Monday, March 7, 2005
Matthew 26:39 He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, "O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will."
SON OF GOD AND SON OF MAN
Here we have before us the deepest mystery of the Christian faith: the person of Jesus Christ. He is the Son of God from eternity, yet as true man He stands face-to-face with a conflict so terrible we have no adequate conception of it. None at all. We have no idea of the pressure that sin, wrath, and death put upon Him here; nor how fierce the temptations of that hour were. The human will of Jesus wrestles with what lies ahead -- and with Satan. And we view the most inscrutable, divine mystery of all -- Jesus Christ, God and man.
God the Son had become man for one great and supreme purpose, to carry out the work of redeeming the human race from sin. That was His Father's will. He knew beforehand what He would have to go through in order to accomplish this. He had warned His disciples He would be betrayed, rejected, beaten, mocked and crucified. Yet, now, on the brink of the precipice it is as though He almost forgets the necessity of it all. For the sum and substance of His pleading prayer is that the terrible anguish and unspeakable torture might pass Him by. What deep, incomprehensible humiliation! We can talk about the Son of God laying aside the use of His divine attributes but here we are face to face with the reality of it and we're definitely beyond our depth. In this moment the very counsel and plan which brought Him from the heavenly throne is darkened before the eyes of Jesus' humanity, obscured from His human consciousness.
Yet not for a moment does Jesus refuse to carry out His Father's will. But in His humanness such submission was not easy. So there is struggling and agony. Under pressure of temptation and affliction, at the limit of endurance, Jesus asks if there is no other way, no other means of bringing about our salvation. But still He prays, "Not as I will, but as You will." To leave the world unredeemed was out of the question, but was there no other path to the same prize? No way other than enduring the sum total penalty and punishment for sin?
And even while Jesus' struggle and agony brings this prayer to His lips, we find in His words VICTORY! "Thy Will Be Done." 