The Garden and Peaceful Death

       He began to be greatly distressed and troubled.  It is rare that we are told of Jesus’ inner attitude toward His circumstance.  The Gospel writers only sparingly refer to how Jesus felt about what was happening around Him.  Here, however, it seems as if the whole being of the Savior was profoundly shaken. 

Why?  What caused His great distress?  Why was He so troubled?

        Was it the understandable fright of facing a horrific death?  We don’t think so.  He knew that He was going to die.  He had said so repeatedly to the disciples and, to this point, He was confident and calm.  What was it that caused Jesus such sorrow that He literally fell down under the weight of it?

        We get a glimpse into the source of the Savior’s dread from v. 36: “Abba Father, all things are possible for you.  Remove this cup from me.”  “The cup” in Hebrew literature represented, not just physical torture and death, but the two-fold threat of the unutterable weight of the sin of the world and the unleashing of divine justice poured out on injustice*.  The Savior’s agony exposed in Gethsemene was the dismay of being smothered by sin and separated from His Father.

       Jesus was about to be exposed to the one thing in life he feared, to the point of being “very sorrowful even to death”: 

              the indescribable experience of being “God-forsaken”

        In the face of such an excruciating end, Jesus begged His Father for relief. But His desperate prayer found its conclusion with these words:

 Yet not what I will, but what you will.

        This is the ultimate expression of the humanity of Christ in submission to the Divine.  Every fiber in His body wrestled against the pouring out of wrath that would separate Him from His Father.  The weight of that reality was too much for Him to bear, causing Him to fall down.

       AND YET He became sin.  Mortifying His own desire, the Savior’s submission to the will of the Father demonstrates a degree of perfection that is without equal. It is hard to imagine, this submission to be overcome by sin and suffer the wrath of God. But the covenant of redemption would demand this ultimate sacrifice -- that the Savior would drink of this cup, and drink it to the dregs.  "He will drink it now, and He will drink it to the full, and He will do His Father's will...He will pay the ransom price to set us free." (Thomas)

        The temptation is to consider this scene and to be overwhelmed with gratitude that is tender and genuine but not transforming.  The submission demonstrated by Jesus is not on display simply for our admiration.  Such submission is the sacred duty of all Kingdom-dwellers.  It promises our ultimate peace and lasting joy as the Father is glorified.  J.C. Ryle describes our imitation of the Savior as we

 learn to take patiently whatever God sends

       grow to like what He likes

              to long for the things that He desires

              to forego ease, if He chooses to send hardship

                   to prefer pain, if it pleases Him to send it.

       This principle informs a biblical consideration of the recent suicide of Brittany Maynard, the young woman who --- dying from a brain tumor --- made the decision to die “peacefully” in her own time, and in her own way.  Without mitigating the heartache and horror of a slow and painful death at the mercy of cancer, it is imperative that the will of God, however difficult, not be set aside.  We, like Christ, must learn to “know no will but His” (Ryle). 

        We must be very careful that we exercise our "freedom" in the context of God's sovereignty and His dominion in our lives.  Our American Citizenship does not usurp citizenship in the Kingdom of God.  The ultimate expression of our maturity in Christ is our increasing disposition to submit our will to the will of God, even when it is costly. 

        The “cup” would not be spared. 

              Jesus would bear the weight of the sin of the world. 

                       Of my sin.

                          And He would do so willingly.

 The world might call that “tragic”.  It is, in reality, the greatest Truth in all of history.  It is the Gospel.  Amen?

      

Note:  It may be helpful to know that I write this text with the perspective of having spent 6 months of the past year at my mother’s bedside as she, like Brittany, suffered the effects of a terminal brain tumor.  She died on February 1.  It was heartbreaking and painful and I’ll never understand the purpose of God…so I realize the dilemma.  But the Truth must not be set aside because it is hard.

 

*Ezekiel 23:32-34 and Isaiah 51:22

**2 Corinthians 5:21