The Berean Staff
November 24, 2017
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He went a little farther and fell on His
face, and prayed, saying, "O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass
from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will." Then He
came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, "What! Could
you not watch with Me one hour? Watch and pray, lest you enter into
temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is
weak." Again, a second time, He went away and prayed, saying, "O My
Father, if this cup cannot pass away from Me unless I drink it, Your will be
done." And He came and found them asleep again, for their eyes were
heavy. So He left them, went away again, and prayed the third time,
saying the same words. Matthew 26:39-44
Perhaps it was not just the approaching physical torture that Jesus dreaded as He made this plea to His Father. For every microsecond of eternity (with the possible two exceptions of His time in Mary's womb and His human babyhood), He had enjoyed a level of consciousness, involvement, control, and communication with God the Father that no other human could even begin to comprehend. It must have been almost intolerable for the Son of God, the great YHWH of the Old Testament, to contemplate being totally unconscious and "out of the picture," even for a mere 72 hours.
Jesus' agony no doubt included the foreknowledge of the
spiritual torture of billions of sins committed throughout human history being
laid on His innocent head. Jesus knew that His mind would soon become
besmirched, infected, and injected with every filthy sin that man had ever
committed in the past and would commit from that time on.
God tells us
in I Corinthians 15:56,
"The sting of death is sin." Most of us have been stung by a spider, bee,
wasp, or hornet. The pain of an insect sting increases rapidly as its poison
spreads through the blood vessels, deep into the body part that has been
stung, and it can sometimes be almost unbearable. Nevertheless, it is
impossible for us to imagine a fraction of the spiritual agony that those
billions of "stings of death" caused our Savior as all the sins of the world were
laid upon Him.
With all His might, He strove to dwell on better things
(Philippians 4:8). He
struggled to look beyond those hours of torture, despite His foreknowledge of
their severity. Jesus knew what would happen after this day of agony and shame
that was just beginning. More than any other human being who ever lived, He
understood what lay beyond the split second of death and His short stay in the
tomb. Just hours before this prayer in Gethsemane, He had spoken joyfully to
His Father about their approaching reunion and regaining His former glory (John 17:5, 11,13).
Did Jesus look forward
to His death? No. He looked beyond His hours of suffering and beyond the
instant of His death. He looked forward to life!
— Staff
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