40. the place--the Garden of Gethsemane, on the west or city side of
the mount. Comparing all the accounts of this mysterious scene, the
facts appear to be these: (1) He bade nine of the Twelve remain "here"
while He went and prayed "yonder." (2) He "took the other three, Peter,
James, and John, and began to be sore amazed [appalled], sorrowful, and
very heavy [oppressed], and said, My soul is exceeding sorrowful even
unto death"--"I feel as if nature would sink under this load, as if life
were ebbing out, and death coming before its time"--"tarry ye here, and
watch with Me"; not, "Witness for Me," but, "Bear Me company." It did
Him good, it seems, to have them beside Him. (3) But soon even they were
too much for Him: He must be alone. "He was withdrawn from them about a
stone's-cast"--though near enough for them to be competent witnesses and
kneeled down, uttering that most affecting prayer
(Mr 14:36),
that if possible "the cup," of His approaching death, "might
pass from Him, but if not, His Father's will be done": implying that
in itself it was so purely revolting that only its being the
Father's will would induce Him to taste it, but that in that
view of it He was perfectly prepared to drink it. It is no struggle
between a reluctant and a compliant will, but between two views of one
event--an abstract and a relative view of it, in the one
of which it was revolting, in the other welcome. By
signifying how it felt in the one view, He shows His beautiful
oneness with ourselves in nature and feeling; by expressing how He
regarded it in the other light, He reveals His absolute obediential
subjection to His Father. (4) On this, having a momentary relief, for
it came upon Him, we imagine, by surges, He returns to the three, and
finding them sleeping, He addresses them affectingly, particularly
Peter, as in
Mr 14:37, 38.
He then (5) goes back, not now to kneel, but fell on His face on the
ground, saying the same words, but with this turn, "If this cup may
not pass," &c.
(Mt 26:42)
--that is, 'Yes, I understand this mysterious silence
(Ps 22:1-6);
it may not pass; I am to drink it, and I will'--"Thy will be done!" (6)
Again, for a moment relieved, He returns and finds them "sleeping for
sorrow," warns them as before, but puts a loving construction upon it,
separating between the "willing spirit" and the "weak flesh." (7) Once
more, returning to His solitary spot, the surges rise higher, beat more
tempestuously, and seem ready to overwhelm Him. To fortify Him for
this, "there appeared an angel unto Him from heaven strengthening
Him"--not to minister light or comfort (He was to have none of that,
and they were not needed nor fitted to convey it), but purely to
sustain and brace up sinking nature for a yet hotter and fiercer
struggle. And now, He is "in an agony, and prays more earnestly"--even
Christ's prayer, it seems, admitted of and now demanded such
increase--"and His sweat was as it were great drops [literally,
'clots'] of blood falling down to the ground." What was this? Not
His proper sacrificial offering, though essential to it. It was
just the internal struggle, apparently hushing itself before, but now
swelling up again, convulsing His whole inner man, and this so
affecting His animal nature that the sweat oozed out from every pore in
thick drops of blood, falling to the ground. It was just shuddering
nature and indomitable will struggling together. But again
the cry, If it must be, Thy will be done, issues from His lips,
and all is over. "The bitterness of death is past." He has anticipated
and rehearsed His final conflict, and won the victory--now on the
theater of an invincible will, as then on the arena of the
Cross. "I will suffer," is the grand result of Gethsemane: "It
is finished" is the shout that bursts from the Cross. The Will without
the Deed had been all in vain; but His work was consummated when He
carried the now manifested Will into the palpable Deed, "by the
which WILL we are sanctified THROUGH THE OFFERING OF THE BODY OF JESUS CHRIST ONCE FOR ALL"
(Heb 10:10).
(8) At the close of the whole scene, finding them still sleeping (worn
out with continued sorrow and racking anxiety), He bids them, with an
irony of deep emotion, "sleep on now and take their rest, the hour is
come, the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners, rise, let
us be going, the traitor is at hand." And while He spoke, Judas
approached with his armed band. Thus they proved "miserable
comforters," broken reeds; and thus in His whole work He was
alone, and "of the people there was none with Him."
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