Saturday, February 26, 2005
Luke 22:42 Then He said to them, "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death."
ALONE
The solitude of Gethsemane was complete. Jesus was totally alone; alone in the night; alone before God. Those closest to Him slept, deserting Him spiritually in His darkest moment just as they would soon forsake Him physically. There was but one of the Twelve awake and he was not on the Mount of Olives -- yet. Jesus' friends slept but Judas and many other enemies of Jesus were awake and plotting.
Yet until the Betrayer would arrive, Christ was alone with the death-like sadness that pressed in on His soul; alone in His struggle with the horrors of hell; alone with the realization of the unquenchable wrath of God falling on the sins of the world -- sins He took upon Himself. Little wonder He was "sorrowful even to death." He had looked into the bitter, burning cup of suffering to come and found it filled to the brim.
Jesus knew He would die torn, pierced, and bloody. He drew back from the specter of such a dying. After all, Jesus was a real man, a living, breathing, flesh and blood human being. His human nature shrank from such a dreadful tearing loose of soul from body.
Remember also that Jesus was not only truly human, He was also truly sinless. Since He had no personal experience with sin of any kind, also foreign to His very nature was the ultimate result of sin, death. We fallen sinners have learned to some extent to accept the fact of death, born, as it were, with a taste of it in our very souls. It is sin's rightful pay-off.
Now, if our sinful flesh can't help but shudder at the prospect of dying, how much more didn't the holy humanity of Jesus shrink from such a horror? Christ tasted death's bitterness in a way no sinful man ever could. Never forget that He did this for you.
Christ, the Life of all the living, Christ, the Death of death, our foe,
Who, Thyself for me once giving To the darkest depths of woe,
Through thy sufferings, death, and merit I eternal life inherit:
Thousand, thousand thanks shall be, Dearest Jesus, unto Thee. 