Jesus In The Garden

Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
(Matthew 26:38-39)

Meditation

Before I was saved, I had this picture in my head of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, all calm and serene, without a care in the world. There are even portraits painted of this very scene. However, being fully God and fully man he knew everything that was going to happen to him. The painful beating, scourging, and crucifixion he was going to suffer through were terrible enough. His anguish was from knowing of the separation from the Father he would have to withstand while he was on the cross. He knew, when the Father placed our sins upon his shoulders, he would become sin, and could not be in communion with the Father. He had NEVER, on earth or in heaven, not been in communion with the Father.

Jesus, knowing the horrible torture he was about to endure, could have decided, after walking among us for 33 years, that we were not worth one minute of his suffering. When Judas arrived at the Garden with the Temple guards to arrest Jesus, he could have called down legions of angels. That would have been the end of any hope for salvation for us. If Jesus had decided to go by his will and not the Father’s, there would have been no shed blood to cleanse us from our sins. If the will of Jesus had prevailed, we would all still be in our sins, with no hope to ever be allowed to go to heaven. We would be facing an eternity in hell.

Jesus would have been justified in leaving us to our fate. He would have been justified in wiping us from the face of the earth and starting over. But Jesus came to be the servant of mankind. He did not come to condemn but to save anyone who submits to him. There is nothing we can do to make ourselves worthy of him. It’s his love for us that he made a way for us to be with him for eternity. He sacrificed himself to the point of death, yes even the atrocious death on the cross, so we can live with him forever. All we have to do is confess him to be our Lord, the Son of God, crucified, buried and raised from the dead. Then be cleansed in the waters of baptism and follow him!

Daily Prayer

Heavenly Father, you are the author of everything good and wholesome in the world. From the foundation of time, it was your plan that Jesus would pay the price for our sins. Even knowing what he was about to have to experience at the hands of the Jews and the Romans, he willingly obeyed your will and followed your plan. A good man might willingly die for those who love him, but Jesus willingly died for people who hate him. We don’t really understand the kind of love he has for us that made him willing to sacrifice himself, but we seek it with our whole hearts. It make us weep when we think about his anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane. It fills us with sorrow because we know that he was going through all of that because of our iniquities and wickedness. We praise Jesus for his love for a stiff-necked human race that turned its back on him. We thank you for this love letter we call the Holy Bible. Its passages give us hope for what comes after we pass from this life. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen!