Recently a friend asked me to look at the account of Jesus
Christ’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.
While the account is recorded in Luke’s Gospel and Mark’s also, I was
directed to Matthew’s treatment, found in Matthew 26:36-46.
As he reflected on Christ’s wrestling in prayer prior to the
cross, what was impressive to my Christian brother was the necessity of prayer to
being in the will of God. As our Savior fought
His most intense spiritual battle, His victory was modeled through His humble,
dependent posture of fervent prayer.
Jesus persisted in prayer that evening until He found rest in the good,
pleasing and acceptable will of His Father.
What a lesson! The
victorious Christian life is laid hold of through persistent prayer. This was a lesson of which I needed to be
reminded.
Yet, what I, myself, discovered, as I reflected on that same
passage, were words that “became for me a joy and delight of my heart”
(Jeremiah 15:16).
Previously when I had thought of Jesus’ prayer in the
garden, I essentially would think of His request that the cup, which
represented God’s wrath against sin, might pass. That is essentially how Mark and Luke present
the prayer of Jesus. Yet, the record
that Matthew gives is consistent, and expansive.
Matthew records that Jesus first requested that the cup
might pass from Him, with the caveat that the Father’s will should take
priority. Next, we read that Jesus
settled firmly upon the plan and will of God when He prayed, “if this cannot
pass away unless I drink it, Your
will be done” (v. 42, emphasis added).
What I find to be such a blessing is our Lord’s acceptance that
the cup of God’s wrath would pass, if He would drink the cup. In other words, consistent with what all of
Scripture teaches, we witness Jesus assuming His substitutionary role. The cup would pass, passing over those who
trusted in Jesus, because Jesus drank.
It wasn’t that I had not known of the doctrine of substitutionary
atonement, that Jesus took my place in absorbing the wrath of God due me
because of my sin. It is clearly taught
in other passages. “He (God) made Him
who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the
righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the
cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds
you were healed” (1 Peter 2:24). I knew,
believed, and taught this glorious doctrine.
I had just never witnessed it in the garden, as my Savior wrestled with
the cup, and then, through prayerful submission, determined to drink so that
the cup might pass from me, from all who would trust in Him.
Jesus Christ our Passover has been sacrificed (1 Corinthians
5:7)!
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