Gethsemane Week 2
Jesus' Anguish, His 1stPRayer, The Angel, Sweating drops of blood
His Anguish
Sorrow/Anguish for what was to come
45 pNow from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land. 46 And about the ninth hour qJesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, r“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
My aGod, My God, why have You forsaken Me?
For zHe made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become athe righteousness of God in Him.
Soul was crushed with grief to the point of death
Jesus was a brave man, and lesser people by far, including many who have owed their inspiration to him, have faced death calmly. It is impossible to hold that it was the fact of death that moved Jesus so deeply. Rather, it was the kind of death that he would die that brought the anguish
Jesus would be one with sinners in his death, he would experience the death that is due to sinners, and it seems that it was this that brought about the tremendous disturbance of spirit that Matthew records.
kHe was despised and rejected2 by men,
a man of sorrows3 and acquainted with4 grief;5
and as one from whom men hide their faces6
he was despised, and lwe esteemed him not.
4 mSurely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
nsmitten by God, and afflicted.
5 oBut he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
pand with his wounds we are healed.
Jesus’ First Prayer
The Cup of Suffering
In the Old Testament the “cup” has associations of suffering and of the wrath of God (e.g., Ps. 11:6; Isa. 51:17; Ezek. 23:33), and we should observe the same kind of symbolism here (GNB reads “this cup of suffering”).80 Jesus’ death meant suffering, and because it was a death for sin, there are associations of the wrath of God connected to it. We are not to think of Jesus facing death with the passionate longing for martyrdom that has characterized fanatics throughout history. The death he faced was a horrible death, and he experienced the natural human shrinking from undergoing such an ordeal. So he prayed that if it were possible it might be avoided.
Spare Me This, if Possible
But the final petition of the prayer rests in the will of God. Jesus is not seeking to impose his will on the Father (“not as I will”), but to accept the will of the Father (“but as you do”). Throughout his whole life he had sought only to do the will of the Father. Before he was born it was said, “you will call his name Jesus; for he will save his people from their sins” (1:21), and throughout his life he had steadfastly moved toward the accomplishment of the divine will. As he now faces the climax of it all, he insists that it is the will of the Father that is his chief concern.
But, THY Will be Done
“If it is possible” most likely reflects a first-class condition (which assumes it is possible; cf. Mark 14:36), as Jesus affirms afresh God’s omnipotence. Nevertheless not everything that is possible is part of God’s will, and Jesus wants to make it plain that he intends to comply fully with his Father’s desire. He will not allow personal preference or ambition to conflict with divine demand.
The Angel
11 Then the devil went away, and angels came and took care of Jesus.
13 And to which of the angels has he ever said,
w“Sit at my right hand
xuntil I make your enemies a footstool for your feet”?
14 Are they not all ministering spirits ysent out to serve for the sake of those who are to zinherit salvation?
The questions are raised as to whether the angel appeared only to Jesus, whether his appearance was visible to him, and, if it was, whether the disciples saw the angel or only concluded that an angel had visited Jesus when he finally returned to them calmly and courageously. “There appeared to him” is one of the regular expressions that is used to indicate the visible appearance of angels, glorified beings, and of heavenly visions (1:11; Acts 7:35). To be sure, this angel’s appearance was granted for the sake of Jesus, whom he was to strengthen; but since the three disciples were chosen as special witnesses of the agony they undoubtedly were to witness also its supreme part and thus saw the angel come to Jesus.
Some of the ancients objected to the idea that the Son of God should need an angel to give him strength. They overlooked the fact that this strength was intended for the human nature of Jesus during this ordeal; also, that the strength came from the Father, and that the angel was only the Father’s medium. It was the Father’s answer to Jesus’ prayers, a visible, tangible, miraculous answer that came directly from heaven at the moment when it was most needed. Do not ask why the Son’s own deity did not strengthen his poor human nature; 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?
There is a tendency to make this strengthening spiritual and not physical. But this is unwarranted. Bengel is right, it was non per cohortationem sed per corroborationem, not stimulating the spirit of Jesus by exhortation but strengthening his exhausted body by means of new vitality. The body of Jesus was about to give way and expire in death under the terrific strain; the prayers reveal the mighty power of Jesus’ spirit. This angel, we may say, performed the same service as did those mentioned in Matt. 4:11. The angel’s coming for this purpose was the Father’s answer that he, indeed, willed that Jesus drink the cup, that he accepted the submission of Jesus’ own will in this regard, and that his strengthening would fully enable also Jesus’ body and human nature to do their hard part. This is the basis of Heb. 2:9, Jesus’ being made lower than the angels, namely by his agonizing human nature; but only in this respect, for the angel gave Jesus strength, not from angelic sources, but from the Father.
Sweat Great Drops of Blood
The intensity of the struggle produced such physical reaction that the sweat of Jesus became bloody. Severe mental distress and strain drive out sweat from the body, a fact that is constantly observed. The fact that this may reach the point where the tiny blood vessels of the skin are ruptured and permit blood to mingle with the sweat is attested medically. Aristotle speaks of bloody sweat as does Theophrastus, and in 1805 Gruner compiled medical data on the subject (R., W. P., and Nebe, Leidensgeschichte).
“As clots,” θρόμβοι, means that the blood mingled with the sweat and thickened the globules so that they fell to the ground in little clots and did not merely stain the skin. “How did the witnesses see this?” it is asked. It is enough to say that they saw it when Jesus returned to them. Why did Mark not record this when he had Peter as his authority, who was one of the three? That is a question one might ask about a hundred things regarding each of the Gospel writers. We cannot state with definiteness just why each writer included this and not that.