We are in the midst of a season of celebration in the Judeo-Christian world. For followers of Judaism, this is the deeply treasured season of Passover, where members of the Jewish faith remember being spared of God’s wrath by having their houses covered in the blood of a sacrificial lamb. On this day, Good Friday, Christians across the globe remember Jesus – as on this day nearly 2000 years ago, Jesus died on the cross for our sins. As we continue learning from Jesus’ journey to the cross, we finally arrive at the pen-ultimate station: the day of his crucifixion. We will look at the account of Jesus praying at the Mount of Olives in the garden of Gethsemane to see the lengths a loving God was willing to go for a people who rejected Him.

The Mount of Olives

The Garden of Gethsemane was a fertile olive orchard found at the foot of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. From the account, one gathers that Jesus customarily visited the garden to pray (Luke 22:39) and on this occasion, Jesus’ disciples came with him in light of his prediction of his impending arrest and death. He warns his disciples to remain vigilant and pray against temptation as he withdrew to do deep work in his soul. It should not surprise us that coming to a place where olives are hard-pressed to produce their oil foreshadows the events which were to occur in a matter of hours.

It is in this account that we find Jesus at his most vulnerable, praying to the Father to have mercy on him. In reading this account, we can hear his words echo in our ears this day:

“Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”
Luke 22:42.

Throughout his earthly ministry, we see Jesus radiate peace, fortitude and a solemn, seemingly unshakeable focus towards his mission. His mission, however, culminates in the cross. He is fully aware of the task before him – and he beseeches His Father for an alternative. However, there is none before Him. The cup of which He speaks, is His alone to drink that night.

The Bitter Cup

Jesus implores God to take ‘this cup away’ from him. In Hebrew prophetic tradition, the cup of the Lord was used in a very particular description:

15 This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, said to me: “Take from my hand this cup filled with the wine of my wrath and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. 16 When they drink it, they will stagger and go mad because of the sword I will send among them.”
17 So I took the cup from the Lord’s hand and made all the nations to whom he sent me drink it: 18 Jerusalem and the towns of Judah, its kings and officials, to make them a ruin and an object of horror and scorn, a curse —as they are today.
Jeremiah 25:15-18 (NIV)
16 You will be filled with shame instead of glory.
Now it is your turn! Drink and let your nakedness be exposed[a]!
The cup from the Lord’s right hand is coming around to you,
and disgrace will cover your glory.
Habakkuk 2:16

As the language of the Gospel writers is making reference to the prophets of old[1], it is clear that Jesus is imploring God to take away the cup of wrath and shame. Such was the gravity of the task before Him, that we see the Lord send an angel to ‘strengthen’ Him (Luke 22:43). Even through the strengthening, Jesus remained in great ‘anguish’ as he prayed with now even increasing fervour. So much so was his duress that the physician and author of the account, Luke, noted that Jesus was in fact sweating blood (22:44). The expression used «θρόμβοι αἵματος» (thromboi haimatos; note the stem ‘thrombos’ where we get the word ‘thrombosis’), is translated as “great drops of blood”. It is a phenomenon which is seen in very rare moments of intense pressure and stress.

To drink from the cup of God’s wrath and shame was to embrace becoming a curse (Deuteronomy 21:23; Galatians 3:13), becoming scorned by others (Luke 22:63; 23:11), and moreover – becoming alienated from God Himself. The prospect of being separated from His Father and becoming a curse led Jesus to a place of the deepest possible anguish, the extent of which is known only to the Father and the angel who ministered to Him. This naturally leads us to the question: why did Jesus have to drink from this cup?

For the Joy Set before Him

We look forward to the book of Hebrews, which describes Jesus’ reason for drinking this bitter cup:

For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Hebrews 12:2

What could this ‘joy’ possibly be? What could possibly be enough motivation to press on towards the cross? The joy of us, God’s alienated people, being redeemed and reunited with God and to have eternal life with Him. As the ‘Good Shepherd’, Jesus spared no expense at seeing his flock redeemed. Our alienation is self-imposed – a result of our corrupted nature, which has led us to incur a debt to God; a debt we could never hope to pay on our own. No number of good deeds could change us or save us. God, in His generous foreknowledge made a provision for our inadequacies. He sent Jesus, His only Son, to live a perfect life in our stead, to reveal to us the nature of God and to be the sacrificial lamb taken to the altar of Golgotha on our behalf. Jesus endured scorn, abuse, humiliation, torture and a brutal death so that we could be the recipients of God’s eternal love, acceptance and approval. As Paul writes:

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
2 Corinthians 5:21

For God so loves us, He sent His perfect Son to endure anguish that was rightfully due to us, so that we could find fullness of life in Him – now and in eternity.

‘But the Anguish he endured, our salvation hath procured’

To celebrate this season is to celebrate the greatness of God’s loving mercy. Being faithful to His promises and compassionate to our weaknesses, He Himself made a provision for us to be spared from the wrath rightfully due to us. Looking back at his prayer in the Gethsemane, may we thank God that in the midst of such duress, Christ remained obedient to his mission, praying ‘yet not my will, but yours be done’. It is for this reason that we invite you to celebrate Jesus with us in this season. We look to the words of the author of Hebrews as he admonishes us:

Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
Hebrews 12:1-3

Join us in fixing our eyes on Jesus and in celebrating his faithfulness to pursue the joy set before Him – seeing us enter into God’s family.

[1] SB Ferguson, ‘To Seek and to Save’, p.112.