His Agony and Our Access
PostPosted: Sat Apr 05, 2014 1:34 am
Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to the disciples . . . . ’Stay here and watch with Me’ —Matthew 26:36, 38
We can never fully comprehend Christ’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, but at least we don’t have to misunderstand it. It is the agony of God and man in one Person, coming face to face with sin. We cannot learn about Gethsemane through personal experience. Gethsemane and Calvary represent something totally unique— they are the gateway into life for us.
It was not death on the cross that Jesus agonized over in Gethsemane. In fact, He stated very emphatically that He came with the purpose of dying. His concern here was that He might not get through this struggle as the Son of Man. He was confident of getting through it as the Son of God— Satan could not touch Him there. But Satan’s assault was that our Lord would come through for us on His own solely as the Son of Man. If Jesus had done that, He could not have been our Savior (see Hebrews 9:11-15*). Read the record of His agony in Gethsemane in light of His earlier wilderness temptation— “. . . the devil . . . departed from Him until an opportune time” (Luke 4:13*). In Gethsemane, Satan came back and was overthrown again. Satan’s final assault against our Lord as the Son of Man was in Gethsemane.
The agony in Gethsemane was the agony of the Son of God in fulfilling His destiny as the Savior of the world. The veil is pulled back here to reveal all that it cost Him to make it possible for us to become sons of God. His agony was the basis for the simplicity of our salvation. The Cross of Christ was a triumph for the Son of Man. It was not only a sign that our Lord had triumphed, but that He had triumphed to save the human race. Because of what the Son of Man went through, every human being has been provided with a way of access into the very presence of God.
from My Utmost for His Highest
*Hebrews 9:11-15:
But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.
*Luke 4:12-13:
And Jesus answered and said to him, “It has been said, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.’” Now the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from Him until an opportune time.
I have never considered Jesus’ time in Gethsemane quite as Chambers has pointed out. I would normally simply reference Ecc 3:4 (‘A time to weep, a time to laugh…’) and to remember that Jesus clearly showed emotion at other places in the bible (John 11:35: ‘Jesus wept.’). Chambers dug a little deeper and uses this scene as a reflection of Jesus’ nature.
Jesus—both Man and God; Son of Man, and Son of God. Chamber’s ideas sent me on an Easter egg hunt through the bible. Gen 1:27: 'So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him…’ To think, it is a human form that God chose as ‘His image.’ I now see this verse as, in its own way, a prophecy of Jesus’ coming. As if God thought, 'I'm going to make humans, so that eventually I can walk with them as a Human.' Human means the entire beings that we are… not just our physical bodies, but also our minds, and our emotions, including the emotion of agony.