation in the wilderness; God led Him into it. But there was in this what was anguish to His soul in the very measure in which He was perfect.
The cup did not pass. God's righteousness cannot bend — not even when His own Son asks.
If God could ever have set aside the smallest part of His righteousness, He would have done it then, when His own beloved Son asked Him. But that was impossible. It would be easier to abandon the law of gravity than for God to move a hair's breadth from His righteousness.
"Not as I will" only means something if there was a real will to lay down. And wanting to avoid the cross was right in Him.
He knew well that He would face the agony of being forsaken by God as He bore the judgment of the cross. So He pleads with His Father, "if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will." As a true Man He had a will of His own, a will that was in every respect perfectly right. It was right that He should desire to avoid the dreadful suffering of the cross. Yet He asks for the Father's will, not His own. How this adds to the blessedness of His great sacrifice!
He took the cup from the Father's hand, not from His enemies. And what He does in the garden is not what He does at the cross.
Man and Satan brought about His death, but He knew how to separate what was theirs from the cup He took out of the Father's hand — the cup filled with the judgment of God. Because He was perfect He shrank from that cup, and in subjection He drank it. His request that the cup might pass from Him was perfection. At the cross what marks Him is a perfect calmness under judgment that no human heart can understand. It is an unbroken calmness in a darkness no human eye could see through. There is no agonising there, no weeping. All is fullest submission and perfect subjection, bowing beneath the awful load, bearing it in His own body on the tree.
One thing here we can copy; one thing we can never share.
He accepted the cup of wrath and judgment and emptied it on the cross, so that for us not a drop of judgment remained. Here the Lord was in total solitude: He alone could drink that cup. But in dependence and obedience He is our perfect example in Gethsemane. He faced a test beyond words, and He overcame it through His dependence and obedience. The disciples stand in sharp contrast: they slept in the garden, and all of them failed badly.
- The cup — not nails and mockery, but God's judgment against sin — and the parting from God it would cost Him.
- The shrinking — His drawing back measures His perfection; only a holy Person could feel what being forsaken meant.
- The refusal — the cup could not pass, because God will not move a hair's breadth from His righteousness.
- The surrender — He had a real human will. Wanting to avoid the cross was right, and He laid that will down for the Father's.
- The result — He alone drank it, so for us not a drop of judgment remained. Copy His dependence, not His suffering.