25   Gethsemane

Scripture: Matthew 26:36-46

 The garden

Having left the upper room, Jesus led His disciples from the city, down into the valley of the Brook Kidron, which lay between the east wall of the city and the Mount of Olives. Crossing the brook (which, though completely dry in the summer, probably had a little water at this time of year), they made their way to a garden called Gethsemane, on the slopes of the Mount of Olives.

Gethsemane (the name means “oil press”) was a small private property, enclosed probably by a low stone wall, and containing a grove of olive trees. It seems to have been a secluded spot and, no doubt for that reason, Jesus “ofttimes resorted thither with his disciples” (John 18:2). It may be, as Lenski suggests, that Jesus had, by permission of the owner, even slept in that garden during a couple of the preceding nights. The fact that Judas expected to find Jesus there in the middle of the night on Thursday seems to lend support to that idea. Whatever the case, Jesus advanced now to this garden exactly because He knew that Judas would guess it to be the place of His retreat.

Terror of soul

Upon entering the place, Jesus directed His disciples to sit and wait for Him while He walked a bit farther into the garden. Peter, James, and John, however, He took with Him. As they walked on, the three disciples must have noticed, even in the pale light of the moon, that something entirely different, and terrible, was coming over their Master. Always before, Jesus had clearly been the Master of every situation. Here in the garden they see for the first time in Jesus a man apparently breaking under pressure. He “began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy” (Mark 14:33). To His disciples He said, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death” (14:34).

That was no exaggeration. The terror that was beginning to flood His soul was such that it seemed as if His nature would truly sink under the load. “His power seems to be entirely gone,” writes Lenski. “He is crushed and beaten down with only one resource left: prayer to His Father.”

And that resource He now seeks. Peter, James, and John He asked to remain behind and watch while He went on yet a little farther. He evidently wanted to be alone with God. And yet, at the same time, He seemed to desire the company, or at least the nearness, of those who stood closest to Him in life—though He understood that the terrible agony of this hour was something that they could not at all understand.

Impossible to comprehend

Nor, for that matter, can we. Standing as we do in the light of Pentecost we can understand something of the necessity of Jesus’ hour; but Gethsemane itself remains an unfathomable mystery.

It is that, first of all, because in it we deal with the mystery of the union of Christ’s human and divine natures. According to His divine nature, Christ was not at all ignorant of the eternal decree. In fact, His will was the will of the Father from eternity. But here we see the Son of God in the flesh flat on His face in the garden, sweating as it were great drops of blood in anticipation of the cross, and asking the Father if there could possibly be another way. Who can fathom that?

And, further, we deal with a depth of suffering that is so far beyond human experience that we cannot even begin to comprehend it.

The bitterness of God’s wrath

Jesus, however, could, and did. He knew in detail the contents of His “cup.” He knew it to be a cup in which, as Smith put it, “the torture of the scourge and the cross was the least bitter ingredient.” It was a cup that had been mixed with the bitterness of the awful wrath of God. Jesus knew this from the beginning, of course, but on entering Gethsemane He stands, for the first time, “before the very gates of hell” (When I Survey . . .).

What was it, then, that filled His soul with such dread and amazement? It was not the simple horror of death—which has been faced by many a martyr with a song on his lips—but, to quote from Calvin, it was “the sight of the dread tribunal of God that came to Him, the Judge Himself armed with vengeance beyond understanding. Our sins, whose burden was laid on Him, weighed on Him with their vast mass. No wonder if death’s fearful abyss tormented Him grievously, with fear and anguish.”

The Son of God asks concerning the Father’s will

Perhaps with that we can begin to understand just a little bit of the agony of Gethsemane. And, when we remember that the suffering here was only in anticipation of that which lay ahead, we can surely appreciate the prayer of Jesus that, “if it were possible, the hour might pass from him” (14:35). We read that, after removing Himself a short distance from the three disciples, He fell on the ground and prayed, “Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will (not what I desire from the point of view of My human nature), but what thou wilt” (14:36).

What we should notice immediately is that a thought of disobeying the will of the Father never once enters the mind of the Lord. His desire throughout remained that His people be redeemed, and that they be redeemed in the way of His own perfect obedience to the Father. The question that arose in the grief-stricken soul of Jesus in Gethsemane was not whether to obey or disobey, but whether or not the redemption of Zion could, by the appointment of the Father, be accomplished in another, less terrible, way than that of the cross. He prays that the “cup” (the bitter suffering of the cross) be removed from Him “if it were possible” (and He knows that all things are indeed possible with God, as far as His power is concerned), and if at the same time it can be done in harmony with the Father’s will.

But, we might ask, did He not know that there was no other way of redemption than the way of the cross? The answer, it seems, is that He did not—that, just as the Son of man needed the strength provided by an angel of the Lord on this occasion, so also did He need the answer from heaven that there was no other way. But could not the Son’s own deity have strengthened and enlightened His human nature? Says Lenski: “Be satisfied that the Father gave the strength. Why argue about the persons when the facts as to what they did are plainly before us?”

Such is the mystery of the two natures in the one divine person.

A sinking human nature

The question of Gethsemane was this: “Is the way of the cross the only possible cup?” And to that question Jesus receives the answer. It is true that “heaven remains as it were deaf to His cries!” (When I Survey . . .); but the fact is that, as Rev. Hoeksema pointed out, that very silence constituted the answer, for the Father opened no other way for His beloved Son. Confirmation of that was given by the appearance of the angel. For the angel came, not to announce another way, but to bolster a sinking human nature for an ever fiercer struggle (Luke 22:43).

How fierce was the struggle and terrible the suffering we will never know, but we can see just a little of the effects of it all from the notice of Luke that, being in agony, “his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (22:44). So intense was His agony! Lenski mentions, by the way, that it has been “attested medically” that severe mental stress “may reach the point where tiny blood vessels of the skin are ruptured and permit blood to mingle with the sweat.” Be that as it may, the bloody sweat of Jesus is a sure indication of the effect of His suffering on His body—which, by His own testimony, was sinking almost into death. It seems as if, in the struggle of Gethsemane, Jesus was beginning as it were to lose ground physically. With a human nature weakened just as ours is, He was scarcely able to bear up under the load.

With the renewed strength provided by the angel, however, His body “rallied powerfully to face the full horror of the curse and the wrath that were impending” (Lenski). Notice that, according to Luke’s account, it was immediately after the appearance of the angel that Jesus began to pray “more earnestly” (22:44), and His struggle reached the intensity that caused Jesus to sweat drops of blood.

The sleeping of the disciples

Whether or not the disciples were close enough to have witnessed the agony of Jesus we cannot tell (Luke mentions that Jesus was withdrawn from them “about a stone’s cast”—22:4). The fact is, though, that whether they could have or not, they did not, for they very soon fell asleep. The lateness of the hour would lend itself to their dozing, of course; but Luke adds another reason, namely, that they were “sleeping for sorrow” (22:45). The idea seems to be that they were moved deeply by the obvious agitation and distress of their Lord; but they could not understand it at all. It was just simply beyond them; and so, though they were sincerely sympathetic with Jesus, they felt utterly helpless to be of any possible comfort to Him. The effect of it all was a kind of dullness of mind that, again, was conducive to sleep.

But there is also another cause, and that is a spiritual one. Jesus no doubt alludes to that when He admonished them to “rise and pray, lest ye enter into temptation” (22:46). Jesus had already warned them of the ordeal that they would face this very night. Preparation for it, lest the trial become for them a temptation to which they succumb, is to be found not in sleeping, but in praying (which is what Christ recommended to them when He left them the first time—Luke 22:40). Finding them asleep on His return, Christ warned them that, though the spirit (the life of regeneration) is willing, they must yet struggle with the weakness of the flesh.

Well may we also take that to heart, for by it “Christ promises that men earnest in prayer, who carefully put away the idleness of their flesh, will be victorious” (Calvin).

At any rate, the disciples should have remained awake and alert, not only to provide the company that Jesus seemed to desire of them, but also to prepare themselves by prayer for the severe trial of their faith of which Christ had forewarned them.

Jesus reproves Peter

Peter, James, and John were all three sleeping when Jesus returned the first time. Yet we read that Jesus, in reproving all of them, addressed one in particular. According to Matthew 26:40 He said to Peter, “What, could ye not watch with me one hour?” It was Peter, remember, who according to his own testimony would remain true to Jesus even if all others would fail Him. It was Peter who had boasted of his power to follow Jesus, come what may—even if that meant he would be required to lay down his life for his Master. So sure Peter had been of his strength to endure! And now he demonstrates that he lacks the strength even to watch, and for but one hour. Of all this did Jesus remind Peter when He singled him out for reproof.

       Strange as it may seem, however, the disciples were asleep when Jesus returned the second time (Mark 14:40), and apparently also the third time (14:41). It would perhaps have been of some small comfort to Jesus to have had His closest disciples as companions in His sorrow. But He suffers alone, for even they proved to be miserable comforters. It must have been, as Calvin suggests, “a bitter addition to His distress to be abandoned by them also.”

Revival of strength before the arrival of the enemy

Three times Jesus left the disciples and prayed earnestly to the Father. According to Mark, the contents of the prayer were each time the same (14:39). According to Matthew, however, the wording of the second prayer differs slightly from that of the first. Edersheim, Calvin, and others interpret that difference to be an indication of progress on the way to Christ’s eventual triumph in the garden. The first time Jesus prays, “if it be possible, let this cup pass from me” (26:39). The second time He prays, “if this cup may not pass from me, except I drink it . . .” (26:42). The silence from heaven at the time of His first anguished cries to the Father must surely have had meaning for Jesus, and it may be that, already in the second encounter, Jesus prays less for the passing of the cup than for the strength needed to drink it.

When it was that the angel appeared to Him we cannot tell from Luke’s account. Edersheim believes it was during the first prayer, Lenski the last. We leave it undecided. Certain it is, though, that, with that strength, Christ went on to gain the victory in Gethsemane. When He had entered the garden, and for the first time looked into the fearful abyss of death, tasting by way of anticipation the cup mixed with the bitterness of God’s wrath, He had been all but crushed beneath the terrible load. But from the struggle in Gethsemane He emerged a victor.

“Sleep on now, and take your rest,” He said to His disciples (Matt. 26:45), with a touch of irony that “lets them know that the opportunity was now past for rendering the last service He had asked of them” (Smith). No longer will He ask that they remain awake and watch with Him. Now, however, they will be kept awake instead by the arrival of the enemy, for, Jesus said, “the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going: behold he is at hand that doth betray me” (26:45, 46). Calm He is now and confident—confident not only that the way of the cross is the only way to accomplish the salvation of His people, but confident that the victory is surely His. Whereas earlier He could scarcely have stumbled into the “fearful abyss,” He now boldly takes that step. For the sounds of an approaching mob already reach His ears, and Jesus goes out to meet them—not as One who falls into the hands of an enemy that succeeds in taking Him by craft, but rather as One who is completely Master of the situation, One who voluntarily gives Himself into their hands, in order that He might, as the obedient Servant of His Father, lay down His life for His sheep. His own exaltation, and the glory of His people, are assured beyond a trace of doubt.    
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