Why did Jesus sweat blood in the Garden of Gethsemane?

71 In Matthew He is specially the victim. All through in a wonderful way you get His entire submission, but along with that, what is most striking, the depths of His path of suffering, Thinking of the cup He says, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me." In Luke we read of His sweating as it were great drops of blood; it is as a man there. But you find this extreme sense of what the terribleness of God's wrath was. In the measure in which He knew what it was to be holy, He felt what it was to be made sin before God. In the measure in which He knew the love of God, He felt what it was to be forsaken of God. His suffering was in that sense perfect, infinite, in that He was contemplating it with His Father. Looking at it with Him, He says, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me." You find His soul going through this utter depth, so that He sweat as it were great drops of blood; but when He comes back to His disciples, there is not a trace of it. He speaks to them as graciously and tenderly, entering into their thoughts as if there was no cup at all to drink. "What! could ye not watch with me one hour?" It is wonderful to trace this, you will find it all through Christ's life, perfect sensibility to all that was around Him (except in the extreme case when He was forsaken of God), but always Himself - never governed by it though He felt it all perfectly. The instant He turns round to the disciples, He has nothing to do but manifest the greatest tenderness and kindness. You see it all through; even before Pontius Pilate He says nothing, He is as a lamb led to the slaughter; as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth; He was dumb unless kindness and good was to be done to another: then He is as if nothing was happening, perfect goodness, perfect sensibility to all. It is His perfect submission, His perfect sense of the dreadful thing He was just about to go through we see; yet, because He felt it entirely with His Father, He could turn round and be just as perfect as to it with His disciples.

72 Now they come to take Him. He looked for some to take pity, but there was none, and for comforters but found none. 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, "Tarry ye here and watch with me." To me it is most precious to find thus, that He who was with God and was God made flesh, felt as a man in everything. When asking His disciples to watch with Him, He knew the world was against Him: He looked to those that He had been most with, that they should be with Him. But He must have nothing. He was tested and tried to the last degree of human suffering and sorrow, standing alone in this, praying in an agony and alone. Where were the people that were going to prison and death with Him? They were asleep, deceived; asleep in the presence of the glory of the kingdom on the mount, asleep in the garden! That shews what poor things we are - not sin exactly; but it shews what Christ was to have as His portion in this world; none to sympathise with Him. Mary of Bethany was the only one, but for the rest never one had sympathy with Him; never one that wanted it that He had not sympathy with. Moved by Judas they say, "To what purpose is this waste?" What kind of hearts had they? It is just there God gives testimony to Him. In John (chap. 11) you have testimony borne to Him as Son of God in raising Lazarus. God would not allow Him to be rejected unless there was this testimony. Then Mary puts this ointment upon Him; and when all were against Him, the Greeks come up desiring to see Him; and the hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." There is that care in which God secures a testimony to Him; but I do not think you will ever find another instance of sympathy with the Lord's heart. How would you like that? It is dreadful! It was a dreadful world to Him. He was perfect and went through it. Here at the very moment that He asked them to watch with Him, they are asleep.

267 Then we were under sin, judgment, wrath, condemnation, and He has been under it all - He was made sin. Had God not measured the sin? Yes. Did He not know the consequences of it? Yes; and He "spared not his own Son, etc. Did Christ not know all that was involved in it? Yes; and He came in the full love of His heart to accomplish the purpose of God - to drink the cup; but such was His agony at the thought of what the cup was, that He sweat great drops of blood. It was the thought of sin, death, and judgment that made Him shrink from the cup, but He went through it with God. The power of death was gone, in a sense, when those who came to meet Him saw Him, "They went back and fell on their faces." He had nothing to do but to go away then, but He did not: He offered Himself up. His disciples might go away, because He stood in the gap. Thus He takes the cup as judgment, suffering the penalty of sin. It is not now Satan (as in the agony in the garden) but God. When on the cross He cries, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" He drank the cup thoroughly on the cross, then He died. His body went down to the grave. Was it the power of Satan when He said, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit?" No. He gave up His spirit, waiting for the resurrection. He went down under death, took up the whole thing - sin, Satan's power, wrath, etc. He was made sin for us. "He died unto sin once."

Here, then, in Gethsemane, we see Satan presenting death in all its horrors, seeking to bring that in between Christ and all His perfection as Man before God, upon whom He leaned in perfect dependence as a Man. That is what constitutes the agony in the garden. It is hardly, beloved brethren, a subject to discourse about, but more one to think of upon your knees before God. But when you gaze on it; when you dwell on it here; when you see Him praying, watching, agonizing; always uninterruptedly dependent; never anything but Man perfectly cast upon God, wholly leaning upon God; taking the cup from His Father's hand — "The cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?" — shrinking from it, as it were, in the perfection of His holy nature; accepting it equally in the perfection of the same dependent Man; how it strikes you as being most mysterious and wonderful!

But the body suffers, and presently the strain upon it is seen in the "sweat, as it were great drops of blood," that fall down upon the ground. Laborer for God and man as He is, His labor is a warfare also: the enemy is here, as He presently says to those who come to apprehend Him: "This is your hour, and the power of darkness." The Seed of the woman is planting His heel upon the head of the old serpent, but His heel is bruised in doing this. In the weakness of perfect Manhood He suffers, and conquers by suffering.

The darkness of the hour is on the disciples also. Coming back to them, He finds them sleeping for sorrow. And again He has to urge on them the peculiar character of that which they are meeting: "Rise and pray, that ye enter not into temptation."

Sweat, as it were great drops of blood, fell to the ground, so intense was the anguish of His spirit in the contemplation of the dread ordeal that lay before Him. Words are utterly inadequate to describe such a scene. It is too sacred for words.

Withdrawing a distance from them, He prayed alone. With what holy, reverent awe and adoration we should view that sight. Even this sorrow of His in Gethsemane we cannot rightly enter into; and far less that of the cross.

While the Lord Jesus prayed for the removal of the cup of the anguish of being made a curse by God (and it was perfectly right that He should have a will desirous of avoiding this), yet He added, "not my will, but Yours, be done." Here is precious, perfect manhood, having and expressing His own Human will, yet fully submitting Himself rather to the will of the Father.

Only Luke mentions an angel from heaven strengthening Him. The intensity of His distress had a weakening physical effect, and this specially is noted in the Gospel that deals with His true manhood. The angel ministered physical strength, not spiritual. Even in His saints it is the Spirit of God Himself who ministers spiritual strength (Eph.3:16). But as His deep agony increased the earnestness of His prayer, He was bodily afflicted with His sweat becoming like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. How truly and fully He is Man, with all the limitations of dependent weakness that this implies, but totally apart from sin and always doing the Father's will.

In contrast to His anguish, His disciples, unaware of the imminent accomplishment of the most dreadful yet wonderful event of all history, were asleep. The Lord had told them what lay before, but the sorrow of it was only sufficient to make them heavy with sleep, rather than earnestly concerned (v.45). They had slept in the presence of His glory (Lk.9:32), and now also in the presence of His agony. How sadly we resemble them! We too might take to heart His serious admonition to rise and pray lest we enter into temptation rather than resisting it.

According to Luke 22:39 it was His custom to go to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed Him quite unprepared for what was about to take place, for the Lord had to enjoin them to pray that they enter not into temptation. What wondrous love that He who knew what lay ahead of Him should, in not thinking of Himself and His sufferings, think of His own and how they could rise above temptation! Feeling the need to be alone in prayer, He withdraws from His disciples about a stone's throw and, taking the place of the truly dependent Man, kneels down and addresses Himself to the Father. His words indicate the pressure felt upon His holy soul in anticipating the dread experience awaiting Him, the drinking of the cup of wrath upon the cross; while the over-riding desire to accomplish the Father's will is expressed in the words, "Not my will, but Thine be done." The Father answered in sending the angel from heaven to strengthen Him, strengthening required to maintain Him in the conflict while He prayed more intently.

There was not only the anguish of soul, there was physical suffering, for His sweat became as great drops of blood falling down upon the earth, showing that God's Son passed through it all as a perfect Man, without any mitigation of the sufferings involved. The incalculable depths of His sufferings were known to Him and God alone.

He returned to find His disciples asleep with grief when they should have been awake in prayer, so as not to enter into temptation. Consequently, when the test came, they wanted to smite with the sword (which one of them did), instead of sheathing it. How much we lose through disobedience to the Lord's word!

I have sought to explain, as many have wished it; but I have not after all expressed my own feelings, which I must now be permitted to do, as the fruit of the enquiry I have pursued — feelings, I mean, solely as to the doctrine in question. I look with unmingled horror on the denial of the truth of Christ's sufferings contained in what is opposed to the paper on "the sufferings of Christ." It is alleged, there are no sufferings of Christ but suffering in atonement and sympathy; or suffering in atonement for sin from God, and for righteousness from man. There is a vast deep of sufferings of Christ, inward sufferings, which are neither one nor the other. When it is said, 'Who in the days of his flesh with strong crying and tears offered up prayers and supplications unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared,' it was not atonement; for if it referred to the atoning sufferings on the cross (though, perhaps, it cannot be said to do so exclusively), yet He was not then undergoing it, but praying, before it was come, to be delivered from death. It was not persecution from man merely, as is evident in the words of the passage. See Gethsemane, where above all it had its accomplishment. This is confessedly not atonement. Persecuting man was not there. He was alone and begged His disciples to watch with Him. He sweat as it were great drops of blood. Was it persecution or atonement?

"If it be possible, let this cup pass from me." None of our souls can estimate what that cup was for One who had dwelt essentially in the Father's love; but the most spiritual will most acknowledge it. Then the Holy One was made sin; no gleam of light on the soul of Jesus. At the thought of it, when pressed by Satan on His soul, we see Him sweating as it were great drops of blood. He did not think lightly of sin! The Prince of life was brought into the dust of death - "all thy billows passed over me." At the cross Jesus bore what you will never be called to bear. Beware of denying Him. Many do so in detail who in the main acknowledge Him. Our happy privilege is, not to be occupied with the trial as a trial, but to see in every trial an opportunity of obeying God, and to say of each, as Jesus did, "The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?"

Mark how in this Gospel there is more development of His sufferings than in any other. "Being in an agony he prayed more earnestly." 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. "And his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground. And when He rose up from prayer, and was come to his disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow, and said unto them, Why sleep ye? Rise and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. And while he yet spake, behold a multitude, and he that was called Judas, one of the twelve, went before them and drew near unto Jesus to kiss him; but Jesus said unto him, Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?" There you have in the disciples man in his infirmity; in Judas, man in his hatred and wickedness; and in Christ, man in his perfectness. The poor disciples were sleeping for sorrow while He was praying "more earnestly, being in an agony." When we come to the cross in this Gospel, we find no trace of the agony. He had gone through it in spirit in Gethsemane, and is then above it all.