They came to a place which was named Gethsemane. He said to his disciples, “Sit here, while I pray.” He took with him Peter, James, and John, and began to be greatly troubled and distressed. He said to them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here, and watch.”
He went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass away from him. He said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you. Please remove this cup from me. However, not what I desire, but what you desire.”
He came and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “Simon, are you sleeping? Couldn’t you watch one hour? Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
Again he went away, and prayed, saying the same words. Again he returned, and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy, and they didn’t know what to answer him. He came the third time, and said to them, “Sleep on now, and take your rest. It is enough. The hour has come. Behold, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Arise! Let’s get going. Behold: he who betrays me is at hand.”
Immediately, while he was still speaking, Judas, one of the twelve, came—and with him a multitude with swords and clubs, from the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders. Now he who betrayed him had given them a sign, saying, “Whomever I will kiss, that is he. Seize him, and lead him away safely.” When he had come, immediately he came to him, and said, “Rabbi! Rabbi!” and kissed him. They laid their hands on him, and seized him.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv32, 36, 37, 43, 44 Christ suffering for us in that flesh which he…
Christ suffering for us in that flesh which he took upon him for our sakes, the most horrible terrors of the curse of God, receiveth the cup at his Father’s hands, which he being just, doth straightway drink of for the unjust.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv32, 33, 36, 37, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44 32 And they came to a place which was…
32 And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane: and he saith to his disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray.
Ver. 32. {See Trapp on "Mat 26:36"}
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv32, 43, 46 See Poole on "Mat 26:36", and following verses to…
See Poole on "Mat 26:36", and following verses to Mat 26:46.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv32, 43 Our blessed Saviour being now come with his disciples…
Our blessed Saviour being now come with his disciples into the garden, he falls there into a bitter bloody agony, in which he prayed with wonderful fervency and importunity to his heavenly Father; his sufferings were now coming a great pace, and he meets them upon his knees, and would be found in a praying posture.
Learn thence, That prayer is the best preparative for, as well as the most powerful support under, the heaviest sufferings that can befal us.
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As to the prayer of our Saviour in the garden, many things are very observable; as first, The place where he prayed, the garden. But why went Christ thither? Not, with our first parents, to hide himself there amongst the trees of the garden, from the notice and observation of his enemies; but as a garden was the place where our misery began, as the first scene of human sin and misery was acted in a garden, so does our Lord choose a garden as the place for his agony and satisfactory pains to begin in.
Again, this garden was a place of privacy and retirement, where our Lord might best attend the offices of devotion preparatory to his passion: That Jesus oft-times resorted to this garden with his disciples, and Judas well knew the place Joh 18:2. It is evident then that Christ went not into the garden to shun his sufferings, but to prepare himself by prayer to meet his enemies.
Observe, 2. The time when he entered into the garden for prayer, it was in the evening before he suffered; here he spent some hours in pouring forth his soul to God; for about midnight Judas with his black guard came and apprehended him in a praying posture.
Our Lord teaching us by his example, That when imminent dangers are before us, especially when death is apprehended by us, to be very much in prayer to God, and very fervent in our wrestlings with him.
Observe, 3. The matter of our Lord’s prayer: That if possible the cup might pass from him; and he might be kept from the hour of suffering, that his soul might escape that dreadful wrath at which he was so sore amazed.
"But what! did Christ then begin to repent of his undertaking for sinners? Did he shrink and give back when it came to the pinch?" No, nothing less; but as he had two natures, being God and man, so he had two distinct wills: as a man, he feared, and shunned death! as a God-man, he willingly submitted to it. The divine nature, and the human spirit of Christ, did now assault each other with disagreeing interests.
Again, this prayer was absolute, but conditional. If it be possible, Father; if it may be; if thou art willing, if it please thee, let this cup pass; if not, I will drink it. The cup of sufferings we see is a very bitter and distasteful cup; a cup which human nature abhors, and cannot desire, but pray against; yet God doth put this cup of affliction into the hands oft-times of those whom he doth sincerely love, and when he doth so, it is their duty to drink it with silence and submission, as here their Lord did before them; Father, let the cup pass; yet not my will but thine be done.
Observe, 4. The manner of our Lord’s payer in the garden; and here we may remark,
1. It was a solitary prayer; he went by himself alone, out of the hearing of his disciples. The company of our best and dearest friends is not always seasonable; there is a time to be solitary as well as to be sociable; there are times and cases when a Christian would not be willing that the most intimate friend he has in the world should be with him, to hear what passes in secret between him and his God.
2. It was an humble prayer, that is evident by the postures into which he cast himself, sometimes kneeling, sometimes lying prostrate upon his face: He lies in the very dust, and lower he cannot lie; and his heart was as low as his body.
3. It was a vehement, fervent, and most importunate prayer; such was the fervour of our Lord’s spirit, that he prayed himself into an agony.
O let us blush to think how unlike we are to Christ in prayer, as to our praying frame of spirit. Lord! What deadness and drowsiness, what stupidity and formality, what dulness and laziness, is found in our prayers! How often do our lips move, when our hearts stand still!
4. It was a reiterated and repeated prayer; he prayed the first, second, and third time, for the the passing of the cup from him; he returns upon God over and over again, resolving to take no denial.
Let us not be discouraged, though we have sought God often for a particular mercy, and yet no anwer has been given in unto us. A prayer put up in faith, according to the will of God, though it may be delayed it shall not be lost.
Our Saviour prayed the first, second, and third time for passing of the cup; and although he was not heard as to support under suffering.
Observe, 5. The posture the disciples were found in when our Saviour was in this agony, praying to his Father, They were fast asleep.
Good God! Could they possibly sleep at such a time as that was, when Christ’s soul was exceeding sorrowful! Could their eyes be thus heavy!
Learn thence, That the best of Christ’s disciples may be, and oft-times are, overtaken with infirmities, with great infirmities, when the most important duties are performing; He cometh to his disciples, and finds them sleeping.
Observe, 6. The mild and gentle reproof which he gives his disciples for their sleeping; "Could ye not watch with me one hour?" Could ye not watch when your master was in such danger? Could ye not watch with me when I am going to deliver up my life for you? What! not one hour? And that the parting hour too? After this reprehension , he subjoins an exhortation, Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation; and superadds a forceable reason, for though the spirit be willing yet the flesh is weak.
Thence learn, That the holiest and best-resolved Christians, who have willing spirits for Christ and his service, yet in regard of the weakness of the flesh, or frailty of human nature, it is their duty to watch and pray, and thereby guard themselves against temptation; Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: for though the spirit is willing, yet the flesh is weak.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv32, 43 Christ is here entering upon his sufferings, and begins…
Christ is here entering upon his sufferings, and begins with those which were the sorest of all his sufferings, those in his soul. Here we have him in his agony; this melancholy story we had in Matthew; this agony in soul was the wormwood and the gall in the affliction and misery; and thereby it appeared that no sorrow was forced upon him, but that it was what he freely admitted.
I. He retired for prayer; Sit ye here (saith he to his disciples), while I go a little further, and pray. He had lately prayed with them (Jn. 17); and now he appoints them to withdraw while he goes to his Father upon an errand peculiar to himself. Note, Our praying with our families will not excuse our neglect of secret worship. When Jacob entered into his agony, he first sent over all that he had, and was left alone, and then there wrestled a man with him (Gen 32:23, Gen 32:24), though he had been at prayer before (Mar 14:9), it is likely, with his family.
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II. Even into that retirement he took with him Peter, and James, and John (Mar 14:33), three competent witnesses of this part of his humiliation; and though great spirits care not how few know any thing of their agonies, he was not ashamed that they should see. These three had boasted most of their ability and willingness to suffer with him; Peter here, in this chapter, and James and John (Mar 10:39); and therefore Christ takes them to stand by, and see what a struggle he had with the bloody baptism and the bitter cup, to convince them that they knew not what they said. It is fit that they who are most confident, should be first tried, that they may be made sensible of their folly and weakness.
III. There he was in a tremendous agitation (Mar 14:33); He began to be sore amazed - ekthambeisthai, a word not used in Matthew, but very significant; it bespeaks something like that horror of great darkness, which fell upon Abraham (Gen 15:12), or, rather, something much worse, and more frightful. The terrors of God set themselves in array against him, and he allowed himself the actual and intense contemplation of them. Never was sorrow like unto his at that time; never any had such experience as he had from eternity of divine favours, and therefore never any had, or could have, such a sense as he had of divine favours. Yet there was not the least disorder or irregularity in this commotion of his spirits; his affections rose not tumultuously, but under direction, and as they were called up, for he had no corrupt nature to mix with them, as we have. If water have a sediment at the bottom, though it may be clear while it stands still, yet, when shaken, it grows muddy; so it is with our affections: but pure water in a clean glass, though ever so much stirred, continues clear; and so it was with Christ. Dr. Lightfoot thinks it very probable that the devil did now appear to our Saviour in a visible shape, in his own shape and proper colour, to terrify and affright him, and to drive him from his hope in God (which he aimed at in persecuting Job, a type of Christ, to make him curse God, and die), and to deter him from the further prosecution of his undertaking; whatever hindered him from that, he looked upon as coming from Satan, Mat 16:23. When the devil had tempted him in the wilderness, it is said, He departed from him for a season (Luk 4:13), intending another grapple with him, and in another way; finding that he could not by his flatteries allure him into sin, he would try by his terrors to affright him into it, and so make void his design.
IV. He made a sad complaint of this agitation. He said, My soul is exceeding sorrowful. 1. He was made sin for us, and therefore was thus sorrowful; he fully knew the malignity of the sins he was to suffer for; and having the highest degree of love to God, who was offended by them, and of love to man, who was damaged and endangered by them, now that those were set in order before him, no marvel that his soul was exceeding sorrowful. Now was he made to serve with our sins, and was thus wearied with our iniquities. 2. He was made a curse for us; the curses of the law were transferred to him as our surety and representative, not as originally bound with us, but a bail to the action. And when his soul was thus exceeding sorrowful, he did, as it were, yield to them, and lie down under the load, until by his death he had satisfied for sin, and so for ever abolished the curse. He now tasted death (as he is said to do, Heb 2:9), which is not an extenuating expression, as if he did but taste it; no, he drank up even the dregs of the cup; but it is rather aggravating; it did not go down by wholesale, but he tasted all the bitterness of it. This was that fear which the apostle speaks of (Heb 5:7), a natural fear of pain and death, which it is natural to human nature to startle at.
Now the consideration of Christ's sufferings in his soul, and his sorrows for us, should be of use to us,
(1.) To embitter our sins. Can we ever entertain a favourable or so much as a slight thought of sin, when we see what impression sin (though but imputed) made upon the Lord Jesus? Shall that sit light upon our souls, which sat so heavy upon his? Was Christ in such an agony for our sins, and shall we never be in an agony about them? How should we look upon him whom we have pressed, whom we have pierced, and mourn, and be in bitterness! It becomes us to be exceeding sorrowful for sin, because Christ was so, and never to make a mock at it. If Christ thus suffered for sin, let us arm ourselves with the same mind.
(2.) To sweeten our sorrows; if our souls be at any time exceeding sorrowful, through the afflictions of this present time, let us remember that our Master was so before us, and the disciple is not greater than his Lord. Why should we affect to drive away sorrow, when Christ for our sakes courted it, and submitted to it, and thereby not only took out the sting of it, and made it tolerable, but put virtue into it, and made it profitable (for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better), nay, and put sweetness into it, and made it comfortable. Blessed Paul was sorrowful, and yet always rejoicing. If we be exceeding sorrowful, it is but unto death; that will be the period of all our sorrows, if Christ be ours; when the eyes are closed, all tears are wiped away from them.
V. He ordered his disciples to keep with him, not because he needed their help, but because he would have them to look upon him and receive instruction; he said to them, Tarry ye here and watch. He had said to the other disciples nothing but, Sit ye here (Mar 14:32); but these three he bids to tarry and watch, as expecting more from them than from the rest.
VI. He addressed himself to God by prayer (Mar 14:35); He fell on the ground, and prayed. It was but a little before this, that in prayer he lifted up his eyes (Joh 17:1); but here, being in an agony, he fell upon his face, accommodating himself to his present humiliation, and teaching us thus to abase ourselves before God; it becomes us to be low, when we come into the presence of the Most High. 1. As Man, he deprecated his sufferings, that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him (Mar 14:35); "This short, but sharp affliction, that which I am now this hour to enter upon, let man's salvation be, if possible, accomplished without it." We have his very words (Mar 14:36), Abba, Father. The Syriac word is here retained, which Christ used, and which signifies Father, to intimate what an emphasis our Lord Jesus, in his sorrows, laid upon it, and would have us to lay. It is with an eye to this, that St. Paul retains this word, putting it into the mouths of all that have the Spirit of adoption; they are taught to cry, Abba, Father, Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6. Father, all things are possible to thee. Note, Even that which we cannot expect to be done for us, we ought yet to believe that God is able to do: and when we submit to his will, and refer ourselves to his wisdom and mercy, it must be with a believing acknowledgment of his power, that all things are possible to him. 2. As Mediator, he acquiesced in the will of God concerning them; "Nevertheless, not what I will, but what thou wilt. I know the matter is settled, and cannot be altered, I must suffer and die, and I bid it welcome."
VII. He roused his disciples, who were dropped asleep while he was at prayer, Mar 14:37, Mar 14:38. He comes to look after them, since they did not look after him; and he finds them asleep, so little affected were they with his sorrows, his complaints, and prayers. This carelessness of theirs was a presage of their further offence in deserting him; and it was an aggravation of it, that he had so lately commended them for continuing with him in his temptations, though they had not been without their faults. Was he so willing to make the best of them, and were they so indifferent in approving themselves to him? They had lately promised not to be offended in him; what! and yet mind him so little? He particularly upbraided Peter with his drowsiness; Simon, sleepest thou? Kai su teknon; - "What thou, my son? Thou that didst so positively promise thou wouldest not deny me, dost thou slight me thus? From thee I expected better things. Couldest thou not watch one hour?" He did not require him to watch all night with him, only for one hour. It aggravates our faintness and short continuance in Christ's service, that he doth not over-task us, nor weary us with it, Isa 43:23. He puts upon us no other burthen than to hold fast till he comes (Rev 2:24, Rev 2:25); and behold, he comes quickly, Rev 3:11.
As those whom Christ loves he rebukes when they do amiss, so those whom he rebukes he counsels and comforts. 1. It was a very wise and faithful word of advice which Christ here gave to his disciples; Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation, v. 38. It was bad to sleep when Christ was in his agony, but they were entering into further temptation, and if they did not stir up themselves, and fetch in grace and strength from God by prayer, they would do worse; and so they did, when they all forsook him, and fled. 2. It was a very kind and tender excuse that Christ made for them; "The spirit truly is willing; I know it is, it is ready, it is forward; you would willingly keep awake, but you cannot." This may be taken as a reason for that exhortation, "Watch and pray; because, though the spirit is willing, I grant it is (you have sincerely resolved never to be offended in me), yet the flesh is weak, and if you do not watch and pray, and use the means of perseverance, you may be overcome, notwithstanding." The consideration of the weakness and infirmity of our flesh should engage and quicken us to prayer and watchfulness, when we are entering into temptation.
VIII. He repeated his address to his Father (Mar 14:39); He went again, and prayed, saying, ton auton logon - the same word, or matter, or business; he spoke to the same purport, and again the third time. This teaches us, that men ought to pray, and not to faint, Luk 18:1. Though the answers to our prayers do not come quickly, yet we must renew our requests, and continue instant in prayer; for the vision is for an appointed time, and at the end it shall speak, and not lie, Hab 2:3. Paul, when he was buffeted by a messenger of Satan, besought the Lord thrice, as Christ did here, before he obtained an answer of peace, Co2 12:7, Co2 12:8. A little before this, when Christ, in the trouble of his soul, prayed, Father, glorify thy name, he had an immediate answer by a voice from heaven, I have both glorified it, and I will glorify it yet again; but now he must come a second and third time, for the visits of God's grace, in answer to prayer, come sooner or later, according to the pleasure of his will, that we may be kept depending.
IX. He repeated his visits to his disciples. Thus he gave a specimen of his continued care for his church on earth, even when it is half asleep, and not duly concerned for itself, while he ever lives making intercession with his Father in heaven. See how, as became a Mediator, he passes and repasses between both. He came the second time to his disciples, and found them asleep again, Mar 14:40. See how the infirmities of Christ's disciples return upon them, notwithstanding their resolutions, and overpower them, notwithstanding their resistance; and what clogs those bodies of ours are to our souls, which should make us long for that blessed state in which they shall be no more our encumbrance. This second time he spoke to them as before, but they wist not what to answer him; they were ashamed of their drowsiness, and had nothing to say in excuse for it. Or, They were so overpowered with it, that, like men between sleeping and waking, they knew not where they were, or what they said. But, the third time, they were bid to sleep if they would (Mar 14:41); "Sleep on now, and take your rest. I have now no more occasion for your watching, you may sleep, if you will, for me." It is enough; we had not that word in Matthew. "You have had warning enough to keep awake, and would not take it; and now you shall see what little reason you have to be secure." Apekei, I discharge you from any further attendance; so some understand it; "Now the hour is come, in which I knew you would all forsake me, even take your course;" as he said to Judas, What thou doest, do quickly. The Son of man is now betrayed into the hands of sinners, the chief priests and elders; those worst of sinners, because they made a profession of sanctity. "Come, rise up, do not lie dozing there. Let us go and meet the enemy, for lo, he that betrayeth me is at hand, and I must not now think of making an escape." When we see trouble at the door, we are concerned to stir up ourselves to get ready for it.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv32–46 And he taketh with him Peter, and James, and…
And he taketh with him Peter, and James, and John,.... Who were witnesses of his transfiguration on the mount, and now of his sorrows in the garden:
and began to be sore amazed; to be in great consternation and astonishment, at the sight of all the sins of his people coming upon him; at the black storm of wrath, that was gathering thick over him; at the sword of justice which was brandished against him; and at the curses of the righteous law, which, like so many thunderbolts of vengeance, were directed at him: no wonder it should be added,
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and to be very heavy: both with sin and sorrow; See Gill on Mat 26:37.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv32, 33, 36, 37, 43, 44 Matt. xxvi, 36.
Matt. xxvi, 36.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv36–37 Verse 36. Abba, Father] This Syriac word, which intimates…
Verse 36. Abba, Father] This Syriac word, which intimates filial affection and respect, and parental tenderness, seems to have been used by our blessed Lord merely considered as man, to show his complete submission to his Father's will, and the tender affection which he was conscious his Father had for him, [Syriac] Abba, Syriac, is here joined to οπατηρ, Greek, both signifying father; so St. Paul, Ro 8:15; Ga 4:6. The reason is, that from the time in which the Jews became conversant with the Greek language, by means of the Septuagint version and their commerce with the Roman and Greek provinces, they often intermingled Greek and Roman words with their own language. There is the fullest evidence of this fact in the earliest writings of the Jews; and they often add a word of the same meaning in Greek to their own term; such as מרי קירי, Mori, κυριε my Lord, Lord; פילי שער, pili, πυλη, shuar, gate, gate: and above, אבא, πατηρ, father, father: see several examples in Schoettgen. The words אבי and אבא appear to have been differently used among the Hebrews; the first Abbi, was a term of civil respect; the second, Abba, a term of filial affection. Hence, Abba, Abbi, as in the Syriac version in this place, may be considered as expressing, My Lord, my Father. And in this sense St. Paul is to be understood in the places referred to above. See Lightfoot.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv32, 39, 43, 46 Mar 14:32-38. They came to Gethsemane — For an…
Mar 14:32-38. They came to Gethsemane — For an explanation of these verses see the notes on Mat 26:36-39. And began to be sore amazed — Greek, εκθαμβεισθαι, to be in a consternation. The word implies the most shocking mixture of terror and amazement: the next word, αδημονειν, which we render, to be very heavy, signifies to be quite depressed, and almost overwhelmed with the load: and the word περιλυπος, in the next verse, which we translate exceeding sorrowful, implies, that he was surrounded with sorrow on every side, breaking in upon him with such violence, that, humanly speaking, there was no way to escape. Dr. Doddridge paraphrases the passage thus: “He began to be in very great amazement and anguish of mind, on account of some painful and dreadful sensations, which were then impressed on his soul by the immediate hand of God. Then, turning to his three disciples, he says, My soul is surrounded on all sides with an extremity of anguish and sorrow, which tortures me even almost to death; and I know that the infirmity of human nature must quickly sink under it without some extraordinary relief from God. While, therefore, I apply to him, do you continue here and watch.” Dr. Whitby supposes, that these agonies of our Lord did not arise from the immediate hand of God upon him, but from a deep apprehension of the malignity of sin, and the misery brought on the world by it. But, considering how much the mind of Christ was wounded and broken with what he now endured, so as to give some greater external signs of distress than in any other circumstance of his sufferings, there is reason to conclude, there was something extraordinary in the degree of the impression; which in all probability was from the Father’s immediate agency, laying on him the chastisement of our peace, or making his soul an offering for our sins. See Isa 53:5; Isa 53:10. He went forward a little — Luke says, about a stone’s cast, and fell on the ground — Matthew, fell on his face, and prayed that the hour might pass from him — That dreadful season of sorrow, with which he was then almost overwhelmed, and which did pass from him soon after. And he said, Abba, Father — That is, Father, Father: or, perhaps, the word Father is added by Mark, by way of interpreting the Syriac word, Abba. All things are possible unto thee — All things proper to be done. Take away this cup from me — This cup of bitter distress. Nothing is more common than to express a portion of comfort or distress by a cup, alluding to the custom of the father of a family, or master of a feast, sending to his children or guests a cup of such liquor as he designed for them. Nevertheless, not what I will, but what thou wilt — As if he had said, If thou seest it necessary to continue it, or to add yet more grievous ingredients to it, I am here ready to receive it in submission to thy will; for though nature cannot but shrink back from these sufferings, it is my determinate purpose to bear whatsoever thine infinite wisdom shall see fit to appoint. And he cometh, &c. — Rising up from the ground, on which he had lain prostrate: he returns to the three disciples; and findeth them sleeping — Notwithstanding the deep distress he was in, and the solemn injunction he had given them to watch; and saith unto Peter — The zealous, the confident Peter! Simon, sleepest thou? — Dost thou sleep at such a time as this, and after thou hast just declared thy resolution to die with me? dost thou so soon forget thy promise to stand by me, as not so much as to keep awake and watch one hour? Hast thou strength to die with me, who canst not watch so little awhile with me? Watch ye and pray — Ye also, who were so ready to join with Peter in the same profession; lest ye enter into temptation — Lest ye fall by the grievous trial which is now at hand, and of which I have repeatedly warned you. Observe, reader, watching and praying are means absolutely necessary to be used, if we wish to stand in the hour of trial. The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak — I know your mind and will are well inclined to obey me, but your experience may convince you, that your nature is very weak, and your resolutions, however sincere and strong, easily borne down and broken. Every one is apt to flatter himself, when he is out of danger, that he can easily withstand temptations; but without prayer and particular watchfulness the passions are wont to prevail over reason, and the flesh to counteract the motions of the Spirit. It is justly observed by Archbishop Tillotson, (Sermons, vol. 2. p. 435,) that “so gentle a rebuke, and so kind an apology as we here read, were the more remarkable, as our Lord’s mind was now discomposed with sorrow, so that he must have had the deeper and tenderer sense of the unkindness of his friends. And, alas! how apt are we, in general, to think affliction an excuse for peevishness, and how unlike are we to Christ in that thought, and how unkind to ourselves, as well as our friends, to whom, in such circumstances, with our best temper, we must be more troublesome than we could wish.”
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv32, 43 See the notes at Mat 26:36-46.
See the notes at Mat 26:36-46.
Mar 14:36
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Ἀββα Abba This word denotes “father.” It is a Syriac word, and is used by the Saviour as a word denoting filial affection and tenderness. Compare Rom 8:15.
Mar 14:40
Neither wist they ... - Neither “knew” they. They were so conscious of the impropriety of sleeping at that time, that they could not find any answer to give to the inquiry why they had done it.
Mar 14:41
It is enough - There has been much difficulty in determining the meaning of this phrase. Campbell translates it, “all is over” - that is, the time when you could have been of service to me is gone by. They might have aided him by watching for him when they were sleeping, but now the time was past, and he was already, as it were, in the hands of his enemies. It is not improbable, however, that after his agony some time elapsed before Judas came. He had required them to watch - that is, to keep awake during that season of agony. After that they might have been suffered to sleep, while Jesus watched alone. As he saw Judas approach he probably roused them, saying, It is sufficient - as much repose has been taken as is allowable - the enemy is near, and the Son of man is about to be betrayed.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv37, 45, 46 You who were ready to die for me, cannot…
You who were ready to die for me, cannot watch with me! We are here taught a great duty of a Christian life, and that is, to beg of God, that he would give us strength to observe and follow the motions and inspirations of his Holy Spirit, and never to resist the calls of heaven.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v32 3. Gethsemane and the Betrayal; or, the Lord’s sorrow…
3. Gethsemane and the Betrayal; or, the Lord’s sorrow of Soul.—The coming of the Traitor. Mar_14:32-42.—The Betrayal and its Effect. The Arrest of the Lord. The Flight of the Disciples. Mar_14:43-52
(Parallels: Mat_26:36-56; Luk_22:39-53; Joh_18:1-11.)
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A. Gethsemane. Mar_14:32-42.
32 And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane: and he saith to his disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray. 33And he taketh with him Peter, and James, and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy; 34And saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch. 35And he went forward16 a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. 36And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt. 37And he cometh, and findeth them sleeping, and saith unto Peter, Simon, sleepest thou? 38 couldest not thou watch one hour? Watch ye, and pray, lest ye enter into temptation: the spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak. 39And again he went away, and prayed, and spake the same words. 40And when he returned, he found them asleep again; (for their eyes were heavy;) neither wist they what to answer him. 41And he cometh the third time, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: it is enough, the hour is come; behold, the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 42Rise up, let us go; lo, he that betrayeth me is at hand.
B. The Betrayal.—The Arrest. The Flight of the Disciples Mar_14:43-52
43 And immediately, while he yet spake, cometh Judges , 17 one of the twelve, and with him a great multitude, with swords and staves, from the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders. 44And he that betrayed him had given them a token, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he; take him, and lead him away safely. 45And as soon as he was come, he goeth straightway to him, and saith, Master, Master; 18and kissed 46, him. And they laid their hands on him, and took him. 47And one of them that stood by drew a sword, and smote a servant of the high priest, and cut off his ear. 48And Jesus answered and said unto them, Are ye come out, as against a thief, with swords and with staves to take me? 49I was daily with you in the temple teaching, and ye took me not: but the Scriptures must be fulfilled. 50And they all forsook him, and fled. 51And there followed him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; and the young men 19 laid hold on him: 52And he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. See the parallel passages in Matthew and Luke. Peculiarities of Mark:—In narrating the sufferings of Christ in Gethsemane, Mark is the only Evangelist who gives the subject of Jesus’ prayer,—that “the (dread) hour might pass from Him.” The prayer, too, has with him a more earnest expression, with the “Abba,” and “All things are possible unto Thee.” In the passage recording the finding the three asleep, the reproof of Christ is directed especially to Peter, and Jesus calls him Simon, as He always does when He would remind him of his weakness and old nature. The modification of the first petition in the second, mentioned by Matthew, is omitted by him. Jesus prays, according to him, in the same words; that is, Mark will emphasize the wrestling importunity in this petition likewise, while Matthew gives prominence to the stronger manifestation of the resignation of Jesus. The third prayer is not introduced by Mark, but is nevertheless implied in his recital. In the remark: “For their eyes were heavy,” he employs, according to Codd. A., B., (Laehmann,) the stronger term, καταβαρυνόμενοι. He also has the noteworthy statement: “Neither wist they what to answer;” which recalls the similar expression in the history of the Transfiguration. Strikingly characteristic is the short phrase: “It is enough” (ἀπέχει); which is addressed by Jesus to the sleep-oppressed disciples. According to Mark’s representation, Judas stands suddenly before our Lord, like some unearthly appearance. The traitor had given to the enemy a distinct, previously appointed signal (σύσσημον), and commanded them to seize the Master with all possible care, and to lead Him away. With a twofold salutation, Rabbi, Rabbi, the traitor here approaches Jesus eagerly and with feigned friendship. Jesus’ address to Judas is here passed over. Of the sword-stroke of Peter he speaks in milder terms, saying he had cut off the ὠτάριον (diminutive) of the servant. The command of Jesus to Peter is also omitted. On the other hand, we are indebted to Mark for the remarkable episode of the youth who changed so quickly from a follower of Jesus to a deserter.
Mar_14:33. To be sore amazed, and to be very heavy; ἤρξατο ἐκθαμβεῖσθαι καὶ ἀδημονεῖν.—Matthew has λυπεῖσθαι καὶ ἀδημονεῖν. Luke, instead of either expressions: γενόμενος ἐν ἀγωνίᾳ (in a dreadful struggle or agony). This agony has its two sides, which are described with about equal force in the phraseology of Matthew and Luke; ἐκθαμβεῖσθαι is a stronger term than λυπεῖσθαι, and is given only by Mark; indeed, the word is only found in the passages, Mar_9:15; Mar_16:5-6. Upon this point consult the Commentary on Matthew, Mat_26:37. The traitorous, false, despairing world, represented in Judas, fills Christ with sorrow to amazement; He shudders before it, before the infernal powers lying behind it, and before the abyss of wickedness in this spiritual hell; the impotent, poor, and lost world, which lay sleeping around Him, overcome with sorrow and devoid of all presentiment, as represented by the three sleeping disciples, gives Him the feeling of eternal abandonment, Isa_63:3. Comp. Matthew. Starke: ἐκθαμβεῖσθαι is used of fright at a peal of thunder, Act_9:3; Act_9:6; and before a phantom, Mat_14:26 : 20 from this some conclude that the most frightful phantoms may have presented themselves to Christ, etc.
Mar_14:35. The hour might pass from Him.—Not His suffering generally, but that hour. The whole feeling of suffering and judgment, to be so betrayed by the one half of the world, and to be so forsaken by the other half. See Matthew. [The “feeling” cannot be entirely accounted for by the desertion of the creature merely; there was also to be the desertion of the Creator.—Ed.]
Mar_14:36. Abba.—Most vivid narration. Citation of the actual words, as in the expression, Talitha cumi, and the exclamation on the cross. Meyer: “This address, among the Greek-speaking Christians, acquired the nature of a nomen proprium.” Apart from the misunderstanding which would arise, the phrase Talitha cumi, and other expressions, speak against this opinion. Accordingly, ὁ πατήρ is certainly an explanatory addition. [Meyer remarks, in loc., that the common view that ὁ πατήρ is a translation of Abba, is not congruous with the idea of earnest supplication; and refers to Rom_8:15.—Ed.]—Nevertheless not.—We supply: “But do not this, as I will, as My feelings would have.” Meyer: “Let this not be which I will.” Matthew indicates by πλὴν οὐχ ὡς. Luke uses appropriately τὸ θέλημα (inclination of the will), not θέλησις (act of will). Accordingly, ἀλλ ̓ οὐ τί is to be taken in rather a formal sense.
Mar_14:40. Found them asleep again.—Luke: “For sorrow.” Sorrow kept the Lord awake, but lulled the disciples to sleep.
Neither wist they what to answer.—Comp. Mar_9:6.
Mar_14:41. Sleep on now, and take your rest.—See Note upon Matthew. The ironical meaning, as conveyed by Matthew, is altered by Luke into a reproof: “Why sleep ye?” Mark presents an intermediate view: first irony, then the call to wake.—It is enough (ἀπέχει).—This is the opposite of οὐδὲν ἀπέχει: nothing stands in the way, nothing hinders. The meaning accordingly is, It has failed; it is no more of use, etc. “Meyer: “It is enough,—ἐξαρκεῖ.” This is quite a derivative meaning, and an application of the word very remote indeed. (The Vulgate renders sufficit, &c.) Quite as untenable is another interpretation: “There is enough watching, ye have watched enough;” or, “My anguish is past.”
Mar_14:45. Master, Master.—Not merely an exclamation of excitement, but also of hypocritical reverence carried to its greatest height.
Mar_14:51. A certain young man.—This forms an episode as characteristic of Mark as the Emmaus disciples of Luke; and given for similar reasons. That he was no apostle is evident from the designation: “A certain young man;” from the circumstance that he had already the night-dress on; and especially from the contrast he presents to the Apostles. He only presents himself after their flight, a youthful Joseph of Arimathea, and so a precursor of him. Some have without reason settled upon John as the person (Ambrose, Chrysostom, Gregory the Great); others have selected, equally without ground, James the Just (Epiph. Hœres. 87, 13). That the youth belonged to a family standing in a relation of friendship to the Lord, we may safely assume; at least, he was himself an enthusiastic follower of Christ. On this account, it was natural to suppose a youth of the family where Jesus had eaten the Passover (Theophylact). In this case, however, we must assume that the young man had, on this occasion, been sleeping, or retiring to rest, in the house which belonged to the family, and which lay in the valley of the Cedron; for, that the young man had been startled from his sleep, or in preparing to retire to rest, in the neighborhood of Gethsemane (in some neighboring country-seat, says Grotius), is proved by his wearing the night-dress. Both circumstances might possibly be found united in Mark himself, whom we, with Olshausen, consider to be this “certain young man.” (See Introduction.) Reasons: 1. The youth’s picture agrees in every line with the character of Mark 2. The circumstances of the youth agreed perfectly with those of Mark: the friend of the Lord, resting in this country-house for the night. 3. There is an analogical support of this view, in the fact that John also, by a mere hint, weaves himself and His mother into the Evangelical narrative (Joh_1:40; Joh_19:25); and probably Luke does the same thing (Luk_24:18). 4. The fact that this circumstance is related by Mark alone, which Meyer considers so very trifling, and Bauer holds to be a piquant addition.—The young men—These certainly were not the temple-guards, nor yet the soldiery, but young persons who had of their own accord joined the company; partly from their interest in adventure. For this reason, they found themselves particularly tempted to make an attack upon this young man, their equal in years, in the nightdress, who wished to follow Jesus, clad in so ridiculous a manner.
Mar_14:52. And he left the linen cloth.—The night-mantle, thrown about him, was easily loosed. Bengel: pudorem vicit timor in magno periculo. Whitefield has properly pointed out the action of this youth as the emblem of a late reception of Jesus, though others have praised it as the emblem of an early following of the Lord, as belief in youth. Both are to be found in it: a beautiful enthusiasm of belief, and a fanatical self-dependence and over-estimation of personal strength. Rather far-fetched is Guyon’s allegory, that we must follow Jesus, stripping off all that is our own, and all that is false. This youth was a follower while he had the linen cloth; deprived of this, he became a deserter.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. Comp. Matthew.
2. The suffering of Jesus in Gethsemane, and the treachery of Judas, stand in the most intimate relation to each other. The bringing about of His sufferings by means of the treachery which grew up in the midst of His disciples, and the spirit of worldliness, of worldly sorrow and worldly falseness, of self-disrespect and despair, manifested in this treachery,—this is, in the particular sense, the bitter cup which he had to drain; for it is the heaviest judgment of God, that sin itself must break forth in treachery proceeding out the disciple-circle; a fact, in which is revealed the full judgment of God upon the sin of the world in its faithlessness, and in its despair—upon the sin of that world which could break through the barriers separating the disciples of Christ from the world. In Christ’s experience of this judgment, there are two points to be marked: the realization of His being perfectly deserted; the manifestation of the world’s weakness, and of the imminent danger to which the wickedness of the world exposed Him even amid His disciples. That He must see Himself forsaken by His young Church, that He must grieve because of the apostasy in the midst of this Church: therein lies the bitter gall of His passion-cup, therein was judgment finished. He prayed that this hour might pass, if it were possible (Mar_14:35). And (Mar_14:41) it is said, The hour is come; behold, the Son of Man, etc. The betrayal marks and seals this hour.
3. The sleeping of the good disciples is contrasted with the watchfulness of the evil disciple. What was common to both parties, was the unspeakable sorrow. In the case of Judas, this has changed into absolute demoniacal distress, animosity, and rage; in the case of the Eleven, it is manifested in complete relaxation, cowardice, and indecision. On this account, Christ opposes to the sleep and indecision of the Eleven, the intensest agitation of soul and energy; to the fevered excitement of Judas, on the contrary, the most perfect quiet of soul.
4. The youth who follows the Lord in his night-garb, and then flees, is a striking picture of the pious resolutions of Jesus’ disciples, which are dissipated in the night of great temptation.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
See Matthew.—The Lord’s preparation as opposed to His enemies’ preparation.—The unfathomable clearness of spirit in the agony of the Lord, and the unfathomable confusion of spirit in the agony of Judas.—The treachery of a disciple in Gethsemane, the Lord’s secret place of prayer, forms a page black as midnight in the history of the world and of the Church.—God’s providence has changed this terrific curse into a cup of blessing for the lost world, through Christ’s obedience.—Jesus could pray twice or thrice almost the same words, yet make from them each time a new prayer (differently placed emphasis): 1. Take from Me this cup; 2. yet not what I will; 3. but what Thou wilt.—The chasm which opens between the Lord and His disciples, while He prays and they sleep: 1. Christ ever more wakeful, more calm, more sure of victory; 2. the disciples ever heavier with sleep, more confused, and undecided.—How the Lord Himself announces the hour of which He prayed that it might pass by: The hour is come; behold, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinful men.—Arise, let us go! lo, he that betrayeth Me is at hand.—Jesus’ disciple as guide to the hostile band.—The kiss of Judas; or, here likewise is Antichrist concealed in the pseudo Christ (a lying Christ).—Christ between the helpless assailants and the helpless defenders: 1. The assailants in their helplessness: a. the traitor, the soldiers; b. He grants them the might which they are allowed to have, according to the Holy Scriptures and God’s providence, though it seems as if derived from human laws. 2. The defenders in their helplessness: a. the sword-stroke of Peter, the fleeing disciples, the fleeing youth; b. He grants them the might of His preserving grace.—There existed a natural relationship between this young man and the disciple Peter, as there existed a spiritual relationship between the Apostle Peter and the Evangelist Mark.—Christ betrayed and captured: 1. How all appears in this state of things to be lost; 2. how sin and Satan are thereby betrayed and captured.—By His bonds are we freed.
Starke:—To pray is the best thing we can do in the hour of temptation.—Quesnel:—God’s will must be at all times dearer than our own, let it cost what it may to perfect it.—Canstein:—Prayer is needed with watching, and watching with prayer. Both must go together.—Alas, if Israel’s Shepherd should not be watchful, how evil would it be with us, from our lethargic security and sloth!—Judas sells Jesus. We should not consider the whole world a sufficient purchase-price for Jesus.—Osiander:—The wickedness of the world is so great, that the very persons who are appointed to administer justice persecute the just, and defend the unjust.—Canstein:—Whosoever allures others into sin, sins himself, and loads himself with all the sin which the others commit.—Osiander:—Satan blinds men, that, when they do evil, they know not what will be its result.—Canstein:—A good intention may lead to evil (the blow of the sword).—Hasty passions are dangerous; therefore, resist a a blind zeal, which, the hotter it burns, displeases God the more.—Hedinger:—Where the cross is, there is flight.
Braune:—As Christ withdrew Himself, at the beginning of His public ministry, into the wilderness, so also now at the conclusion of His mission.—He addresses Himself to Peter at once, to do all that He could to bring him to see his weakness.—It is not the Scripture which makes the necessity of fulfilment: but the will of God, revealed in the prophets, causes the fulfilment of the Scriptures. The darkness, likewise, stands beneath God’s light.—It is noticeable, that upon the spot where Jesus was seized by the band, Titus, the Roman commander, pitched his camp forty years after. The Turks, however, have walled the place where Judas kissed Christ, as an accursed spot.
Brieger:—Had Christ not been tempted as well from the side of terror as formerly from that of lust, the Scriptures could not say: He was tempted in all points.—Was that, perhaps, now fulfilled in His own person, which He prophesied of this time (Luk_21:26)? Then did that statement receive its accomplishment in Gethsemane: “I have trodden the winepress alone,” Isa_63:3.—Rabbi, Rabbi. It was the last Rabbi his lips uttered.—The whole transaction (the arrest of Christ) presents itself as a drama arranged by the chief council. But all the pretence being, destroyed, the leaders of the people stand before us as common criminals.—This terror could not have overmastered the disciples, had they not erred regarding the Lord. Being dissatisfied that Jesus did not deliver Himself from suffering, they held themselves bound to withdraw from danger.—Gossner, on Mar_14:27 :—If thou canst not overcome sleep how wilt thou overcome death?—Bauer:—And these were the best of the disciples of Jesus!—Judas, accordingly, is there with his band already! He has been quick. Yes, sin runs a rapid race.
Footnotes:
[16]Mar_14:35.—The remarkable difference between προσελθών and προελθών is found here, just as in Matthew. Most MSS. are in favor of the first; the sense favors the second. If we retain προσελθών, the terminus ad quem is wanting: unless there he a reference to drawing near to God in prayer, קָרַב. Luke uses an expression denoting separation.
[17]Mar_14:43.—After “Judas,” A., D., K., Lachmann, Tischendorf read ὸ ’Ισκαριώτης.]
[18][Mar_14:45.—The second ῥαββί omitted by Lachmann after B., C.*, D., L., Vulgate.]
[19][Mar_14:51,—Lachmann, Tischendorf, after B., C.*, D., L., Syriac, Persian, Coptic, Itala, Vulgate, omit οἱ νεανίσκοι.
[20][In Mat_14:26 the words employed are ἐταράχθησαν, and ἀπὸ τοῦ φόβου ἔκραξαν.—Ed.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv32, 33, 36, 43 § 131. — SUFFERINGS IN GETHSEMANE, Mar_14:32-42.
§ 131. — SUFFERINGS IN GETHSEMANE, Mar_14:32-42.
(See notes on Mat_26:36-46.)
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45 32. And they came] They would pass through one…
32. And they came] They would pass through one of the city gates, “open that night as it was Passover,” down the steep side of the Kidron (Joh_18:1), and coming by the bridge, they went onwards towards
a place which was named Gethsemane] The word Gethsemane means “the Oil-Press.” It was a garden (Joh_18:1) or an olive orchard on the slope of Olivet, and doubtless contained a press to crush the olives, which grew in profusion all around. Thither St John tells us our Lord was often wont to resort (Joh_18:2), and Judas “knew the place.” Though at a sufficient distance from public thoroughfares to secure privacy, it was yet apparently easy of access. For a description of the traditional site see Stanley’s Sinai and Palestine, p. 455.
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32–42. The Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv32, 33, 36, 37, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46 (32) While I shall pray.—Literally, till I shall have…
(32) While I shall pray.—Literally, till I shall have prayed.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45 And they come (ercontai) here again St. Mark"s present…
And they come (ercontai) here again St. Mark"s present gives force to the narrativeunto a place which was named Gethsemane. A place (cwrion) is, literally, an enclosed piece of ground, generally with a cottage upon it. Josephus tells us that these gardens were numerous in the suburbs of Jerusalem. St. Jerome says that "Gethsemane was at the foot of the Mount of Olives." St. John (Joh_18:1) calls it agarden, or orchard (khpov). The word "Gethsemane" means literally "the place of the olive-press," whither the olives which abounded on the slopes of the mountain were brought, in order that the oil contained in them might be pressed out. The exact position of Gethsemane is not known; although there is an enclosed spot at the foot of the western slope of the Mount of Olives which is called to this day El maniye. The real Gethsemane cannot be far from this spot. Our Lord resorted to this place for retirement and prayer, not as desiring to escape the death that awaited him. It was well known to be his favourite resort; so that he went there, as though to put himself in the way of Judas, who would naturally seek him there. Sit ye here, while I pray. St. Matthew (Mat_26:36) says, "While I go yonder and pray.
Vers. 32-42. Gethsemane.
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How pathetic is this scene! Here we are in the presence of the sorrow of the Son of man; and there is no sorrow like this sorrow. Here we see Christ bearing our griefs, carrying our sorrows a load beneath which even he almost sinks! It is not to us a spectacle merely of human anguish; we are deeply and personally interested in the agony of the Son of God. It was for our sake that the Father spared not his own Son. It was for our sake that Jesus, our High Priest, offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto God, and learned obedience by the things which he suffered. The last quiet evening of fellowship has been passed in the upper room at Jerusalem by Jesus and the twelve. The last discourse how full of encouragement and consolation! has been delivered. The last, the most wonderful and precious, prayer has been offered by the Master for his disciples. Instead of returning, as on the earlier evenings of the week, to the seclusion of hospitable Bethany, the little company proceed to a spot where Jesus was wont to retire, from the excitement of the city ministry, for meditation and for prayer. By the light of the Paschal moon they pass through the open gate, and, leaving the city walls behind them, descend into the valley of the Kedron. Every heart is full of the sacred words which have just been spoken, and silence falls upon the pensive group. On the slope of Olivet they halt at an enclosure, where aged olive trees cast a sombre shade, and the rocks offer in their recesses a meet scene for lonely prayers. It is the garden of the olive-press, well known to every member of the band. Leaving the rest behind him, Jesus takes with him the favored three, who are witnesses to the awe and deadly sorrow that come upon him. He entreats their sympathy and watchfulness, and then withdraws to a spot where in solitude he pours out all his soul in prayer. The hour indeed has come. The ministry of toil is over, and the ministry of suffering and of sacrifice only now remains. He is straitened until the last baptism be accomplished. The shadow of the cross has often before darkened his holy path; the cross itself is just upon him now. Hitherto his soul has been almost cloudlessly serene; in this hour the tempest of sorrow and of fear sweeps over him and lays him low. There is no resource save in prayer. Earth rejects him, man despises him. So he turns to heaven; he cries to the Father. He is feeling the pressure of the world"s sin; he is facing the death which that sin, not his, has merited. It is too much, even for Christ in his humanity, and he implores relief. "Oh that this cup may pass untasted!" Yet, even with this utterance of natural feeling, there is blended a purpose of submission: "Not my will, O my Father, but thine, be done!" It is the crisis of agony, unexampled, never to be repeated! An agony of grief, an agony of prayer, an agony that finds its vent in every pore. Angelic succor strengthens the fainting and exhausted frame. Is there human sympathy with the Sufferer? Surely the dear friends and scholars they are praying with and for him! His craving heart draws him to the spot, to find them neither watching nor praying, but asleep! He treads the winepress alone! It is an added drop of bitterness in the bitter cup. "What, could ye not not even Peter watch with me not for one short hour?" Alas! how feeble is the flesh, even though the spirit be alert and active! The prayer of Jesus, repeated with intensest fervor, gains in perfectness of submission. Thrice he retires to renew his supplication, with a growing acquiescence in the Father"s will; thrice he approaches his chosen friends, each time to be disappointed by their apathy. But now the victory has been won. Jesus has wrestled in the garden that he may conquer on the cross. He leaves his tears and cries behind. For the eleven there is no further opportunity for sympathy; for the Master there is no more hesitation, no more outpouring of personal distress. He loses himself in his work. With the cross before him, a former exclamation seems to arise from the depths of his spirit: "For this cause came I unto this hour." He goes forward to meet the betrayer and his band. "Rise up, let us go; behold, he is near who betrays me!
I OUR SAVIOR"S SUFFERINGS IN HIS OWN SOUL. It is noticeable that, up to this point in his earthly career, Jesus had maintained singular tranquility of soul and composure of demeanor. He had been tempted by the devil; he had been calumniated by his enemies; he had been disappointed in professed friends; but his calm seems to have been unruffled. And it is also noticeable that, after his agony in the garden, he recovered his equanimity; and both in the presence of the high priest and of the governor, and (generally speaking) when enduring the agonies of crucifixion, showed the self-possession, the dignity, the uncomplaining resignation, which have been the occasion of world-wide and enduring admiration. But this hour in Gethsemane was the hour of our Lord"s bitter grief and anguish, when his true humanity revealed itself in cries and tears, in prayers and prostration, in agony and bloody sweat. How is this to be accounted for? That his nature was pre-eminently sensitive we cannot doubt. Never was a heart so susceptible to profound emotion as the heart of the High Priest who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, because he had been in all points tried and tempted even as we are, though without sin. But what occasioned, in this hour, feeling so deep, anguish so poignant? To a certain extent we can clearly understand his sorrows, but there is a point here at which our finite understanding and our imperfect human sympathies necessarily fail us. It is clear that Jesus foresaw what was approaching. He was not ignorant of the hostility of the Jewish leaders, of the treachery of Judas, of the fickleness of the populace, of the timidity of his own disciples. And, by his Divine foresight, he knew what the next few, awful hours were to bring him. There awaited him bodily pain, scourging, and crucifixion; mental distress in the endurance of the insults of his foes, the desertion of his friends, the ingratitude of the people for whom he had labored and whom he had benefited. All this we can understand; but what careful reader of the narrative can deem even all this a sufficient explanation for woe unparalleled? It is, indeed, true that the sufferings and death of Jesus were undeserved; but this fact, and his own consciousness of innocence, might rather relieve than aggravate his distress. The fact is that, when we read of his being amazed and appalled sorrowful unto death," and asking that if possible he might be spared the approaching experience of shame and anguish we are compelled to regard our Savior in the light of our Representative and Substitute. His mind was, in a way we cannot understand, burdened with the world"s sin, and his body was about to endure death which he did not deserve, but which he consented to pass through that he might be made perfect through sufferings, and that he might give his life a ransom for many. In the garden of the olive-press the Redeemer endured the unprecedented pressure of human sin and human woe!
II OUR SAVIOR"S PRAYER TO THE FATHER. The words of Jesus are reported somewhat differently by the several evangelists, from which we may learn that it is not so much the language as the meaning which is important for us.
1. Observe the address: "Abba, Father!" It is clear that our Lord was conscious of the personal favor and approval of him to whom he was rendering obedience, never so acceptable as in the closing scenes of the earthly ministry.
2. The petition is very remarkable: it was that the hour might pass, and that the cup might be taken away untasted. We are admitted here to witness the workings of Christ"s human nature. He shrank, as we should do, from pain and insult, from slander and cruelty. Although he had forewarned his disciples that there was a baptism for him to endure, a bitter cup for him to drink, now that the time approached, the trial was so severe, the experience so distressing, that had he been guided by his individual feelings he would fain have avoided a doom so unjust and so overwhelming.
3. The qualification, added explains what would otherwise be inexplicable. Jesus did not absolutely ask for release; his condition was, "If it be possible," and his conclusion, "Not my will, but thine, be done!" There was no resistance to the Father"s appointment; on the contrary, there was perfect submission. Not that the Father took pleasure in the Son"s sufferings, but the Father appointed that the ransom should be paid, that the sacrifice should be offered.
III OUR SAVIOR"S CLINGING TO HIS DISCIPLES. Very touching is our Lord"s attachment to the eleven; "he loved them unto the end;" he took them with him to the garden. And very touching is his craving for human sympathy. Although his anguish could be best endured alone, he would have the little band not far off, and the favored three he would have close by him. If they would watch with him one hour, the one only, the one last remaining hour of fellowship if they would pray for themselves, perhaps for him it would be a solace to his tender soul; to be assured of their sympathy, to be assured that, even on earth, he was not alone; that there was, even now, some gratitude, some love, some sympathizing sorrow, left on earth. Why Jesus should have gone thrice to see whether his three nearest friends were watching with him in the hour of his bitter woe, seems only to be explained by considering his true humanity, his heart yearning for sympathy. Even his prayers, fervent though they were, were interrupted for this purpose! There is a tone of reproach in his final permission, "Sleep on now! now that the glimmering of the torches is seen through the olive boughs as their bearers cross the deep ravine, now that the step of the traitor falls upon the ear of the betrayed. A sad reminder of "the irreparable past;" an everlasting expostulation, again and again in coming years to ring in the ear of each slumberous, unsympathizing disciple, and rouse to diligence, to watchfulness, to prayer.
IV OUR SAVIOR"S RESIGNATION AND ACCEPTANCE OF THE FUTURE BEFORE HIM. His bodily weakness was supported by angelic succor. His spirit was calmed by prayer, and by the final assurance that from the cross there was no release, except at the cost of the abandonment of his work of redemption. From the moment that the conflict was over, and his mind was fully and finally made up to accept the Divine appointment from that moment his demeanor was changed. Instead of seeking sympathy from his disciples, he spoke words of authority and encouragement to them, in their weakness and their panic. Instead of falling upon his knees or upon his face, in agony and tears, he went forward to meet his betrayers. Instead of seeking release from the impending fate, he offered himself to his foes. He put forth his hand to take the cup from which he had so lately shrunk. He boldly met the hour which, in the prospect, had seemed almost too awful to encounter. He had now no will but his Father"s, no aim but our salvation. Even now he saw "of the travail of his soul, and was satisfied." "For the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame!" The unity of the Savior"s sacrifice is thus apparent. He was obedient unto death; and the triumph of the spirit in Gethsemane was part of his filial and perfect obedience. Indeed, it would seem that the price of our redemption was paid, spiritually, in the garden; and, in the body, upon the cross!
APPLICATION.
1. This representation of our Savior"s character is peculiarly fitted to awaken our reverence, gratitude, and faith. As we trace our Savior"s career of active benevolence, our minds are constantly impressed with his unselfishness and pity, his willingness and power to relieve the wants, heal the disorders, pardon the sins, of men. But when we behold him in suffering and anguish, and remember that he consented to this experience for our sake, for our salvation, how can our hearts remain untouched? The innocent suffers in the place, and for the benefit of, the guilty. If we are the persons benefited, how sincere should be our thanksgiving, how lowly our adoration, how ardent our faith, how complete our devotion!
2. In the demeanor of our Savior in the garden there is much which we shall do well to imitate. His patient endurance of grief and trouble encountered in the path divinely appointed, the absence of any hatred or vindictiveness towards his foes, his forbearance with his unsympathizing friends, and, above all, his submissive prayer offered to the Father, all these are an example which all his followers should ponder and copy. Whilst we cannot suffer as he did for the benefit of the whole human race, our patience under trouble, our perseverance in resignation, and consecration to the will of God, are qualities which will not only prove serviceable to ourselves, but helpful and advantageous to some at least over whom our influence may extend.
3. Nothing is more fitted to deepen our sense of the enormity of human sin, nothing is more fitted to bring our sinful hearts to penitence, than the contemplation of the dread scenes of Gethsemane. Jesus was oppressed by a burden of sin the sin of others, which we may take as an example of the sins of mankind, and ourselves all of which he then bore. The coldness and callousness of the eleven, the treachery of Judas, the cowardice of Peter, the malice of the priests, the fickleness of the multitude, the injustice of the Roman governor, the unspiritual and unfeeling insolence of the rulers, all these in this awful hour pressed heavily upon the soul of Jesus. But these were only samples of the sins of humanity at large, of the sins of each individual in particular. He took all upon his own great heart, and bore them, and suffered for them, and on the cross submitted to that death which was their due penalty. In what spirit should we contemplate these sufferings of our Redeemer? Surely, if anything is adapted to bring us in lowly contrition before the feet of God, this scene is pre-eminently so adapted. Not indeed in abject, hopeless, terror, but with humble repentance and confidence. For the same scene that reminds us of our sins, reminds us of Divine mercy, and of the Being through whose sacrifice that mercy is freely extended to every contrite and believing suppliant. This is the language of every Christian who is a spectator of these unparalleled woes: "He loved me, and gave himself for me!
4. And what more fitted to awaken within the breast of every hearer of the gospel a conviction of the greatness and sufficiency of the salvation which is by Christ unto all who believe? There is no extenuation of the seriousness, the almost desperateness, of the sinner"s case; for sin evidently needed, if this record be true, a great Savior and a great salvation. The means used were not trivial to bring sinners to a sense of their sin and need, to make it consistent with the Divine character to pardon and accept the contrite sinner. "Ye were redeemed... with the precious blood of Christ!" Therefore, without hesitation or misgiving, receive Jesus as your Redeemer; "be ye reconciled to God!
Vers. 32-42. The agony in the garden.
I ITS SORROW.
1. The manner in which it was experienced. There were premonitions. All through life there ran a thread of similar emotions, which were now gathering themselves into one overwhelming sense of grief, fear, and desolation: it was crescent and cumulative. He did not artificially create or stimulate the emotion, but entered into it naturally and gradually. Gethsemane was sought, not from a sense of aesthetic or dramatic fitness, but through charm of long association with his midnight prayer, or simply as his wonted place of retirement in the days of his insecurity. As a good Israelite observing the Passover, he may not leave the limits of the sacred city, yet will he choose the spot best adapted for security and retirement.
2. At first awakening conflicting impulses. He craved at once for sympathy and for solitude. The general company of disciples were brought to the verge of the garden, and informed of his purpose; the three nearest to him in spiritual sympathies and susceptibilities were taken into the recesses of the garden, into nearer proximity and communion. And yet ultimately he must needs be alone. All this is perfectly natural, and, considering the nature of his emotion, explicable upon deep human principles: "Sympathy and solitude are both desirable in severe trials" (Godwin). There was a sort of oscillation between these two poles.
3. To be attributed to the influence of supernatural insight upon his human sympathy and feeling. What it was he saw and felt cannot be adequately conceived by us, but that it was not emotion occasioned by ordinary earthly interests or attachments we may assure ourselves. The exegesis which sees in "exceeding sorrowful to die" a reason for concluding that it was the idea of dying which so overwhelmed our Savior, may be safely left to its own reflections. The "cup" he felt he had to drink to its dregs he had already alluded to. (Mar_10:38) It had "in it ingredients which were never mingled by the hand of his Father, such as the treachery of Judas, the desertion of his disciples, denial on the part of Peter, the trial in the Sanhedrim, the trial before Pilate, the scourging, the mockery of the soldiery, the crucifixion, etc." (Morison). "He began to be sore amazed dismayed, sorrowful, and to be very heavy oppressed, distressed," are terms which are left purposely vague. He saw the depths of iniquity, he felt the overwhelming burden of human sinfulness.
4. He betook himself to prayer as the only relief for his surcharged feeling. The safest and highest way of recovering spiritual equilibrium. Well will it be for a man when his grief drives him to God! There is no sorrow we cannot take to him, whether it be great or small.
II THE SOLITUDE.
1. Symbolized by his physical apartness from the three disciples. "Is there any sorrow like unto my sorrow?" We may not intrude. God only can fathom its depths and appreciate its purity and intensity.
2. Suggested by their failure to "watch.
III THE CONFLICT. The physical effects of this are given by St. Luke. His prayer was a "wrestling," not so much with his Father as with himself. But the struggle gradually subsides to submission and rest. This shows itself in his detachment from his own emotions and attention to the condition of his disciples, and soon in his movement towards the approaching band of the betrayer. There is a complete "grammar" of emotion gone through, however, ere that spiritual result is attained. Uncertainty, dread, the weakness of human nature, are overcome by the resolute contemplation of the Divine will. His own will is deliberately and solemnly submitted to his Father"s, and the latter calmly and profoundly acquiesced in as best and most blessed for all it concerns. M.
Vers. 32-35. Gethsemane.
The Mediator between God and man experienced all the vicissitudes of human life. From the loftiest height of joy he plunged into the deepest depths of distress. Because of the fullness of his nature he surpassed us in these experiences, alike in the glory of the Transfiguration and in the agony of Gethsemane. Therefore we are never beyond the range of his sympathy.
We are all familiar with the outward circumstances of this incident, but the wisest of us knows but little of the depths of its mystery. Indeed, although our interest in the scene is intense, although we feel it is fraught with the destiny of our race, we shrink with hesitation from speaking much of it. A sense of intrusiveness overpowers those who are conscious of ignorance and sin, when they would gaze on that sinless agony of grief. It seems as if our Lord still said to his disciples, "Sit ye here, while I shall pray." The place whereon we stand is holy ground.
I THE SUFFERING SAVIOR.
1. There is mystery about his agony. Our recognition of the proper deity and humanity of our Lord leads us to expect seeming contradictions in him. They appear in his intercessory prayer. In one breath he speaks as the Son of God, in another he wrestles as a weak man might do. Sometimes he pleads as Mediator, and sometimes he expresses himself with Divine majesty and authority. is so with our Lord"s agony, which must ever be a stone of stumbling to all who refuse to recognize that they only know in part and prophesy in part. Thus some assert that this experience contradicts the composure and resolution with which our Lord had previously announced his sufferings; and that his prayer is in antagonism with his omniscience as the Son of God. Here is the Prince of peace seemingly destitute of peace; the world"s Redeemer wanting deliverance; the Comforter himself needing consolation. As the old myth reminds us, we sometimes come across a fact which appears like a glittering ring which a child could lift when we walk around it and talk about it; but, when we try to lift it, we find it is no isolated ring, but a link in a chain which we can hardly stir, for it girdles the earth and reaches heaven and hell! "Behold, God is great, and we know him not; and darkness is under his feet.
2. There is a meaning in this agony. We gain some little insight into it when we remember the vicarious nature of Christ"s sufferings; that "the Lord hath laid upon him the iniquities of us all." If Jesus Christ were only a great Prophet, who came to enlighten the world, he might now seem to have lost his courage. If he were only an Exemplar of unconditional resignation or heroic endurance, he was surpassed by others. All points to the conclusion that his sufferings were not like those of Job, or Jeremiah, or Paul, or Stephen, but were unique in the world"s history. He, the sinless One, was the Representative and Substitute of the sinful world.
II THE TROUBLED BELIEVER may find instruction and comfort in this experience of his Lord, especially in the consciousness of his sympathy.
1. Sympathy was longed for even by our Lord. He wanted to have near him those who could best understand him, so that in the thought of their affection and prayer he might find comfort. It failed him. They were overpowered by sleep, and when aroused, they fell back into the old drowsiness. It was another pang in his anguish. He trod the winepress alone. How tenderly he feels for lonely sufferers!
2. Absence of sympathy intensified prayer. When our trouble is very heavy it has a tendency to paralyze prayer, and makes the heart stony; but we should rather follow him who, being in an agony, prayed the more earnestly. If, in answer to prayer, the cup is not taken away, still the prayer is not useless. Paul thrice besought the Lord in vain to remove the thorn in the flesh; but he had an answer, "My grace is sufficient for thee." And our Lord came forth from the place of prayer as one who had already gained the victory.
3. Earnestness in prayer led to absolute submission. When we pray we realize with growing intensity that there is another will besides ours and above ours firm and wise and good. If God sees further than we see; if he knows what would harm and what would bless us, when we do not; if he looks not only to this little life, but to the eternity to which it leads; let us seek in prayer to know what his will is, and then say, even though it be with tears, "Nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt. A.R.
Vers. 32-42. Gethsemane.
I THE SPIRIT"S NEED OF OCCASIONAL SOLITUDE. We need to collect and concentrate ourselves. "We must go alone. We must put ourselves in communication with the internal ocean, not go abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men. I like the silent church before the service beans better than any preaching. How far-off, how cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary! So let us always sit" (Emerson).
II ITS NEED TO THROW ITSELF ON GOD. We ask advice of others too much, and depend on human sympathy when we ought only to depend on God. But God does not speak his deepest messages to men amidst a mob, but in the desert, when they are alone with him. Amidst the confusion of opinion and conjecture, his will becomes clear to us. In solitude it shines, the pole-star of our night. His will is ever wisest and best. It is ever possible to follow:"When duty whispers low, "Thou must," The soul replies, "I can!
It is ever safest: man"s perdition to be safe When for the truth he ought to die.
III THE NEED OF WATCHFULNESS AND PRAYER. Porphyry says, in his affecting life of the great philosopher Plotinus, that the latter, though full of suffering, never relaxed his attention to the inner life; and that this constant watchfulness over his spirit lessened his hours of sleep. And he was rewarded by an intimate union with, or absorption in, the Divinity. He was ever interrogating his soul, lest it should be yielding to fallacy and error. This was the great man of whom his disciple again says, that he was ashamed of having a body. Even in ascetic extremes, there are lessons for us. "The spirit indeed is forward, but the body is feeble. J.
Vers. 32-42. Gethsemane.
With reverent steps and bent head must we approach this scene. It would be improper to intrude upon the privacy of the Savior"s suffering had not the Spirit of truth seen fit to "declare" this also unto us. The disciples, with the three, exceptions, were excluded by the words, "Sit ye here, while I pray." And even from the favored three "he went forward a little," "about a stone"s cast." Then, "sore troubled," and with a "soul exceeding sorrowful even unto death," he "fell on the ground," kneeling, with his face to the earth. Then, from that spirit so sorely wrung, the cry escaped, which has ever been the cry from the uttermost suffering, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me." Thrice the holy cry was heard, and in so great "an agony" that "his sweat became as it were great drops of blood falling down upon the ground," though strengthened by "an angel from heaven." Thrice the words of uttermost submission, "Thy will be done!" completed his act of entire surrender and self-devotion. "The will of the Father," which had been his law through life, was no less his one law in death. For all ages and for all sufferers Gethsemane is the symbol of the uttermost suffering, and of the supremest act of devotion to the will of the Father on high. Its depth of suffering is hidden in its own darkness. The bearing of this hour upon the great work of redemption, as well as the precise references of the Redeemer in his words, and many other solemn questions that this scene suggests, deserve the most careful thought. But we turn, as in duty bound, to consider its instruction to us. By him, who taught us to pray, we have been led to desire the accomplishment of the Divine will. By him, who is ever for us the Example of righteous obedience, we have been constrained to seek to bring our life into conformity with that will. And by him, from whom our richest consolations have descended, we have been led to submission and lowly trust in the times of our deepest sufferings. We would that his example should gently lead us to keep the sacred words upon our lips, "Thy will be done!" If we would use them in the supreme exigencies of our life, we must learn to use them as the habitual law of our life. Therefore, let us so use them that they may express:
1. The abiding desire of our heart.
2. The habit of our life.
3. The uppermost sentiment in the hour of our trial and suffering.
The former steps lead to the latter. We cannot desire the will of the Lord to be done by our suffering unless we have first learnt to submit to it as the law of our activity.
I "THY WILL BE DONE!" IS TO BE THE ABIDING DESIRE OF OUR HEARTS. The habitual contemplation of the Divine will is likely to lead us to desire its fulfillment. We shall see, if faintly, the wisdom, the goodness, the pure purpose, which that will expresses. It is a desire for the Divine Father to do and carry out his own will in his own house on earth, "as it is in heaven." Seeing God in all things, and having entire confidence in the unsullied wisdom and unfailing goodness of the Father on high, it desires both that he should do his own will in all things, and that by all that will should be sought as the supreme law. It knows no good outside of the operation of that will. Within its sphere all is life, and health, and truth, and goodness; without is darkness and the region of the shadow of death.
II As our prayer becomes the true expression of our desire, we shall seek to embody it in our daily conduct. It will then become THE HABIT OF OUR LIFE. Our great Exemplar said, "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me;" "I seek not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me;" "I am come down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me." And the spirit of his obedience is uttered in one word: "I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy Law is within my heart." How blessed to have a "will of the Lord" to turn to for our guidance! How holy a Law is it! The truest greatness of life is to hold it in subjection to a great principle. There can be no higher one than "the will of the Lord." Devotion to a great principle transfigures the whole life; it makes the very raiment white and glistering.
III But there are exigencies in life when the crush of sorrow comes upon us. He who has habitually sought to know and observe the will of the Lord in his daily activity will easily recognize the Divine will in his sufferings; and to bow to that will in health will prepare him to acquiesce in it in sickness. To say, "Thy will be done!" when health and friends and possessions all are gone, needs the training of days in which all the desires of the heart have been brought into subjection. Many things transpire which are contrary to the Divine will; but obedient faith will rest in the Divine purpose, which can work itself out by the least promising means. Though held in "the hands of wicked men," it will cry, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. G.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv32, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45 Which was named Gethsemane.
Mar_14:32-36
Which was named Gethsemane.
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The conflict in Gethsemane
I. The place of the conflict calls for a brief notice.
II. The story of the conflict. Its intensity is the first fact in the story that strikes us. His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling to the ground. This conflict wrung from the Saviour a great cry. What was it? O My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt. We have a glimpse of the conflict carried on by Christ for us, single-handed.
III. The sleep of the disciples whilst this conflict was going on. (Charles Stanford, D. D.)
Gethsemane
I. Gethsemane suggests to reverent faith our blessed Redeemers longing for human sympathy.
II. It reminds us of the sacredness of human sorrow and Divine communion.
III. It reveals the overwhelming fulness of the Redeemers sorrow.
IV. It reminds us of the will of Christ yielded to the will of the Father.
V. It has lessons and influences for our own hearts. (The Preachers Monthly.)
Jesus in Gethsemane
I. Woes bitterest cup should be taken when it is the means of highest usefulness. Wasted suffering is the climax of suffering. Afflictions furnace heat loses its keenest pangs for those who can see the form of One like unto the Son of Man walking with them by example, and know that they are ministering to the worlds true joy and life, in some degree, as He did.
II. From our Lords example we learn the helpfulness in sorrow of reliance upon human and Divine companionship combined. But to do both in proper proportion is not easy. Some hide from both earth and heaven as much as possible. Others lean wholly upon human supports; others, yet, turn to God in a seclusion to which the tenderest offices of friends are unwelcome. Our Lords divinity often appears plainest in his symmetrical union of traits, mainly remarkable because of their combination. He was at once the humblest and boldest of men; the farthest from sin and the most compassionate towards the returning prodigal; the meekest and the most commanding. So, in the garden agony, he leaned upon human and Divine supports; the one as indispensable as the other. Whatever the situation, we are not to act the recluse. Lifes circles need us and we need them. Neither are we to forget the Father in heaven. Storms and trial only increase His ready sympathy and succour.
III. Our Lords crucial obedience in the garden agony reflects the majesty of the human will and its possible mastery of every trial in perfect obedience to the Divine will. However superhuman Jesus suffering, He was thoroughly human in it. He had all our faculties, and used them as we may use ours. It is no small encouragement that the typical Man gives us an example of perfect obedience, at a cost unknown before or since. In the mutual relations of the human and Divine wills all merit is achieved and all character constructed. Learned authors dwell with deserved interest upon the worlds decisive battles, the pivots of destiny. The souls future for time and eternity turns upon contests in which the will is in chief command. Intellect and sensibilities participate, but they are always subordinate. It were helpful to bear this in mind under every exposure. Let the inquiry be quick and constant, What saith the will? Is that steady and unflinching?
IV. Jesus soul could have been sorrowful even unto death only as His sufferings were vicarious. He was always sublimely heroic. Why such agony now? It was something far deadlier than death. It was the burden and mystery of the worlds sin. The Lamb of God was slain for us in soul agony rather than by physical pain. His soul formed the soul of His sufferings.
V. Gethsemanes darkness paints sins guilt and ruin in faithful and enduring colour. It is easy to think lightly of sin. Having never known guilt, Christ met the same hidings of the Divine countenance as do the guilty. This was mans disobedience in its relation with Gods law and judgment.
VI. Gethsemane throws portentous light upon the woe of lost souls. He suffered exceptionally, but He was also a typical sufferer; every soul has possibilities beyond our imagination; and terrible the doom when these possibilities are fulfilled in the direction to which Gethsemane points.
VII. Our lesson gives terrible emphasis to the fact and seriousness of impossibilities with God. Our time tends strongly towards lax notions of the Divine character and law and of the conditions of salvation. The will and fancy erect their own standards. Religion and obedience are to be settled according to individual notions, a subjective affair. Our Lords agonized words, If it be possible, establish the rigidity and absoluteness of governmental and spiritual conditions. Gods will and plans are objective realities; they have definite and all-important direction and demands. Man should not think of being a law unto himself either in conduct or belief; least of all should he sit in judgment upon the revealed Word, fancying that any amount or kind of inner light is a true and sufficient test of its legitimacy and authority. But, how futile all attempts at fathoming Gethsemanes lessons. (H. L. B. Speare.)
Christ in Gethsemane
I. Gethsemane saw Christs agony on account of sin.
II. Gethsemane was a witness of Christs devotion in the hour of distress.
III. Gethsemane was a witness of Christs resignation to the will of God.
IV. Gethsemane was a witness of Christs sympathy with, and affection for, His tried followers. (J. H. Hitchens.)
The prayer in Gethsemane
I. Let us notice, in the outset, the sudden experience which led to this act of supplication. He began to be sore amazed and to be very heavy. Evidently something new had come to Him; either a disclosure of fresh trial, or a violence of unusual pain under it. Here it is affecting to find in our Divine Lord so much of recognized and simple human nature He desired to be alone, but He planned to have somebody He loved and trusted within call. His grief was too burdensome for utter abandonment. Hence came the demand for sympathy He made, and the persistence in reserve he retained, both of which are so welcome and instructive. For here emphatically, as perhaps nowhere else, we are with Him in the garden. Oh, how passionately craving of help, and yet how majesterially rejectful of impertinent condolence, are some of these moments we have in our mourning, when our souls retire upon their reserves, and will open their deepest recesses only to God! Our secret is unshared, our struggle is unrevealed to men. Yet we love those who love us just as much as ever. It is helpful to find that even our Lord Jesus had some feelings of which He could not tell John. He went away (Mat_26:44).
II. Let us, in the second place, inquire concerning the exact meaning of this singular supplication. In those three intense prayers was the Saviour simply afraid of death? Was that what our version makes the Apostle Paul say He feared? Was He just pleading there under the olives for permission to put off the human form now, renounce the likeness of men (Php_2:7-8), which He had taken upon Him, slip back into heaven inconspicuously by some sort of translation which would remove Him from the power of Pilate, so that when Judas had done his errand quickly, and had arrived with the soldiers, Jesus would be mysteriously missing, and the traitor would find nothing but three harmless comrades there asleep on the grass? That is to say, are we ready to admit that our Lord and Master seriously proposed to go back to His Divine Fathers bosom at this juncture, leaving the prophecies unfulfilled, the redemption unfinished, the very honour of Jehovah sullied with a failure? Does it offer any help in dealing with such a conjecture to insist that this was only a moment of weakness in His human nature? Would this make any difference as a matter of fact for Satan to discover that he had only been contending with another Adam, after all? Would the lost angels any the less exult over the happy news of a celestial defeat because they learned that the seed of the woman had not succeeded in bruising the serpents head by reason of His own alarm at the last? Oh, no: surely no! Jesus had said, when in the far-back counsels of eternity the covenant of redemption was made, Lo, I come: I delight to do Thy will, O my God (Psa_40:7-8). He could have had no purpose now, we may be evermore certain, of withdrawing the proffer of Himself to suffer for men. There can be no doubt that the cup which our Lord desired might pass from His lips, and yet was willing to drink if there could be no release from it, was the judicial wrath of God discharged upon Him as a culprit vicariously before the law, receiving the awful curse due to human sin. We reject all notion of mere physical illness or exhaustion as well as all conjecture of mere sentimental loneliness under the abandonment of friends. In that supreme moment when He found that He, sinless in every particular and degree, must be considered guilty, and so that His heavenly Fathers face and favour must at least for a while be withdrawn from Him, He was, in despite of all His courageous preparation, surprised and almost frightened to discover how much His own soul was beginning to shudder and recoil from coming into contact with sin of any sort, even though it was only imputed. Evidently it seemed to His infinitely pure nature horrible to be put in a position, however false, such as that His adorable Father would be compelled to draw the mantle over His face. This shocked Him unutterably. He shrank back in consternation when He saw He must become loathsome in the sight of heaven because of the abominable thing God hated (Jer_44:4). Hence, we conceive the prayer covered only that. That which appears at first a startling surrender of redemption as a whole, is nothing more than a petition to be relieved from what He hoped might be deemed no necessary part of the curse He was bearing for others. He longed, as He entered unusual darkness, just to receive the usual light. It was as if He had said to His heavenly Father: The pain I understood, the curse I came for. Shame, obloquy, death, I care nothing for them. I only recoil from being loaded so with foreign sin that I cannot be looked upon with any allowance. I am in alarm when I think of the prince of this world coming and finding something in me, when hitherto he had nothing. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint, my heart is like wax, when I think of the taunt that the Lord I trusted no longer delights in Me; this is like laughing God to scorn. Is there no permitted discrimination between a real sinner, and a substitute only counted such before the law in this one particular? All things are possible with Thee; make it possible now for Thee to see Thy Son, and yet not seem to see the imputed guilt He bears! Yet even this will I endure, if so it must be in order that I may fulfil all righteousness; Thy will, not Mine, be done!
III. Again, let us observe carefully the extraordinary range which this prayer in the garden took. It is not worth while even to appear to be playing upon an accidental collocation of words in the sacred narrative; but why should it be asserted that any inspired words are accidental? The whole history of Immanuels sufferings that awful night contains no incident more strikingly suggestive than the record of the distance He kept between Himself and His disciples. It is the act as well as the language which is significant. Mark says, He went forward a little. Luke says, He was withdrawn from them about a stones east. Matthew says, He went a little farther. So now we know that this one petition of our Lord was the final, secret, supreme whisper of His innermost heart. The range of such a prayer was over His whole nature. It exhausted His entire being. It covered the humanity it represented. In it for Himself and for us He went a little farther than ever He had in His supplication gone before. One august monarch rules over this fallen world, and holds all human hearts under His sway. His name is Pain. His image and superscription is upon every coin that passes current in this mortal life. He claims fealty from the entire race of man. And, sooner or later, once, twice, or a hundred times, as the king chooses, and not as the subject wills, each soul has to put on its black garment, go sedately and sufferingly on its sad journey to pay its loyal tribute, precisely as Joseph and Mary were compelled to go up to Bethlehem to be taxed. When this tyrant Pain summons us to come and discharge his dues, it is the quickest of human instincts which prompts us to seek solitude. That seems to be the universal rule (Zec_12:12-14). But now we discover from this symbolic picture that, whenever any Christian goes away from other disciples deeper into the solitudes of his own Gethsemane, he almost at once draws nearer to the Saviour he needs. For our Lord just now went forward a little. There He is, on ahead of us all in experience! It is simply and wonderfully true of Jesus always, no matter how severe is the suffering into which for their discipline He leads His chosen, He Himself has taken His position in advance of them. No human lot was ever so forlorn, so grief-burdened, so desolate, as was that of the Great Life given to redeem it. No path ever reached so distantly into the region of heart trying agony as that it might not still see that peerless Christ of God about a stones cast beyond it, kneeling in some deeper shadows of His own. No believer ever went so far into his lonely Gethsemane but that he found his Master had gone a little farther.
Christ did not send, but came Himself, to save;
The ransom price He did not lend, but gave;
Christ died, the Shepherd for the sheep,-
We only fall asleep.
IV. Finally, let us inquire after the supreme results of this supplication of our Lord.
1. Consider the High Priest of our profession (Heb_12:2-4). What good would it do to pray, if Christs prayer was unsuccessful?
2. But was it answered? Certainly (Heb_5:7-9). The cup remained (Joh_18:11), but he got acquiescence (Mat_26:42), and strength (Luk_22:43).
3. Have we been with Him in the garden? Then we have found a similar cup (Mar_10:38-39). (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)
Companionship in sorrow
It is a delightful thing to be with Jesus on the mountain of transfiguration, where heavenly visitants are seen, and a heavenly voice is heard. It would seem good to be always there. But they who would follow Jesus through this earthly life, must be with Him also out on the stormy sea in the gloomy night; and again they must come with Him into the valley of the shadow of death. There are bright, glad clays to the Christian believer, when faith and hope and love are strong. But there are days also of trial and sorrow, when it seems as if faith must fail, and hope must die, and love itself must cease. It is one thing for a young couple to stand together in light and joy, surrounded by friends, at their marriage reception, or to share each others pleasure on their wedding tour. It is quite another thing for a married pair to watch together through the weary night over a sick and suffering child, and to close the eyes of their darling in its death sleep, in the gray of the gloomy morning. Yet the clouds are as sure as the sunlight on the path of every chosen disciple of Jesus who follows his Master unswervingly; and he who never comes with Jesus to a place named Gethsemane has chosen for himself another path than that wherein the Saviour leads the way. (H. Clay Trumbull.)
Christ, our sin bearer
I. With regard to the position our Lord was in, He stood there as the great Sin Bearer. Here, beloved, we see what the burden was which our Lord bore: it was our sins.
II. But now observe, secondly, the great weight of this burden. Who can declare it? (J. H. Evans, M. A.)
The sufferings of the good
My life has been to me a mystery of love. I know that Gods education of each man is in perfect righteousness. I know that the best on earth have been the greatest sufferers, because they were the best, and like gold could stand the fire and be purified by it. I know this, and a great deal more, and yet the mercy of God to me is such a mystery that I have been tempted to think I was utterly unworthy of suffering. God have mercy on my thoughts! I may be unable to stand suffering. I do not know. But I lay myself at Thy feet, and say, Not that I am prepared, but that Thou art good and wise, and wilt prepare me. (Norman Macleod.)
Resignation
Of all the smaller English missions, the Livingstone Congo stands conspicuous for its overflowing of zeal and life and promise; and of all its agents, young MCall was the brightest; but he was struck down in mid-work. His last words were recorded by a stranger who visited him. Let each one of us lay them to our hearts. Lord, I gave myself, body, mind, and soul, to Thee, I consecrated my whole life and being to Thy service; and now, if it please Thee to take myself, instead of the work which I would do for Thee, what is that to me? Thy will be done. (R. N. Cust.)
Christs sorrow and desertion
It is beyond our power to ascertain the precise amount of suffering sustained by our Lord; for a mystery necessarily encircles the person of Jesus, in which two natures are combined. This mystery may ever prevent our knowing how His humanity was sustained by His divinity. Still, undoubtedly, the general representation of Scripture would lead to the conclusion, that though He was absolute God, with every power and prerogative of Deity, yet was Christ, as man, left to the same conflicts, and dependent on the same assistances as any of His followers. He differed, indeed, immeasurably, in that He was conceived without the taint of original sin, and therefore was free from our evil propensities: He lived the life of faith which He worked out for Himself, and He lived it to gain for us a place in His Fathers kingdom. Although He was actually to meet affliction like a man, He was left without any external support from above. This is very remarkably shown by His agony in the garden, when an angel was sent to strengthen Him. Wonderful that a Divine person should have craved assistance, and that He did not draw on His own inexhaustible resources! But, it was as a man that He grappled with the powers of darkness-as a man who could receive no celestial aid. And, if this be a true interpretation of the mode in which our Lord met persecution and death, we must be right, in contrasting Him with martyrs, when we assert an immeasurable difference between His sufferings, and those of men who have died nobly for the truth: from Him the light of the Fathers countenance was withdrawn, whilst unto them it was conspicuously displayed. This may explain why Christ was confounded and overwhelmed, where others had been serene and undaunted. Still, the question arises,-Why was Christ thus deserted of the Father? Why were those comforts and supports withheld from Him which have been frequently vouchsafed to His followers? No doubt it is a surprising as well as a piteous spectacle that of our Lord shrinking from the anguish of what should befall Him, whilst others have faced death, in its most frightful forms, with unruffled composure. You never can account for this, except by acknowledging that our Lord was no ordinary man, meeting death as a mere witness for truth, but that he was actually a sin offering; bearing the weight of the worlds iniquities. His agony-His doleful cries-His sweating, as it were, great drops of blood; these are not to be explained on the supposition of His being merely an innocent man, hunted down by fierce and unrelenting enemies. Had He been only this, why should He be apparently so excelled in confidence and composure by a long line of martyrs and confessors? Christ wad more than this. Though He had done no sin, yet was He in the place of the sinful, bearing the weight of Divine indignation, and made to feel the terrors of Divine wrath. Innocent, He was treated as guilty! He had made Himself the substitute of the guilty-hence His anguish and terror. Bear in mind, that the sufferer who exhibits, as you might think, so much less of composure and firmness than has been evinced by many when called on to die for truth-bear in mind, that this sufferer has had a worlds iniquity laid on His shoulders; that God is now dealing with Him as the representative of apostate man, and exacting from Him the penalties due to unnumbered transgressions; and you will cease to wonder though you may still almost shudder at words, so expressive of agony-My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
Christs agony of soul
It is on the sufferings of the soul that we would fix your attention; for these, we doubt not, were the mighty endurances of the Redeemer-these pursued Him to His very last moments, until He paid the last fragment of our debts. You will perceive that it was in the soul rather than in the body that our blessed Saviour made atonement for transgression. He had put Himself in the place of the criminal, so far as it was possible for an innocent man to assume the position of the guilty; and standing in the place of the criminal, with guilt imputed to Him, He had to bear the punishment that misdeeds had incurred. You must be aware that anguish of the soul rather than of the body is the everlasting portion of sinners; and though, of course, we cannot think that our Lord endured precisely what sinners had deserved, for he could have known nothing of the stings and bodes of conscience beneath which they must eternally writhe, yet forasmuch as he was exhausting their curse-a curse which was to drive ruin into their soul as well as rack the body with unspeakable pain-we might well expect that the souls anguish of a surety or substitute would be felt even more than the bodily: and that external affliction, however vast and accumulated, would be comparatively less in its rigour or accompaniments, than His internal anguish, which is not to be measured or imagined. This expectation is certainly quite borne out by the statements of Scripture, if carefully considered. Indeed it is very observable that when our Lord is set before us as exhibiting signs of anguish and distress there was no bodily suffering whatever-none but what was caused mentally. I refer, as you must be aware, to the scene in the garden, as immediately connected with our text, when the Redeemer manifested the most intense grief and horror, His sweat being as it were great drops of blood-a scene which the most callous can scarcely encounter: in this case there was no nail, no spear. Ay, though there was the prospect of the cross, there was hardly fear. It was the thought of dying as a malefactor, which so overcame the Redeemer, that He needed strength by an angel from heaven. That it was that wrung out the thrilling exclamation: My soul is exceeding sorrowful. It is far beyond us to tell you what were the spiritual endurances which so distressed and bore down the Redeemer. There is a veil over the anguish of the incarnate God which no mortal hand may attempt to remove. I can only suppose that holy as He was-incapable of sinning in thought or deed-He had a piercing and overwhelming sense of the criminality of sin-of the dishonour which it attached to the world-of the ruin which it was bringing on man: He must have felt as no other being could, the mighty fearfulness of sin-linked alike with God and with man-the brethren of sinners, and the being sinned against. Who can doubt that, as He bore our transgressions in our nature, He must have been wounded as with a two-edged sword-the one edge lacerating Him as He was jealous of divine glory, and the other as He longed for human happiness? Though we cannot explain what passed in the soul of the Redeemer, we would impress on you the truth, that it was in the soul rather than in the body that those dire pangs were endured which exhausted the curse denounced against sin. Let not any think that mere bodily anguish went as an equivalent for the miseries and the tortures which must have been eternally exacted from every human being. It would take away much of the terribleness of the future doom of the impenitent, to represent those sufferings as only, or chiefly, bodily. Men will argue the nature of the doom, not the nature of the suffering capacity in its stead. And, certainly, a hell without mental agony, would be a paradise in comparison with what we believe to be the pandemonium, where the soul is the rack, and conscience the executioner. Go not away from Calvary, with thoughts of nothing but suffering a death by being nailed to a cross and left to expire after long torture! Go away, rather thinking of the horror which had taken hold of the soul of the forsaken sufferer; and as you carry with you a remembrance of the doleful spectacle, and smite your breasts at the thought of His piteous cry-a cry more startling than the crash of the earthquake that announced His death-lay ye to heart His unimaginable endurances which extort the cry: My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
Blessings through Christs soul agony
It is this death-this travail of the soul, which from the beginning to the end of a Christian life is effecting or producing that holier creature which is finally to be presented without spot or wrinkle, meet for the inheritance of the saints in light. It is in the pangs of the soul, that he feels the renewing influence of the Holy Ghost, realized in the birth of the Christian character, who in any age of the world recovers the defaced image of his God. I think it gives a preciousness to every means of grace, thus to consider them as brought into being by the agonies of the Redeemer. It would go far, were this borne in mind, to defend it against the resistance or neglect, if it were impressed on you that there is not a single blessing of which you are conscious, that did not spring from this sorrow-this sorrow unto death of the Redeemers soul. Could you possibly make light, as perhaps you now do, of those warnings and secret admonitions which come you know not whence, prompting you to forsake certain sins and give heed to certain duties, if you were impressed that it was through the very soul of the Redeemer being exceeding sorrowful, even unto death, that there was obtained for you the privilege of access to God by prayer, or the having offers made to you of pardon and reconciliation? Do you think you could kneel down irreverently or formally, or that you could treat the ordinance of preaching as a mere human institution, in regard to which, it mattered little whether you were in earnest or not? The memory that Christs soul travailed in agony to procure for you those blessings-which, because they are abundant, you may be tempted to underrate-would necessarily impart a preciousness to the whole. You could not be indifferent to the bitter cry; you could not look languidly on the scene as you saw the cross. This is a fact; it was only by sorrow-sorrow unto death of the Redeemers soul-that any of the ordinary means of grace-those means that you are daily enjoying, have been procured. Will you think little of those means? Will you neglect them? Will you trifle with them? Will you not rather feel that what cost so much to buy, it must be fatal to despise? Neither, as we said, is it the worth only of the means of grace that you may learn from the mighty sorrow by which they were purchased; it is also your own worth, the worth of your own soul. When we would speak of the soul and endeavour to impress men with a sense of its value, we may strive to set forth the nature of its properties, its powers, its capacities, its destinies, but we can make very little way; we show little more than our ignorance, for search how we will the soul is a mystery; it is like Deity, of which it is the spark; it hides itself by its own light; and eludes by dazzling the inquirer. You will remember, that our Lord emphatically asked: What shall a man give in exchange for his soul? It is implied in the question, that if the whole world were offered in barter-the world, with all its honours and its riches-he would be the veriest of fools who would consent to the exchange, and would be a loser to an extent beyond thought, in taking creation and surrendering his soul. Then I hear you say, This is all a theory! It may be so. The world in one scale, is but a particle of dust to the soul in the other! We should like to see an actual exchange: this might assure us of the untold worth that you wish to demonstrate. And, my brethren, you shall see a human soul put on one side and the equivalent on the other. You shall see an exchange! Not the exchange-the foul exchange which is daily, ay, hourly! made-the exchange of the soul for a bauble, for a shadow; an exchange, which even those who make it would shrink from if they thought on what they were doing-would shrink from with horror, if they would know how far they are losers and not gainers by the bargain. The exchange we have to exhibit is a fair exchange. What is given for the soul is what the soul is worth. Come with us, and strive to gaze on the glories of the invisible God-He who has grieved in the soul, for He emptied Himself, and made Himself of no reputation, that the soul might be saved! Come with us to the stable of Bethlehem! Come with us to Calvary! The amazing accumulation of which you are spectator-the fearful sorrow, on which you hardly dare to look-the agony of Him who had done no sin-the agony of Him who was the Lord of glory-the death of Him who was the Prince of Light-this was given for the soul; by this accumulation was redemption effected. Is there not here an exchange-an exchange actually made, with which we might prove it impossible to overrate the value of the soul? If you read the form of the question-What shall a man give in exchange for his soul? you will see it implies that it is not within the empire of wealth to purchase the soul. But cannot this assume the form of another question-What would God give in exchange for the soul? Here we have an answer, not of supposition, but of fact: we tell you what God has given-He has given Himself. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
Complete resignation
A minister, being asked by a friend, during his last illness, whether he thought himself dying, answered: Really, friend, I care not whether I am or not. If I die, I shall be with God; and, if I live, God will be with me.
Instance of resignation
During the siege of Barcelona, in 1705, Captain Carleton witnessed the following affecting incident, which he relates in his memoirs: I saw an old officer, having his only son with him, a fine young man about twenty years of age, going into their tent to dine. Whilst they were at dinner a shot took off the head of the son. The father immediately rose, and first looking down upon his headless child, and then lifting up his eyes to heaven, whilst the tears ran down his cheeks, only said, Thy will be done!
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On vv32, 34, 43 CHAPTER 14:32-42 (Mar_14:32-42)
CHAPTER 14:32-42 (Mar_14:32-42)
IN THE GARDEN
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"And they come unto a place which was named Gethsemane: and He saith unto His disciples, Sit ye here, while I pray. And He taketh with Him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly amazed, and sore troubled. And He saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death: abide ye here, and watch. And He went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass away from Him. And He said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto Thee: remove this cup from Me: howbeit not what I will, but what Thou wilt. And He cometh, and findeth them sleeping, and saith unto Peter, Simon, sleepest thou? couldest thou not watch one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. And again He went away, and prayed, saying the same words. And again He came, and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy; and they wist not what to answer Him. And He cometh the third time, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: it is enough; the hour is come; behold, the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Arise, let us be going: behold, he that betrayeth Me is at hand." Mar_14:32-42 (R.V.)
ALL scripture, given by inspiration of God, is profitable; yet must we approach with reverence and solemn shrinking, the story of our Savior's anguish. It is a subject for caution and for reticence, putting away all over-curious surmise, all too-subtle theorizing, and choosing to say too little rather than too much.
It is possible so to argue about the metaphysics of the Agony as to forget that a suffering human heart was there, and that each of us owes his soul to the victory which was decided if not completed in that fearful place. The Evangelists simply tell us how He suffered.
Let us begin with the accessories of the scene, and gradually approach the center.
In the warning of Jesus to His disciples there was an undertone of deep sorrow. God will smite Him, and they will all be scattered like sheep. However dauntless be the purport of such words, it is impossible to lose sight of their melancholy. And when the Eleven rejected His prophetic warning, and persisted in trusting the hearts He knew to be so fearful, their professions of loyalty could only deepen His distress, and intensify His isolation.
In silence He turns to the deep gloom of the olive grove, aware now of the approach of the darkest and deadliest assault.
There was a striking contrast between the scene of His first temptation and His last; and His experience was exactly the reverse of that of the first Adam, who began in a garden, and was driven thence into the desert, because he failed to refuse himself one pleasure more beside ten thousand. Jesus began where the transgression of men had driven them, in the desert among the wild beasts, and resisted not a luxury, but the passion of hunger craving for bread. Now He is in a garden, but how different from theirs. Close by is a city filled with foemen, whose messengers are already on His track. Instead of the attraction of a fruit good for food, and pleasant, and to be desired to make one wise, there is the grim repulsion of death, and its anguish, and its shame and mockery. He is now to be assailed by the utmost terrors of the flesh and of the spirit. And like the temptation in the wilderness, the assault is three times renewed.
As the dark "hour" approached, Jesus confessed the two conflicting instincts of our human nature in its extremity -- the desire of sympathy, and the desire of solitude. Leaving eight of the disciples at some distance, He led still nearer to the appointed place His elect of His election, on whom He had so often bestowed special privilege, and whose faith would be less shaken by the sight of His human weakness, because they had beheld His Divine glory on the holy mount. To these He opened His heart. "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death; abide ye here and watch." And He went from them a little. Their neighborhood was a support in His dreadful conflict, and He could at times return to them for sympathy; but they might not enter with Him into the cloud, darker and deadlier than that which they feared on Hermon. He would fain not be desolate, and yet He must be alone.
But when He returned, they were asleep. As Jesus spoke of watching for one hour, some time had doubtless elapsed. And sorrow is exhausting. If the spirit do not seek for support from God, it will be dragged down by the flesh into heavy sleep, and the brief and dangerous respite of oblivion.
It was the failure of Peter which most keenly affected Jesus, not only because his professions had been so loud, but because much depended on his force of character. Thus, when Satan had desired to have them, that he might sift them all like wheat, the prayers of Jesus were especially for Simon, and it was he when he was converted who should strengthen the rest. Surely then he at least might have watched one hour. And what of John, His nearest human friend, whose head had reposed upon His bosom? However keen the pang, the lips of the Perfect Friend were silent; only He warned them all alike to watch and pray, because they were themselves in danger of temptation.
That is a lesson for all time. No affection and no zeal are a substitute for the presence of God realized, and the protection of God invoked. Loyalty and love are not enough without watchfulness and prayer, for even when the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak, and needs to be upheld.
Thus, in His severest trial and heaviest oppression, there is neither querulousness nor invective, but a most ample recognition of their good will, a most generous allowance for their weakness, a most sedulous desire, not that He would be comforted, but that they should escape temptation.
With His yearning heart unsoothed, with another anxiety added to His heavy burden, Jesus returned to His vigil. Three times He felt the wound of unrequited affection, for their eyes were very heavy, and they wist not what to answer Him when He spoke.
Nor should we omit to contrast their bewildered stupefaction, with the keen vigilance and self-possession of their more heavily burdened Lord.
If we reflect that Jesus must needs experience all the sorrows that human weakness and human wickedness could inflict, we may conceive of these varied wrongs as circles with a common center, on which the cross was planted. And our Lord has now entered the first of these; He has looked for pity but there was no man; His own, although it was grief which pressed them down, slept in the hour of His anguish, and when He bade them watch.
It is right to observe that our Saviour had not bidden them to pray with Him. They should watch and pray. They should even watch with Him. But to pray for Him, or even to pray with Him, they were not bidden. And this is always so. Never do we read that Jesus and any mortal joined together in any prayer to God. On the contrary, when two or three of them asked anything in His name, He took for Himself the position of the Giver of their petition. And we know certainly that He did not invite them to join His prayers, for it was as He was praying in a certain place that when he ceased, one of His disciples desired that they also might be taught to pray (Luk_11:1). Clearly then they were not wont to approach the mercy seat hand in hand with Jesus. And the reason is plain. He came directly to His Father; no man else came unto the Father but by Him; there was an essential difference between His attitude towards God and ours.
Has the Socinian ever asked himself why, in this hour of His utmost weakness, Jesus sought no help from the intercession of even the chiefs of the apostles?
It is in strict harmony with this position, that St. Matthew tells us, He now said not Our Father, but My Father. No disciple is taught, in any circumstances to claim for himself a monopolized or special sonship. He may be in his closet and the door shut, yet must he remember his brethren and say, Our Father. That is a phrase which Jesus never addressed to God. None is partaker of His Sonship; none joined with Him in supplication to His Father.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv32, 43 32–42. They came to a place which was named…
32–42. They came to a place which was named Gethsemane. See notes on Matt. 26:36–46, where the fullest account of the agony is given. Compare Luke 22:40–46. Luke only speaks of the “sweat, as it were drops of blood.”
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv32, 43 Mar_14:32. Gethsemane.—I. e. Oil-press. The traditional site is a…
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Mar_14:32. Gethsemane.—I. e. Oil-press. The traditional site is a garden at the foot of the Mount of Olives on the north-west, where still are to be seen eight olive trees, believed to be over two thousand years old.
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Mar_14:33. Sore amazed.—Filled with consternation at the thought of all He must pass through ere He reached the goal. Very heavy.—Uncertain whether ἀδημονεῖν is derived from ἄδημος, “away from home,” or ἄδην “imeasily”: in either case it expresses the yearning of heart-sickness. The two words are most aptly chosen to depict the feelings of one “surrounded with sorrow,” as Christ Himself describes His position in next verse.
Mar_14:36. Abba.—The very word used by Christ. Peculiar to Mark. Take away this cup from Me.—His soul “exceeding sorrowful unto death,” Christ feared apparently that the agony He was enduring might snap asunder the thin thread of His life there and then. He therefore prays for strength to reach the Cross, there to complete the offering of Himself as a ransom for the sins of the world. This may be the meaning of Heb_5:7. Nevertheless not what I will, but what Thou wilt.—The sublime self-sacrifice of the preceding clause is intensified by this. He had said long before, “I, if I be lifted up, shall draw all men unto Me.” But it seemed, in the garden, as if He were not to be lifted up on the Cross after all—as if His life-work might be frustrated at the very last, by His physical strength not holding out long enough. Even to this He resigns Himself, if it be the Father’s will. See Expository Times, vol. vi., No. 10, pp. 433, 434.
Mar_14:41. The meaning of ἀπέχει being uncertain, and the punctuation being equally undetermined, Christ’s words here are susceptible of very different interpretations:
(1) Sleep and rest for the time that remains; he (the traitor) is far away. Then, after an interval: The hour has come, etc.
(2) Sleep and rest for the time that remains. Then, after an interval: Enough! the hour has come, etc.
(3) Are you sleeping and resting for the time that remains? Enough! The hour has come, etc.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Mar_14:32-42
(PARALLELS: Mat_26:36-46; Luk_22:39-46.)
The agony in the garden.—In our Litany we plead with our Lord by His agony and bloody sweat. From among the events of His life we thus select the agony in the garden as one of the most important. We bring it, if we may so say, to our Lord’s remembrance. We are convinced that it bore a prominent part in working out our salvation. The remembrance of it will operate to make Him grant our requests. No passage of His life is more mysterious; we should approach the topic with awe and reverence, taking as it were the shoes off our feet, because it is holy ground that we purpose to visit.
I. His sufferings on the Cross had not yet begun. What was the cause of this exceeding distress?
1. Chiefly, mainly, I believe, it was the grief of His whole life. He was in the place of sinners; He was the representative of sinners; He was suffering for sinners, bearing their punishment, and their punishment is that God hides His face from them; and the holier, the more loving, the more capable, the soul of the Christ was, the more bitter to Him was this punishment, which others deserved and He endured.
2. There were special reasons why the suffering thus produced should at this time press with extreme violence on His soul. He had completed other work; He had trained His apostles, finished the work given Him to do, had reissued the law, had fulfilled all types and prophecies, had revealed the Divine character, had exhibited the type of perfect manhood; and so the work of suffering and expiation alone remained. No more controversy, no more teaching—only endurance. The mind could no longer be diverted by other employment from that which lay before Him in the way of suffering.
3. All this suffering was foreseen, anticipated; it was not like our sufferings, which are mercifully hidden from us.
4. There are also other explanations of the horror of great darkness through which He now passed. He said a little farther on that it was the hour of His enemies and the power of darkness. We believe that Satan now put forth all his power to crush Him. Then we may also believe that the fear of death, the fear of all that was to come to body, mind, and spirit, all the agonising sufferings of the Cross, depressed the human soul of the Redeemer.
5. Again, He was denied those consolations which have made martyrs, under excruciating sufferings, triumphant. What is it makes a martyr meekly, gladly, patiently endure, though every nerve be racked? It is the infusion of God’s grace, a drop of the joy of heaven, a cordial sent by God on high to support the soul of His faithful witness. But this is just what was denied the Christ while bearing, as our representative, the burden of our sins.
6. We see, too, in the narrative the mark of another trial, viz. disappointment, owing to the failure of human support and sympathy.
II. What is to be learnt from this passage.—
1. This passage should impress on us that our salvation was no easy work. Creation, with all its wonders, might be effected by a word. He had only to speak, and it was done; but to recover mankind, to cancel sin, to extricate the race from Satan’s usurped dominion.—this was a task which cost much. This required the infinite descent, the inconceivable mystery of the Son of God emptying Himself, laying aside His garments of light, taking the form of a servant, humbling Himself to one descent after another, divesting Himself, as far as possible, of the exercise of the attributes of Godhead, acting through a created nature, submitting to humiliations, and laying Himself open to the keenest inroads of pain, spiritual, mental, and physical. Every time we plead with Him by His agony and bloody sweat, we should remember that our salvation cost Him pain, and that we must not expect ourselves without tribulation to enter into the kingdom of God.
2. We see the completeness of our Lord’s manhood. He took not only our body, but our mind, our most essential and distinctive quality, our will. He cries, “Not My will, but Thine.” He had therefore a will, as Man; and His perfection was that He bowed His human will, sacrificed it, adjusted it, subjected it to the Divine will.
3. We see that it is not wrong to make known our wishes to God in prayer. We may shrink from pain, we may ask to be spared suffering, so long as we do so in entire submission to the Divine will. We may ask that the cup of suffering may pass from us, if only we are willing to drain it cheerfully, when God signifies His will that we should drink it. And because we may have to give up our wills in a great matter, it is well to practise ourselves to get power over our will in smaller matters.
4. Observe our Great Master and Pattern called God His Father in the very crisis of bowing His human will to the greatest sacrifice that will of man ever made, to entire accordance, perfect submission to, and acquiescence in the Divine appointment, though it involved inconceivable sufferings: “Abba, Father.” May God produce in all of us a faith in the Fatherhood of God! Then we too shall be able to bear pain, to go into a crisis in faith, and to come out of it, as our Master did, unscathed.
5. Lastly, notice in this crisis that our Lord was not so engrossed with His own surpassing agony as not to attend to His disciples, and strive to rouse, stimulate, and shame them to better endeavours. He graciously makes allowance for them, acknowledges that the spirit is ready though the flesh is weak. He honours them by requesting their support and sympathy; He returns to them more than once; He rouses them at last that they may not be discredited by their negligence when the enemy is close at hand. Of those given Him, He will not lose one. May God give us grace to be, after His example, thoughtful for others, if God should be pleased to visit us with exhausting and engrossing sufferings!—Canon Burrows.
Gethsemane.—We may here learn our true attitude in suffering. The clouds which darken the sky of this transitory life have gathered over us all, and maybe their shadows fall upon some of you now. Adversity is an inheritance we cannot decline, forced upon us all, and forced because we have not sufficient grace to choose and bear it for virtue’s sake. Suffering—and by that I mean all the pains and trials, physical, intellectual, spiritual, which attack mankind—is inevitable. It may vary in degree and kind, but in some measure we all are its victims; and every doubt, every sick-bed, every grave, seals this true. There is no exemption, and the noblest hearts seem to hold the most; and looking ahead, we ask the question, not for the first time—
“Is it so, O Christ in heaven, that the highest suffer most,
That the strongest wander farthest and most hopelessly are lost,
That the mark of rank in nature is capacity for pain,
That the anguish of the singer makes the sweetness of the strain?”
It may appear strange that one cup should contain so much more of bitterness than another. The best and perhaps only way of coming to know the “Why?” of these things is to bear a right attitude towards them, and towards Him whose care never fails, whose wisdom never errs, whose love never changes. Affliction is not calamity to the one who knows how to bear it, but a mine of inexhaustible wealth; and though the sun may go down, yet to the one who can read the heavens even the night will bring its joyful truths. Remember there is another side to the cloud under which you dwell, and there is light and deliverance and an everlasting Father.
I. Christ’s suffering did not shake His confidence in God.—“All things are possible unto Thee; remove this cup from Me.” There was the recognition of God’s power. The night was dark, but He did not cry, “There is no light!” The cup was bitter, but there was no complaint or cruel charge. The burden was heavy, but weakness never suggested, “There is no deliverer!” Brethren, do we not feel condemned when we recall our weakness and unbelief, when overtaken by adversity? At times God lets His shadow fall upon us, and we think it cold and harsh and meaningless. But instead of concluding that the sun has been extinguished when he sets, instead of idle, weak complaints, making the time bitter unto us, let us labour to discover the treasure of His love in the severest stroke He deals us. As in nature, so in grace, there must be a change of seasons. When grim winter appears and closes the eye and damps the smile of mother-earth, clothing her in a snow-white shroud, and freezing her body hard and cold, think we that her life has gone and we must starve, for nature’s cupboard is empty and cannot be replenished? Nay; we remember it lay as helpless but a year ago; but creeping beneath the sun’s directer rays it day by day revived, and the spring and summer came, followed by ripe old autumn with his lap full of golden fruit. Oh, how often shall the Master save us ere we cease to be afraid? When shall we learn to trustfully repose, through hope and despair, through joy and sorrow, in that eternal principle of truth, “We know that to them that love God all things work together for good”? “All things are possible unto Thee; remove this cup from Me.” The prayer is, however, by no means complete here. There must be something more than the acknowledgment of God’s power. We may come to God and say, “Thou art able,” and He answering may declare, “I am willing.” But should He declare, “I am not willing,” what then? If there be nothing more than the acknowledgment of God’s ability, the result will be disappointment and unbelief; and according to the estimate we had of God’s ability there will follow this bitterness. “Howbeit, not what I will, but what Thou wilt.”
II. The complete submission of Christ’s will to the Father’s.—Christ has expressed the desire of His heart, He has prayed for deliverance; but He closes His petition, He interrupts His very agonies, He turns right round to the Father and bows in adoring submission to His will; and how He suffered it we know. This, brethren, is the true spirit of prayer. To pray is not to claim unconditionally, to ask what we want and selfishly require it. It is the soul’s request submitted to the will of God. We must remember our ignorance, the restive desires of our hearts, the circumscribed present only visible to us; and realising all this, and more, we must pray, but leave our prayer in His hands, not dictating what we would have God do, but beseeching Him to grant our requests as they accord with His will, which is our eternal welfare. And if the answer come as we call, if the blessing descend whilst we still linger at the throne of grace, let us be thankful. But, on the other hand, if no voice replies, if the long-sought blessing be delayed, yea, and if it be delayed for ever and never greets us, still let us be thankful, rejoicing to forsake our own desires when the wisdom of God beckons us away. Our disappointment is our gain; the frustration of our hopes is our everlasting benefit. The supreme purpose of our life should be to know the will of God, and our zealous care to gain this patient, gentle grace, submission, which quickly turns its face whichever way the current of God’s Spirit flows, and with swift obedience answers each movement of His will. The knowledge of His will interprets our duty, which is the fulfilment of that will. There are truths we do not know, we cannot know; and many are the things which are veiled from our sight, for the revelation of which we must wait. They lie beyond the haze which surrounds and circumscribes our vision here, in a clearer, purer atmosphere. A time will come, and come speedily, when this concealing cloud shall be the pathway for our feet, and when we shall begin to know these hidden truths; but believe me, brethren, that time will also tell us of eternal secrets yet unveiled, and we shall find a path for our abiding faith. Our pride and unbelief must be quenched, and the Father’s will must reign supreme, the song of our heart ever rising in clear notes to the attentive sky, “Not my will but Thine be done.” It was this complete submission which led the Saviour to His death.
III. The victory of the Cross was gained in Gethsemane.—The Crucifixion was public, but the Saviour bore it first in secret. The hardship and grief of the soldier is not as he stands in the midst of the fight, but as he takes one farewell glance at the window yonder, where his child waves its tiny handkerchief and his bereaved wife sobs her pain away. The trial of Archbishop Cranmer was not greatest when he stood in the curling smoke and thrust his hand in the devouring flame, but in the agony it cost him to go there. And it was even so with our agonising Lord. He saw the cruel Cross as He knelt in Gethsemane, He felt the wounds of the nails, and wept as He heard the cries of the mocking crowd He died to save. He saw and felt it all as He wrestled there. If we would discover the secret of our Lord’s strength, we shall find it in those nights of earnest prayer spent upon the green slopes of the mountain. Our prayers may cast us, as Daniel of old, in the lions’ den, but they shall close the lions’ mouths. And now what consolation is ours and what remaineth unto us? We are not left comfortless, brethren; the Saviour has provided for His absence. The Spirit comes as a heavenly messenger to remind us that we have interests beyond, a Father who loves, a Saviour who intercedes, a throne vacant, till we gain the shore.—S. W. Kay.
Mar_14:37. The hour of watching.—There is an unknown element in human nature which makes the sympathy of others a necessary factor in our life. A writer has told us that joy unshared loses half its glow, and that the weight of sorrow is threefold heavier if there be none to watch with the sufferer. Specially in our dark moments of spiritual need we cry aloud for just one soul, one only, to watch with us, that we be not left alone. We pity the man who has to take a solitary path through the world; and if we have known the deep privilege of walking through the sunlight and shadow of earth with some sympathetic human soul, we recognise in how terrible a blank moves the uncompanioned life.
I. This half-sorrowful and half-indignant cry is just one of those cries for sympathy, for friendship.—The Bible never hesitates to emphasise the true humanity of Christ—His anger; His sorrow, His pity, His hunger and thirst and weariness, His need of love and fellowship. He could face, with all the self-reliance of His loving purpose, the frown of His critics and enemies, the scribes and Pharisees, the lawyers and the Roman soldiers; but here in the solitude of the garden He could not face without remonstrance the loneliness of the human heart. He pleaded for one hour of watching with Him. He knew, no doubt, that His disciples could not help Him much. Their simple and childlike natures were too far from His for that; and it was not until He was taken from them that they even began to understand what He was. Certainly they never guessed what He was suffering. And we, had we been there, with all our larger knowledge and deeper insight—we should have been, if sleepless, at least as dumb as they. For this is one of the tragic colours in the picture, that, whereas we can trace clearly enough all those outward forms, we do not know the depth of all they represent. We cannot tell what He suffered for the sins of men. Into the depths of that story the world has never entered. That patience, that humility, that love, have never been felt, fathomed, or rightly understood even by the most sacred spirits of earth. A very immortality of pain is centred in that one short hour.
II. Does not the cry ring down to us across the ages like a peal of thunder?—
1. It is primarily in our own personal life that we are thus called upon to watch with Christ. To all of us there comes, sometimes in little things, sometimes in great things, a temptation, an impulse to do what we know to be wrong—a time when our spiritual principles, our Christian temper, is put to the proof, and the hour of trial comes to the Christ within us. It is then that we are alone like He was, in the sense that we have to face and conquer that temptation without help from others; it is then that He appeals to us most earnestly to watch with Him one hour, to watch until the temptation has passed, and we come out victorious. There is a moral truth of a very supreme value in the words “one hour.” For the temptation that is thus met in the spirit of Christ is a brief one. It loses its power over us, and every successful resistance of it makes it less formidable on its next return. That is the true watchfulness that watches not, like the old ascetics, that it may shun temptation, but, like Christ, that it may meet and subdue it. We see, in a word, that trial and temptation are rather less things to be shunned than blessings in disguise, angels with hidden wings. The first step, as Socrates has warned us, in spiritual progress is learning to know ourselves, our own powers and potentialities, just as the soldier learns the work of shield and spear and the measure of his own courage only in the heat of the fight. Above all, we learn our own weakness, and so open the way for fresh watchfulness. Temptation, thus used, becomes the great helper in human development. We grow larger under God’s discipline, and emerge from it with new faculties and a finer character. We have seen something of the deep things of God, and can never more shake off the vision of them. If we have thus watched with Christ, we are in a manner sharing His sufferings and receiving His sanctification; and though, if we are wise, we shall love good because it is good and hate evil because it is evil, quite apart from any results they bring, that may fairly be our hope and prospect in the hours when we are tempted. While, on the other hand, if we have slept in the time of trial, there is the miserable thought that we have disappointed our Master’s hope.
2. The appeal comes to us not only as individuals, but as members of the organic body we call “the Church.” Whatever may be thought of the very singular age in which we live, we are all agreed on one point, that it is an age of transition, a time whose thoughts and feelings and ideals are not fixed, permanent, complete. It is the one short hour in which we as Christians are called upon to watch with Him. And we can do it best not by engaging in theological disputes, still less by ignorantly rejecting the genuine results of historical or scientific research, or by trying vainly to smother the flame of free inquiry, but by more maintaining our Christian principles unshaken, by offering to men the sweet apology of a holy and self-devoted life, by making them feel that with us at least religion shall be a reality and not a form. Christianity is not a system of beliefs, but a life, a new life, in the world. “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” The thoughtfulness, therefore, and patience and self-devotion of our daily work may become the best apology for the Christian faith; for the new life that is thus lived in the spirit of Christ is an argument which men can neither answer nor ignore.—S. A. Alexander.
Mar_14:38. The nature and kinds of sins of infirmity.—One can scarce acquit the disciples of some degree of negligence and want of respect. But our Lord was pleased to put the mildest and most candid construction possible upon it. The night was far spent; sleep stole upon them unawares; and they were naturally slow and heavy, not apprehending how much depended upon that critical juncture. They intended no affront or disrespect to their Lord: they had a true and real, only not so lively and vigorous a concern for Him as they ought to have had; their spirit truly was willing, and they meant well; but yet, for want of quicker sentiments, they failed in the performance. It was natural infirmity which prevailed over their resolutions, which overpowered their very hearty and honest but languid endeavours.
I. What sins are properly sins of infirmity.—Their general nature is briefly described thus: that they are rather weak than wilful, having much more of frailty than of wilfulness in them. Something of wilfulness they must have, otherwise they could not be imputed as sins. But as the degree of wilfulness is small in comparison, and the frailty so much the greater, they have therefore their denomination from their most prevailing ingredient, and so are called sins of infirmity. They are a kind of slips, failings, or deviations, issuing from an honest and good heart, and carrying no malice prepense, no premeditated guile, no ill meaning in them—harmless almost as to the matter of them, and without any bad design. They are owing either to inadvertency, forgetfulness, surprise, strength of passion, or to the suddenness and violence of an unlooked-for temptation.
1. I begin with such as have respect to the inward thought. And here we are liable to offend two ways—either in not thinking as we ought to think, or in thinking as we ought not. Human frailty is too often and too sadly felt in what concerns the government of the thoughts. Who is there that does not often find distraction and wanderings and deadness at his prayers, private or public—but public more especially, as we there meet with more objects to divert the eyes and to turn off the attention? This kind of non-attention or absence of thought in religious exercises, so far as it is a sin (for it is not so always), is, generally speaking, a sin of infirmity, and no more. And it is then only to be reckoned among wilful sins, when a man makes a habit of it, and slothfully submits to it, without striving against it; or when it carries some contempt of the service with it, arising from some vicious principle of the mind. Besides the sin of infirmity now mentioned, I may name some others reducible to the same head,—such as the not thinking often enough or highly enough of God and His good providence; not having Him constantly in our thoughts, nor setting Him before our eyes; not attending to His calls, not regarding His judgments, nor being duly thankful for His mercies, etc. To these we may add, the not thinking how to lay hold of and to improve any opportunities we meet with of doing good in the world; and this through dulness, through inadvertency, or forgetfulness: for if we wilfully and designedly let slip the golden opportunity offered us, and despise the invitation, the sin is then wilful, and the offence presumptuous. Among sins of infirmity belonging to this head may be reckoned some kinds of unbelief, as both belief and unbelief respect the inward thoughts of the heart. Want of faith or trust in God’s words or His promises in some timorous minds may justly pass for a sin of infirmity. They despond and sink down in the day of adversity more than becomes them to do, as if they had forgot that the very hairs of their heads are all numbered, or as if they had never read that not so much as a sparrow falleth to the ground but by the order or with the permission of an All-knowing God. Hitherto I have been considering such sins of infirmity as respect the inward thoughts, in such cases wherein we do not think as we ought to think. There is another branch of the same head, which is the thinking as we ought not. The former is a sin of omission only, this of commission, both resting in the mind. When we are thinking of this world only, suppose in prayer-time or sermon-time, instead of thinking of a better, as most of us are apt to do—this, we hope, may pass for a sin of infirmity, if not chosen by us, nor designedly indulged. Sometimes profane, blasphemous thoughts will rise up in men’s minds; but if they be checked as soon as observed, and are not consented to, they are at most no more than sins of infirmity, owing generally to bodily indispositions. The same I say even of unchaste or malicious thoughts, if they are only short and transient, which abide not, which do not gain our consent, but are condemned by us as soon as perceived; they are then either sins of infirmity only, or not sins at all. For what the will or choice has no hand in is not imputable to us as a fault; it may be our misfortune. Too much warmth and eagerness, in some instances, is a sin of infirmity. Such, I suppose, was Peter’s eagerness, when he drew his sword, without staying for his Lord’s commission, and smote off a servant’s ear. To this head I may refer credulity or over-hasty belief, as being often a sin of infirmity and pertaining only to the mind. To the same head may be referred over-great carefulness or anxiety in respect of worldly things. Martha, a very good woman in the main, was yet careful and cumbered about many things more than she should have been; and she received a gentle rebuke for it from our Blessed Lord.
2. Many are our sins of infirmity in speech. Our greatest comfort is that several of them may pass for frailties only; and happy will it be for us if we go no farther. I am persuaded that even Peter’s denial of his Lord was rather weak than wilful; he was surprised into it, had forgot himself, and had not yet time to recollect. I should be willing to hope that hasty, heedless swearing, or taking God’s name in vain, in those who have unhappily got a habit of it from their childhood, may be but a sin of infirmity for some time; but to such as perceive it, and continue it, and use not all proper means and care to get the better of it, and to break the evil habit, to them it is wilful and deadly sin. Telling of lies I do not reckon among the sins of infirmity. It is, generally at least, a voluntary chosen thing. But varying a little from strict truth, or adding to it, as is sometimes done, undesignedly, hastily, forgetfully, in the making a report, if it be in things of slight consequence, that may be numbered among human frailties. Angry and passionate speeches may mostly fall under the head of infirmities; but bitter invectives, and irritating, injurious reflexions, made in cold blood, made deliberately, are without excuse. It would be endless to enumerate all the offences of the tongue which men are liable to. It is a difficult matter to talk much and well. Great talkers offend often, and they who say the least are generally the most innocent. Yet there may be a fault sometimes in being too reserved, shy, and silent—as when a man neglects to exhort or reprove his neighbour as occasions offer, or when he can patiently sit by and hear the name of God dishonoured or an innocent absent man abused without opening his mouth in defence of either. Such reservedness, in some cases, may rise no higher than a sin of infirmity; but for the most part we may more justly call it a wilful neglect, betraying meanness of spirit at least, or something worse.
3. I come now to the most material article of all, which concerns our outward actions. And here also we may offend two ways—either as neglecting to do what we ought, or doing what we ought not. Sins of infirmity are mostly seen in our manifold omissions and neglects, either forgetting what duties are incumbent upon us or performing them but in part. Hard would be our circumstances were we to give a strict account of all our omissions, or if much the greater part of them were not kindly overlooked by an All-merciful God, as pitiable frailties. Yet let not any man set light by omissions. Wilful omissions of known duties are wilful and presumptuous sins; and there are some kinds of omissions which will be always charged as wilful, and will be enough to exclude us from the kingdom of heaven, particularly if we omit or neglect to worship God or do good to man as our opportunities and abilities permit. I come next to speak of sins of commission, the doing what we ought not to do. Sins of this kind are mostly wilful; but some there are which may be justly looked upon as sins of infirmity. Drunkenness in righteous Noah, once only, might be a sin of infirmity. He was not aware of the effects of wine; he had not till then had experience of it; he was overtaken unawares, and surprised into it. I know not whether the like favourable excuse may not be admitted for others who may once unhappily fall into the like excess unawares. But, generally speaking, as the world now stands, a man can scarce be surprised into such excess or overtaken without his fault. Some have been weak enough to plead human frailty even for crying and scandalous sins, such as fornication or adultery or other sinful lusts. But all such pretences are vain. Sins of that kind never are, never can be, committed without great degrees of wilfulness. There are some other kinds of sins for which human infirmity is sometimes pleaded, and with very little reason—acts of hostility, assaults, beating, striking, wounding, and the like. Good men run sometimes into excessive warmth and zeal in the discharge of a duty or execution of an office. They may be guilty of indiscreet rigours, and push things too far—may be so afraid of not doing enough that they will even overdo, and be too officious or too severe, exceeding the bounds of Christian prudence, and doing hurt when they intended good. These and other the like indiscretions of good men are properly sins of infirmity, owing to inadvertency or surprise or to some natural weakness adhering to their particular temper, complexion, and constitution.
II. How far our spiritual state or condition is affected by the sins of this kind.—They do not exclude a man from the kingdom of heaven; they do not put him out of a state of grace, or out of favour with Almighty God. This may be proved several ways, both from Scripture texts and from the reason of the thing itself.
1. There are two or three special texts of Scripture which number up and recite such particular sins as will most certainly, if not repented of, exclude the offenders from the kingdom of heaven (see 1Co_6:9-10; Gal_5:19-21; Mat_25:41-43). Sins of mere infirmity are not the sins which either St. Paul or our Blessed Lord refer to as excluding men from the kingdom of heaven. They are quite of another kind from those now mentioned; and therefore they do not exclude the person from a state of grace, but are consistent with the love of God and the love of one’s neighbour, and so are not mortal or damning sins. They are the spots of God’s children, such as the best of men are not entirely free from, though they are not imputed to them.
2. There is the greatest reason and equity imaginable here shewn in making such distinctions between sins of infirmity and deliberate sins; because this is estimating of men according to their sincerity, and according to the turn of their hearts, of which God alone is the unerring Judge, and which He has chiefly respect to; because indeed the heart is the principal thing—the mind is the man.
III. What kind of conduct or management on our part is prudent or proper in regard to them.—
1. It concerns us to repent of them, that is, to express our sorrow and contrition for them, and to humble ourselves before God on the account of them. That they are sins is supposed, though not wilful or deliberate sins; and as they are sins, they will stand in need of pardon; and if they need pardon, they will also require repentance, which is the condition on which pardon is promised, and by means of which it will be given. But then the question is, “What kind of repentance?” First, a general repentance may suffice. We need not, we cannot be particular in all our sins of infirmity. Who can tell how oft he offendeth in this kind? We are not aware perhaps of one half or a tenth part of our failures, and therefore cannot particularly repent of them. And even those which we have been aware of, while fresh and new, yet easily slip out of our memories; and the very number of them, as they happen daily or hourly, is much too great to be distinctly considered or retained. But there is a farther difference between the repentance proper to wilful sins and the repentance required for human frailties. A man must not be content merely to confess and to declare his sorrow for wilful sins, but he must renounce and forsake them, and never rest satisfied till he has divested himself of them. But as to sins of infirmity the case is different. They are such as a good man may be content to live with and die with, and that because he never can entirely remove them from him. They are inseparable from flesh and blood, are interwoven into our very frame, and are as natural and necessary, in some degree at least, as it is to be weak or frail, unthinking or unobserving; or as it is to be liable to forgetfulness, fatigue, weariness, and the like.
2. We should farther add our devout prayers to God, to make us every day less and less liable to them, and not to impute them. The greater perfection we attain to, the more secure are we against falling back; and not only so, but we thereby become qualified for a higher and nobler reward.
3. We must use our best endeavours along with our prayers, to guard as much as possibly we can even against those smaller sins, lest they should lead to greater.—Archdeacon Waterland.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Mar_14:32. Retirement for prayer.—An afflicted heart ought to shut itself up from men by retirement, and to open itself to God by prayer. Christ, as the Good Shepherd, does that first Himself which He enjoins His sheep to do, preventing temptations by prayer. He prays retired, not out of any necessity, but both out of obedience to His Father, who had prescribed this to Him as well as all the rest, and out of love towards us, whom He would instruct, edify, and redeem by this means.—P. Quesnel.
Mar_14:33-36. Christ’s agony in Gethsemane was consistent with—
1. The affection of God towards Him. He suffered as the Substitute of guilty man (2Co_5:21)—according to the Divine plan (Joh_5:22)—with satisfaction to God (Joh_10:17).
2. Voluntary consecration.
(1) Christ was equal with God, and therefore could not be coerced.
(2) Christ was loved by God, and therefore would not be coerced.
(3) Christ was devoted to God, and therefore needed not to be coerced. It was not the nails but His love that bound Him to the Cross. He died when He could have lived.
3. Purity of character. He did not suffer because He sinned.
(1) Men testified to His purity. Judas, Pilate, Peter.
(2) Fiends testified to His purity. “Holy One of God.”
(3) God testified to His purity. “Well pleased.”
4. Consciousness of power to overcome opposition. “The prince of this world shall be cast out.” “And I, if I be lifted up,” etc. “It is finished.”
(1) He was fully conscious of the arduousness of His work.
(2) He experienced the terrible penalties of His work.
(3) He never shrank from the consequences of His work.
(4) He finally accomplished the design of His work.—B. D. Johns.
Christ’s agony of soul on account of sin.—He was, so to speak, mentally robing Himself for the great sacrifice; He was robing, He was folding round His sinless manhood, He was laying upon a sinless soul the sins of a guilty world. To us, indeed, the burden of sin is as natural almost as the clothes we wear; it sits on us as lightly, and for long tracks of life, it may be, we think nothing at all about it; but to Him the touch which we take so easily was an agony even in its lightest form. And when we consider the weight and magnitude, the subtle penetrating poison, the dreadful importunity of the burden which He willed to bear, when we think of that festering accumulation of ages, the sins of the men before the Flood, the sins of Egypt and of Babylon, the sins of Sodom, of Moab, of Philistia, of Tyre, the sins of Imperial Rome, of barbarous heathendom, and then, worse than these, the sins of Israel—sins of disobedience and stubbornness, sins of scorn and ingratitude, sins of cruelty and hypocrisy—when we think of all that was suggested to the mind of the Son of David as He looked up from the mount there in Gethsemane, and beheld in the moonlight the eastern wall of the city which was rejecting Him, on the hill over against the very spot where He knelt—when we recall that which touches us more nearly, the sins of redeemed Christendom, and Christian Churches, of Christian nations, of individual Christians—your sins and mine, our sins against light and knowledge, our sins against grace, our sins against merciful warnings and wholesome fears, all of them most intimately present to Him,—can we wonder that His bodily nature gave way, that His passion seemed to have been upon Him before its time, and that His sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood falling to the ground?—Canon Liddon.
Christ in Gethsemane an example to us.—It is not at all times that even good Christians can enter into the meaning of this solemn scene; but there are mental trials which interpret it to us, and which, in turn, are by us, if we will, transfigured into heavenly blessings.
1. There is the inward conflict which often precedes our undertaking hard or unwelcome duty or sacrifice; there is no doubt of the obligation, and the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. The eye measures the effort which is required, the length and degree of endurance which must be attempted ere the work is really done; and as the eye traverses the field before it, all the quick sensibilities of feeling start up and rehearse their past by anticipation, and cling to and clog and embarrass the will—the will already, perhaps, sufficiently sluggish or reluctant—that they may hold it back from the road of duty. Ah! struggles such as this between inclination and duty may be at times sorrow for the soul even unto death. When they come on you, brace yourselves by watching, by praying with Jesus in Gethsemane, that you may learn to say after Him, “Not my will but Thine be done.”
2. Then there are forms of doubt respecting God’s goodness and providence which are a great trouble at times to excellent Christians. There are, of course, obvious sources of relief for this calamity—wise books, thoughtful friends; but the best remedy is to kneel in spirit side by side with Jesus in Gethsemane. It is a prayer such as was His prayer, which struggles on under a darkened heaven into the light beyond.
3. And then, quite distinct from doubt, there is a desolateness of the soul, which, for long intervals of time, sometimes makes God’s service distasteful even to the best Christians. They who experience it can but kneel in their Gethsemane with that oft-repeated prayer, “Oh, my Father, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not what I will, but what Thou wilt.”
4. Lastly, there is the approach of death, which may come upon us suddenly as a thief in the night, but may be also ushered in, as it generally is, by a preface of weakening health and lingering sickness. “I was sitting at luncheon,” said one of the best of Christ’s servants in this generation, “and I suddenly felt as I never did before. I felt that something had given way. I knew what it meant, what it must mean. I went up into my room; I prayed God that He would enable me to bear what I knew was before me, and would at the last receive me, for His dear Son’s sake.” It was the close of a life as bright as it was beautiful, only there was much to leave behind, warm and affectionate friends, and an abundance of those highest satisfactions which come with constant and unselfish occupation; but it was the summons to another world, and, as such, it was obeyed. Death is awful, and that first gaze at the break up of all that we have hitherto called life must ever have about it a touch of agony; and yet if Jesus in Gethsemane is our Shepherd, surely we should lack nothing. “Yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we shall fear no evil,” for He is with us who has gone before, His rod and His staff comfort us.—Ibid.
Comfort to us from Christ’s agony.—In our reverential contemplation of Christ’s human perfections we are apt to overlook the important fact that they were not the result even of His original human nature left to itself, but as it was influenced and perfected by the same holy comfort which He has imparted to all His disciples. “He was made in all things like unto us, sin only excepted.” The tears which fell on the grave of Lazarus flowed from the same source out of which in unregenerate man springs weak repining or sullen discontent; his unwearied industry in “doing good” was but that which the miser or the ambitious man employs to other ends; and the calm fortitude with which He endured insult, pain, and death was formed out of the very same qualities which, ungoverned and misdirected, brought the guilty robber to a cross by His side. The materials were all human and our own, the workmanship alone Divine. And is the Lord’s arm shortened? Will not the same God that worketh in us also enable us like Him perfectly to will and to do of His good pleasure, if only the same mind be in us that was in Christ Jesus? It is true, indeed, that to us the Holy Spirit is given by measure; still that measure is a measure of grace sufficient for us.—S. Hinds.
Christ’s craving for sympathy.—Tender touch of nature to make Him with the whole world kin. In any great trial this craving of companionship, if no more; if no hand can help nor voice can soothe, yet a motionless, silent companionship; who is a stranger to the desire? It begins in childhood, when two infants will walk hand in hand “in the dark” where neither would go alone. Do these two innocents calculate that the twain are more defensible against “the giant” than one? By no means. It is the embryo of that wordless hunger of the soul, developing as life broadens, and finding its most exalted manifestation in Gethsemane. Invalids, who have counted the strokes of midnight wakeful hours, conjured by the wall-flashes and flickers of dim lamps, and need no other service, cry out, “Father! Mother! Some one!” It is nothing, only to hear you answer that you are there. Then we sit by them, long and patiently, perhaps dozing disciple-like as we hold their hands, saying and doing nothing, but being—near them. Jesus knew, as the crisis approached, that the acme of sorrow must ever be met in solitude; but up to the outer vestibule of that solitude He brought the eight disciples, and to the last inner door He brought the three. Even when He must be alone, in conflict and victory, He yet emerges twice to feel the helpfulness of His beloved near Him. He wants our sympathy still in His warfare with sin on the earth. He who so wanted the society of men will have His own with Him where He is, at last and for ever.—E. J. Haynes.
Mar_14:35. Secret prayer.—The prayer of Jesus Christ was secret. He had withdrawn Himself from His disciples. They were not able to bear the sight of such a conflict. Even at this distant period we read of it with painful emotions. The transactions of the soul with God demand secrecy. A deeper humiliation may become us before God than it would be proper for any about us to witness. We do well, therefore, to seek opportunities of retirement, and should reserve large portions of our time for the purpose of drawing nigh to God.—O. A. Jeary.
“Fell on the ground.”—With His face to the earth—a posture betokening far more abasement and earnestness than even kneeling. That the Son of God should have prayed in such a posture teaches us the fearful darkness of that shadow of death which He had resolved to pass through on our account; that the Son of God should have prayed in such a posture teaches us that we must worship God with the worship of the body. What a reproof to those who would fain make a shew of prayer, sitting at ease, to see the Holy One of God prostrated on the ground!—M. F. Sadler.
Mar_14:36. Submission to the will of God.—There is no Christian grace which we have oftener occasion to exercise than that of an humble and patient submission to the will of God.
1. There are few moments of our lives in which we are not either under the pressure of some evil which lies heavy upon our minds, or under the apprehension of some grievous calamity which hangs over our heads and is ready to fall down upon us. In both these cases an entire resignation to the good pleasure of God is necessary, that we should without repining bear whatever He hath been pleased to inflict, and that we should have our minds well prepared to endure whatever He in His infinite wisdom shall think expedient farther to lay upon us.
2. Those who have taken the greatest care to arm themselves against the time of conflict find it sometimes difficult enough to stand their ground and to come off conquerors in the day of battle; but those who have in their prosperous state made no provision against adversity, those who fall into the midst of troubles defenceless and unarmed, those who are then to learn the hard duty of submission when they are called to practise it, will be much more at a loss how to bear up against evils unforeseen and unprovided against, and how to demean themselves in the needful time of trouble.
3. The difficulties with which we are to encounter during our pilgrimage in this world are very many and very great, so many that we may not hope by any foresight to escape them all, and some of them so great that without due preparation we cannot expect to be patient under them. Liable we are to be attacked with troubles of mind and with pains of body, with losses of our nearest and dearest friends, with the ruin of our estates, and with the blastings of our reputations: these we are obnoxious to in our own persons, and in the persons of those who are so closely tied to us by blood or by friendship, by affection or by interest, that what happens to them touches us as nearly and afflicts us as sensibly as what happens to ourselves.
4. Upon all these occasions which do so frequently occur, which are now, it is to be feared, present to many of us, and which to those who may think them at a very great distance may probably be much nearer than they imagine, submission to the will of God is a duty which we are called to exercise, and which therefore it concerns us to be well acquainted with and to be well prepared for.—Bishop Smalridge.
“Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me,” was the first thought that human frailty suggested even to our Blessed Saviour Himself; and therefore it cannot be blameworthy in us if upon the first hasty view of any great calamity ready to overtake us we do in the like manner desire and beg that we may escape it; but when we have time to consider and deliberate, we must bring our natural desires under a strict discipline, and curb them with the same restraint as Christ did: “Nevertheless, not what I will, but what Thou wilt.”—Ibid.
Christ’s two wishes.—Christ is not two Christs, but one; yet has He two wishes—a general wish, and a particular wish. His particular wish is to escape this suffering, His general wish that God’s will be done. The one is the wish for His own sake, the other the wish for God’s sake. The one is a temporary wish, the other an enduring wish. If Christ knew not before He prayed what was possible and what impossible, how much less likely is it that we should know?—Jas. Lonsdale.
Obedience learnt by suffering.—No one has ever learned obedience to the will of God, and joy in that obedience, except through suffering. He who endures because he must suffers only as a servant. He who endures only because he hopes to gain something by it is not a Christian at all. Christ’s submission is a lesson of utter unselfishness. “God has good ends in view for you,” we say, to console the sufferer. But God had ends in view in Christ’s sufferings, not for His Son, but for His Son’s enemies. He only has learned to suffer as a son who has found that the will of God is sweet even when it involves what is in itself bitter. To suffer gladly because it is our Father’s will is to have learned obedience. When that is learned, the Christian need not wait for great afflictions, but finds in every little trial, every disappointment, each daily cross and care, a discipline to bring him into richer revelations of sonship with God.
Mar_14:37. “Couldest not thou watch one hour?”—Probably many of us would be discomposed by an arithmetical estimate of our communion with God. It might reveal to us the secret of much of our apathy in prayer, because it might disclose how little we desire to be alone with God. We might learn from such a computation that Augustine’s idea of prayer as “the measure of love” is not very flattering to us. We do not grudge time given to a privilege which we love. Why should we expect to enjoy a duty which we have no time to enjoy? Do we enjoy anything which we do in a hurry? Enjoyment presupposes something of mental leisure. How often do we say of a pleasure, “I wanted more time to enjoy it to my heart’s content.” But of all employments none can be more dependent on “time for it” than stated prayer. Fugitive acts of devotion, to be of high value, must be sustained by other approaches to God, deliberate, premeditated, regular, which shall be to those acts like the abutments of a suspension bridge to the arch that spans the stream. It will never do to be in desperate haste in laying such foundations. This thoughtful duty, this spiritual privilege, this foretaste of incorporeal life, this communion with an unseen Friend—can you expect to enjoy it as you would a repartee or a dance?—“The Still Hour.”
Mar_14:38. Watching and prayer.—If we must watch and pray, to prevent and withstand temptation, let us not be surprised that so many enter into it and fall thereby: it is for no other reason but because there are very few who watch and pray in that manner and with that constancy which they ought. Prayer is necessary in order to watch, and watchfulness in order to pray; and both the one and the other are so to secure us from temptation. Peter was deficient in vigilance because he was so in prayer; and through the neglect of both he fell, being overcome by the fear of death and the love of life.—P: Quesnel.
Mar_14:39. The simplicity and plainness of Christ in His prayers is an important lesson, and of great use and advantage. A Christian who prays to God is not an orator who would persuade by his eloquence, but a beggar who would move to compassion by his poverty and humility. These speak plainly and without ornament. And Jesus speaks thus to God because He has clothed Himself with our humility and poverty.—Ibid.
Trouble—great, searching, overwhelming trouble—has no varied diction. Sorrow has but few words. These are syllabled by lips that are pale and quivering. There is a terrible concentration in grief. The soul that groans under its pressure is swathed in darkness, even amid the splendour of high noon. The light is gone. The stars glitter no more. The voices of the loving are unheard. Oh the frightful abstraction of woe!—Dean Lefroy.
Mar_14:41-42. The past and the future.—He had warned the disciples in vain to watch and pray, and now it was too late for that—all was over; the opportunity had slipped away from them and was buried in the past, so that, as far as this duty went, they might sleep on, for it must remain for ever undone. But then He turned away at once from this contemplation of the unchangeable, and pointing onward to present duty He said, “Rise, let us be going.” The one thing was beyond their control, and though they might mourn they could not alter it; there would be no answer to their endeavours but “Too late,” so that it behoved them now to turn at once to the courses which were still open.—J. Percival, LL.D.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 14
Mar_14:32. The Garden of Gethsemane.—There is a garden in the Alps surrounded by dizzy peaks, mighty glaciers, yawning crevasses. There one hears the gurgling waters far beneath one’s feet, like the moan of imprisoned spirits. The approach to that lonely island in a frozen sea is through a broken way of ice and snow and frost. The route lies in uncertainty and even peril. No leaf, flower, or shrub appears along the icy sea. But when the garden is reached, the gentian and the forget-me-not, the saxifrage and the rose, are found decking the solitude with beauty and the scene with life. So here this Gethsemane garden has its environment of height and depth—of shadow, dark, dreary, and deathlike—of light, faint and full; but as we, by faith and in love, approach reverently near to Him who gives it all its meaning, we gather those fruits and flowers which ripen best in an atmosphere which was sanctified by the presence of the Man of Sorrows, and which for that reason are likely to be refreshing to those who, living His life, breathe His Spirit.—Dean Lefroy.
In communion with God.—There was each morning, during General Gordon’s first sojourn in the Soudan, one half-hour during which there lay outside his tent a handkerchief, and the whole camp knew the full significance of that small token, and most religiously was it respected by all there, whatever was their colour, creed, or business. No foot dared to enter the tent so guarded. No message, however pressing, was carried in. Whatever it was, of life or death, it had to wait until the guardian signal was removed. Every one knew that Gordon, in there alone, was in communion with God.
Mar_14:33. Mutual sympathy.—Christ asked His disciples to watch with Him in Gethsemane. Tender touch of nature to make Him with the whole world kin. Two infants will walk hand in hand “in the dark” where neither would go alone. Invalids, who have counted the strokes of midnight wakeful hours, conjured by the wall-flashes and flickers of dim lamps, and need no other service, cry out, “Father! Mother! Some one!” We sit by them, long and patiently, perhaps dozing disciple-like as we hold their hands, saying and doing nothing, but being near them. Through the streets of Paris, between prison and block, the most desperate were often observed sitting upon the cart’s edge hand in hand. Triumph wants friends also. Jesus wants our sympathy still in His warfare with sin on the earth. He who so wanted the society of men will have His own with Him where He is, at last and for ever.—Haynes.
Mar_14:36. Resignation to the Divine mill.—Epictetus, a heathen philosopher, thus prayed, “Great God, use me henceforward according to Thy pleasure. I am altogether of Thy mind. It is indifferent to me how Thou dealest with me; I refuse nothing if Thou seest it good for me; lead me where Thou thinkest it convenient; clothe me in what garment Thou pleasest, whether it be whole or torn, either shall be welcome; whether Thou wilt have me to bear the office of magistrate, or lead a private life; whether Thou wilt have me to stay in my own country, or let me be driven into exile; whether Thou wilt have me rich or poor; in all this, by my equanimity, I will justify Thee before men.” This from the lips of a heathen is wonderful, and the more so because real Christians seldom reach such an elevation of soul. The King of Arragon (Alfonso) was once asked whom he considered the most perfect man; and he replied, “Him who receives all things, whether sad or pleasant, as coming from a kind and wise Father’s hand, with an even mind.” And so it is now; he is the most perfect Christian who is not lifted up by prosperity, nor cast down by adversity; who, whatever happens to him, still looks beyond second causes to God, the great first cause of all; who makes it his daily business to desire nothing but that which God appoints; and whose constant prayer is, that God’s will may be fully carried out, and accomplished in him, and in all his concerns. Edward Payson, who was a great sufferer, being asked if he saw any particular reason for a dispensation, replied: “No, but I am as well satisfied as if I could see ten thousand. God’s will is the very perfection of all reason.” Mr. Simeon, on his death-bed, telling an inquiring friend of his dependence upon God, said: “He cannot do anything against my will.”
“Thy will be done.”—It is related that when St. Gertrude used to say the Lord’s Prayer she would repeat the words “Thy will be done” several times over. One day, when she was praying in this manner, the Saviour appeared to her holding health in His right hand and sickness in His left. “Choose, My daughter, which you please,” said the Lord; to which she replied, “Thy will be done, not mine, O Lord.” Many an impressive homily on acquiescence to the Divine will has been written by sufferers. Richard Baxter was throughout life familiarised, as few are, with hours of sickness and prostration. Perhaps it was this habitual discipline of pain, causing him for long years to hover on the very border-land of death, which imparted so much pathos and fervency to his Saint’s Rest, and its realistic vision of “the better country.” Quaint and beautiful is his prayer—a formula of devout submission—to Him whose loving hand and wisdom he recognised in it all. “What Thou wilt; where Thou wilt; when Thou wilt!”
Mar_14:38. “Watch and pray.”—There is a custom among the Breton sailors, when launching their boats, to offer this prayer, “Keep me, my God; my boat is so small, and Thy ocean is so wide.” The life of a Christian may be likened unto a frail bark cast upon the mighty ocean, which unless rightly steered may run into some contrary current that will toss it about and turn its course. In this great ocean of ungodliness it is necessary to pray that the current of sin may not turn us from our course. “Pray that ye enter not into temptation”; and if ye do, “call upon Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver Thee,” saith the Lord. Prayer is not enough. Like the Scots when they conquered the English at Bannockburn, or the English when they conquered the French at Creçy, we are to rise from our knees; to stand up and fight; to quit us like men; “having done all,” to stand. We are to put on the whole armour of God; and since we know neither when nor where the adversary may assault us, we are never to put it off. Live and die in harness,—using such precautions as some say Cromwell did against the assassin’s dagger—his dress concealed a shirt of mail. In the council-chamber, at the banquet, in court as in camp, he wore it always. Let the good man go to his workshop, counting-room, market, the place of business, and scenes of enjoyment, as the peasant of the East to his plough, where fiery Bedouins scour the land, and bullets whistling from the bush may suddenly call him to drop the ox-goad and fly to arms. The sun glances on other iron than the ploughshare, a sword hangs at his thigh, and a gun is slung at his back.—T. Guthrie, D.D.
Mar_14:39. “Spake the same words.”—The late Rev. W. H. Krause, of Dublin, was visiting a lady in a depressed state—“weak, oh, so weak!” She told him that she had been very much troubled in mind that day, because in meditation and prayer she had found it impossible to govern her thoughts, and kept merely going over the same things again and again. “Well, my dear friend,” was his prompt reply, “there is provision in the gospel for that too. Our Lord Jesus Christ, when His soul was exceeding sorrowful, even unto death, three times prayed, and spoke the same words.” This seasonable application of Scripture was a source of great comfort to her.
Mar_14:40. The power of sleep.—The most violent passion and excitement cannot keep even powerful minds from sleep; Alexander the Great slept on the field of Arbela, and Napoleon upon that of Austerlitz. Even stripes and torture cannot keep off sleep, as criminals have been known to give way to it on the rack. Noises which at first serve to drive it away soon become indispensable to its existence; thus, while a stage-coach, stopping to change horses, wakens all the passengers, the proprietor of an iron forge, who slept close to the din of hammers, forges, and blast furnaces, would wake up if there was any interruption to them during the night; and a sick miller who had his mill stopped on that account passed sleepless nights until the mill resumed its usual noise. Homer, in his Iliad, elegantly represents sleep as overcoming all men, and even the gods, except Jupiter alone.
Mar_14:41. The hour of crisis.—Often has the fate of kingdoms and empires been left to the decision of an hour, and that hour of inconceivable importance to millions. Often have the rights and the liberties, the freedom or the slavery, of a nation depended upon the result of a contest where valour and patriotism and magnanimity struggled hard amidst the clash of arms and the din of war; and their bosoms have beat with trembling anxiety, as from lip to lip the important announcement passed, “The hour is come.” But although we could put together all the interesting anticipations, all the distressing and conflicting hopes and fears, all the important deeds and destinies that were ever suspended upon any hour in the world’s history, they would instantly sink into insignificance compared with the vast and eternal interests of innumerable myriads which were suspended upon the results of that hour which our Saviour declares in the text to be at hand. The fate of kingdoms and empires is nothing compared with the fate of the universe, upon whose destiny it was to bear its decision for eternity.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On v43 Mat 26:47-56; Mar 14:43-52; Luk 22:47-53;Joh 18:2-12. “And Judas,…
THE ARREST
Mat 26:47-56; Mar 14:43-52; Luk 22:47-53;Joh 18:2-12. “And Judas, the one betraying Him, knew the place, because frequently, Jesus, with His disciples, had resorted thither. Then Judas, taking a band and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees, comes thither with lanterns, torches, and arms.” The lantern was a closed- up light of some kind, fortified against the wind, while the torches were large, blazing flambeaux. Though the moon was very bright, as she was nearly full, it was exceedingly important to have plenty of light as a fortification against the liability of mistaking the wrong person, as they surmised that an effort would be made on the part of the disciples to elude them in that way; their great confidence, however, being in Judas, who was so intimately acquainted with Him. Thus they had taken every precaution to make sure that they arrested the One whom they had been pursuing these three years, and who had baffled them so frequently by rendering Himself invisible, and in various ways eluding their grasp till His work was done.
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Mar 14:43 : “And immediately, He speaking, Judas, being one of the twelve, comes, and a great multitude with him, with swords and clubs, from the chief priests, scribes, and elders.” A huge club, four or five feet long, is an exceedingly common weapon in that country now. I saw persons incessantly thus armed — quite a formidable weapon in the hands of a stalwart man.
Joh 18:4-9. “Then Jesus, knowing all things which are coming upon Him, having gone out, said to them, Whom do you seek? They responded to Him, Jesus the Nazarene. Jesus says to them, I am He?” Never did the world see another such a man as Jesus. When they came to crown Him King, He fled away; but when they came to kill Him, He went out to meet them. “Judas, the one betraying Him, also stood with them. Then, when He said to them, I am He, they went back, and fell upon the ground.” This is His last miracle, except healing the amputated ear, which speedily followed. Though He boldly comes out from the dense shade of those great olive-trees into the clear light of the moon, shining so brightly from that cloudless, Palestinian sky, and also into the strong light of a hundred flambeaux, so that it was as bright as day, and there was no trouble about recognition, yet, lo! an awful panic strikes them, so they retreat back and fall upon the ground like dead men. How easily He could have utterly baffled and defeated them, striking them all with the paralysis of incorrigible terror! But the time has come for Him to meet the bloody avalanche from the bottomless pit, and lay down His life for a lost world.
“Then again He asked them, Whom do you seek? And they said, Jesus the Nazarene. Jesus responded, I said to you that I am He. If then you seek Me, let these retire in order that the word which He spoke may be fulfilled, That I lost none of them whom Thou hast given Me.” They did not consider His disciples sufficiently important to deserve their attention at that time, as they were satisfied if they could only get the One who had given them so much trouble, and whose life they had so long been seeking in vain. Really, all their energies, aspirations, and wits were laid under contribution to secure the arrest and execution of Jesus.
Mat 26:48-50. “And the one having betrayed Him gave them a sign, saying, Whom I shall kiss is He; hold Him fast. And immediately coming to Jesus, he said, Hail, Master; and kissed Him copiously. Jesus said to him, Comrade, for what do you come? Then they, coming, laid hands on Jesus, and bound Him.” Joh 18:12. “Then the band, the chiliarch, and the officers of the Jews took Jesus and bound Him.” Such was their fear, solicitude, and anxiety for success that they all united in arresting and binding Him. Joh 18:10 : “Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the servant of the high-priest, and cut off his right ear. And the name to that servant was Malchus.” Mat 26:52 :
“Then Jesus said to Peter, Put up thy sword into its place; for all taking the sword shall perish by the sword.” (Gen 9:6.) Of course, those who use the sword are all liable to perish in that way. Luk 22:51 : “Jesus said, Hold on a little, and touching his ear He healed it.” The moment Peter smote Malchus, Jesus ordered him to put up his sword, stepped instantly to the wounded soldier, touched his ear and healed it, thus in His last miracle manifesting His loving kindness even to His enemies, who had that moment arrested Him, and He knew they were going to take His life. You see in the assault Peter made on the enemies of Jesus a brilliant manifestation of his native heroism. He feared the face of no man, but was brave enough to fight that whole army. It is a great mistake to conclude that he was deficient in natural courage because in the subsequent events of that awful night he displayed so signal cowardice. All this was because Jesus would not let him fight, and consequently he felt he was at the mercy of His enemies, who knew no mercy.
Mat 26:53-56. “Do you not think that I am able now to call on My Father, and He will send Me more than twelve legions of angels? How then can the Scriptures be fulfilled, because it behooveth it thus to be?” Those angels were ready, hovering around, and eager for the opportunity to snatch Him away from the cruel manacles of the bloodthirsty rabble and bear Him on pinions of light to the home of the glorified. Right there at Jerusalem a solitary angel had slain a hundred and eighty-five thousand Assyrian soldiers in one night. Doubtless the same angels who ministered to Him when tempted in the wilderness were hovering round. “At that hour Jesus said to the multitudes, You have come out as against a thief with swords and clubs to take Me. I sat daily with you, teaching in the temple, and you laid not hands on Me. But all this has taken place that the Scriptures of the prophets may be fulfilled. Then all of His disciples, leaving Him, fled.” When the mob first came they surrounded them altogether. Now that they have secured the only One they wanted, they break ranks, leaving an opening for the others all to run away, as they did not want to be encumbered with them at that time. If Jesus had not risen from the dead, thus creating a great popular sensation and weakening the hands of His enemies, they would have arrested and executed every one of His apostles, except Judas, as accomplices in the criminality in which they had falsely implicated Jesus. Now the apostles see that He is arrested and bound, completely in the hands of His enemies; hence, yielding to desperation and affright, they flee away.
Luk 22:53. “But this is your hour, and the power of darkness.” His enemies had repeatedly tried to arrest Him, stone Him, and destroy Him in any way they could; but invariably suffered utter defeat till now, when He is turned over to the powers of earth and hell to execute their vilest venom against His innocent person, and He thus becomes the vicarious substitute for every guilty sinner.
Mar 14:51-52. “And one certain young man follows Him, clothed with a linen cloth on his naked body. The young men arrest him; but he, leaving the linen cloth fled from them in a state of nudity.” It is believed that this young man was none other than the Apostle John and it is said that he fled away to the house of Rabbi Amos in the city, and there procured the robe of a Jewish priest, invested in which he returned, and remained with the Savior in all of His troubles, walking by His side to the tribunal of Annas, thence to the judgment-hall; of Caiaphas, thence to Pilate’s bar and to Herod’s tribunal, then back to Pilate, and on His way to Calvary. Standing by His side when He hung bleeding on the cross all this time hoping that He would revive, exercise His wonderful power, and extricate Himself from the hands of His enemies, till the Roman soldier came along and plunged the spear into His side, thus tearing His heart to pieces. It is said that when this cruel deed was done, all hope of His reviving taking its flight, John, yielding to despair, fainted. Let this be as it may, we see here that John was with Him after the flight of the other ten.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv32, 37, 38, 43 Mar 14:32 - Mar 14:42.
Mark
‘STRONG CRYING AND TEARS’
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Mar 14:32 - Mar 14:42.
The three who saw Christ’s agony in Gethsemane were so little affected that they slept. We have to beware of being so little affected that we speculate and seek to analyse rather than to bow adoringly before that mysterious and heart-subduing sight. Let us remember that the place is ‘holy ground.’ It was meant that we should look on the Christ who prayed ‘with strong crying and tears,’ else the three sleepers would not have accompanied Him so far; but it was meant that our gaze should be reverent and from a distance, else they would have gone with Him into the shadow of the olives.
‘Gethsemane’ means ‘an oil-press.’ It was an enclosed piece of ground, according to Matthew and Mark; a garden, according to John. Jesus, by some means, had access to it, and had ‘oft-times resorted thither with His disciples.’ To this familiar spot, with its many happy associations, Jesus led the disciples, who would simply expect to pass the night there, as many Passover visitors were accustomed to bivouac in the open air.
The triumphant tone of spirit which animated His assuring words to His disciples, ‘I have overcome the world,’ changed as they passed through the moonlight down to the valley, and when they reached the garden deep gloom lay upon Him. His agitation is pathetically and most naturally indicated by the conflict of feeling as to companionship. He leaves the other disciples at the entrance, for He would fain be alone in His prayer. Then, a moment after, He bids the three, who had been on the Mount of Transfiguration and with Him at many other special times, accompany Him into the recesses of the garden. But again need of solitude overcomes longing for companionship, and He bids them stay where they were, while He plunges still further into the shadow. How human it is! How well all of us, who have been down into the depths of sorrow, know the drawing of these two opposite longings! Scripture seldom undertakes to tell Christ’s emotions. Still seldomer does He speak of them. But at this tremendous hour the veil is lifted by one corner, and He Himself is fain to relieve His bursting heart by pathetic self-revelation, which is in fact an appeal to the three for sympathy, as well as an evidence of His sharing the common need of lightening the burdened spirit by speech. Mark’s description of Christ’s feelings lays stress first on their beginning, and then on their nature as being astonishment and anguish. A wave of emotion swept over Him, and was in marked contrast with His previous demeanour.
The three had never seen their calm Master so moved. We feel that such agitation is profoundly unlike the serenity of the rest of His life, and especially remarkable if contrasted with the tone of John’s account of His discourse in the upper room; and, if we are wise, we shall gaze on that picture drawn for us by Mark with reverent gratitude, and feel that we look at something more sacred than human trembling at the thought of death.
Our Lord’s own infinitely touching words heighten the impression of the Evangelist’s ‘My soul is exceeding sorrowful,’ or, as the word literally means, ‘ringed round with sorrow.’ A dark orb of distress encompassed Him, and there was nowhere a break in the gloom which shut Him in. And this is He who, but an hour before, had bequeathed His ‘joy’ to His servants, and had bidden them ‘be of good cheer,’ since He had ‘conquered the world.’
Dare we ask what were the elements of that all-enveloping horror of great darkness? Reverently we may. That astonishment and distress no doubt were partly due to the recoil of flesh from death. But if that was their sole cause, Jesus has been surpassed in heroism, not only by many a martyr who drew his strength from Him, but by many a rude soldier and by many a criminal. No! The waters of the baptism with which He was baptized had other sources than that, though it poured a tributary stream into them.
We shall not understand Gethsemane at all, nor will it touch our hearts and wills as it is meant to do, unless, as we look, we say in adoring wonder, ‘The Lord hath made to meet on Him the iniquity of us all.’ It was the weight of the world’s sin which He took on Him by willing identification of Himself with men, that pressed Him to the ground. Nothing else than the atoning character of Christ’s sufferings explains so far as it can be explained, the agony which we are permitted to behold afar off.
How nearly that agony was fatal is taught us by His own word ‘unto death,’ A little more, and He would have died. Can we retain reverence for Jesus as a perfect and pattern man, in view of His paroxysm of anguish in Gethsemane, if we refuse to accept that explanation? Truly was the place named ‘The Olive-press,’ for in it His whole being was as if in the press, and another turn of the screw would have crushed Him.
Darkness ringed Him round, but there was a rift in it right overhead. Prayer was His refuge, as it must be ours. The soul that can cry, ‘Abba, Father!’ does not walk in unbroken night. His example teaches us what our own sorrows should also teach us-to betake ourselves to prayer when the spirit is desolate. In that wonderful prayer we reverently note three things: there is unbroken consciousness of the Father’s love; there is the instinctive recoil of flesh and the sensitive nature from the suffering imposed; and there is the absolute submission of the will, which silences the remonstrance of flesh. Whatever the weight laid on Jesus by His bearing of the sins of the world, it did not take from Him the sense of sonship. But, on the other hand, that sense did not take from Him the consciousness that the world’s sin lay upon Him. In like manner His cry on the Cross mysteriously blended the sense of communion with God and of abandonment by God. Into these depths we see but a little way, and adoration is better than speculation.
Jesus shrank from ‘this cup,’ in which so many bitter ingredients besides death were mingled, such as treachery, desertion, mocking, rejection, exposure to ‘the contradiction of sinners.’ There was no failure of purpose in that recoil, for the cry for exemption was immediately followed by complete submission to the Father’s will. No perturbation in the lower nature ever caused His fixed resolve to waver. The needle always pointed to the pole, however the ship might pitch and roll. A prayer in which ‘remove this from me’ is followed by that yielding ‘nevertheless’ is always heard. Christ’s was heard, for calmness came back, and His flesh was stilled and made ready for the sacrifice.
So He could rejoin the three, in whose sympathy and watchfulness He had trusted-and they all were asleep! Surely that was one ingredient of bitterness in His cup. We wonder at their insensibility; and how they must have wondered at it too, when after years taught them what they had lost, and how faithless they had been! Think of men who could have seen and heard that scene, which has drawn the worshipping regard of the world ever since, missing it all because they fell asleep! They had kept awake long enough to see Him fall on the ground and to hear His prayer, but, worn out by a long day of emotion and sorrow, they slept.
Jesus was probably rapt in prayer for a considerable time, perhaps for a literal ‘hour.’ He was specially touched by Peter’s failure, so sadly contrasted with his confident professions in the upper room; but no word of blame escaped Him. Rather He warned them of swift-coming temptation, which they could only overcome by watchfulness and prayer. It was indeed near, for the soldiers would burst in, before many minutes had passed, polluting the moonlight with their torches and disturbing the quiet night with their shouts. What gracious allowance for their weakness and loving recognition of the disciples’ imperfect good lie in His words, which are at once an excuse for their fault and an enforcement of His command to watch and pray! ‘The flesh is weak,’ and hinders the willing spirit from doing what it wills. It was an apology for the slumber of the three; it is a merciful statement of the condition under which all discipleship has to be carried on. ‘He knoweth our frame.’ Therefore we all need to watch and pray, since only by such means can weak flesh be strengthened and strong flesh weakened, or the spirit preserved in willingness.
The words were not spoken in reference to Himself, but in a measure were true of Him. His second withdrawal for prayer seems to witness that the victory won by the first supplication was not permanent. Again the anguish swept over His spirit in another foaming breaker, and again He sought solitude, and again He found tranquillity-and again returned to find the disciples asleep. ‘They knew not what to answer Him’ in extenuation of their renewed dereliction.
Yet a third time the struggle was renewed. And after that, He had no need to return to the seclusion, where He had fought, and now had conclusively conquered by prayer and submission. We too may, by the same means, win partial victories over self, which may be interrupted by uprisings of flesh; but let us persevere. Twice Jesus’ calm was broken by recrudescence of horror and shrinking; the third time it came back, to abide through all the trying scenes of the passion, but for that one cry on the Cross, ‘Why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ So it may be with us.
The last words to the three have given commentators much trouble. ‘Sleep on now, and take your rest,’ is not so much irony as ‘spoken with a kind of permissive force, and in tones in which merciful reproach was blended with calm resignation.’ So far as He was concerned, there was no reason for their waking. But they had lost an opportunity, never to return, of helping Him in His hour of deepest agony. He needed them no more. And do not we in like manner often lose the brightest opportunities of service by untimely slumber of soul, and is not ‘the irrevocable past’ saying to many of us, ‘Sleep on now since you can no more do what you have let slip from your drowsy hands’? ‘It is enough’ is obscure, but probably refers to the disciples’ sleep, and prepares for the transition to the next words, which summon them to arise, not to help Him by watching, but to meet the traitor. They had slept long enough, He sadly says. That which will effectually end their sleepiness is at hand. How completely our Lord had regained His calm superiority to the horror which had shaken Him is witnessed by that majestic ‘Let us be going.’ He will go out to meet the traitor, and, after one flash of power, which smote the soldiers to the ground, will yield Himself to the hands of sinners.
The Man who lay prone in anguish beneath the olive-trees comes forth in serene tranquillity, and gives Himself up to the death for us all. His agony was endured for us, and needs for its explanation the fact that it was so. His victory through prayer was for us, that we too might conquer by the same weapons. His voluntary surrender was for us, that ‘by His stripes we might be healed.’ Surely we shall not sleep, as did these others, but, moved by His sorrows and animated by His victory, watch and pray that we may share in the virtue of His sufferings and imitate the example of His submission.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On v43 J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [CXXIV. Jesus Betrayed].
J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [CXXIV. Jesus Betrayed].
CCXXIV. JESUS BETRAYED, ARRESTED, AND FORSAKEN. (Gethsemane. Friday, several hours before dawn.) aMATT. XXVI. 47-56; bMARK XIV. 43-52; cLUKE XXII. 47-53; dJOHN XVIII. 2-11.
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d2 Now Judas also, who betrayed him, knew the place: for Jesus ofttimes resorted thither with his disciples. [See 2Ki_6:8-12). Jesus asked, "Whom seek ye?" (1) To openly and manfully declare his identity; (2) to make the Jewish rulers fully conscious that they were arresting him, an innocent man; (3) to confine the arrest to himself and thus deliver his disciples. The older commentators regard the falling to the ground as a miracle, but modern scholars look upon it as a result of sudden fear. Jesus merely manifested his dignity and majesty, and the prostration followed as a natural result.] a48 Now he that betrayed him gave bhad given them a token, aa sign, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that is he: take him. band lead him away safely. cand he drew near unto Jesus to kiss him. 48 But Jesus said unto him, Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss? b45 And when he was come, astraightway he came to Jesus, and said bsaith, aHail, Rabbi; and kissed him. 50 And Jesus said unto him, Friend, do that for which thou art come. [Some place this event before the preceding paragraph. It comports better with the fitness of things to place it here. Jesus made Judas feel his utter nothingness, and his worthlessness even as a betrayer. Before Judas can in any way identify Jesus, the Lord had twice declared himself to be the party whom they sought. When he approaches to carry out his contract, the Lord's question exposes him before all as a betrayer, and not a disciple as he wished to appear to be (for kissing was the common mode of salutation between men, especially between teacher and pupils), and when Judas brazenly persists in completing the sign, Jesus bids him do it, not as a friend, but as a traitor. Little did the betrayer think that the kiss of Judas would become a proverb in every nation.] Then they came [690] and laid hands on Jesus, and took him. [The sight of Judas touching him no doubt reassured them, and they laid hands on Jesus.] c49 And when they that were about him saw what would follow, they said, Lord, shall we smite with the sword? b47 But a51 And behold, d10 Simon Peter ba certain one of them that stood by athat were with Jesus dtherefore having a sword astretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and smote dstruck athe servant of the high priest, and struck dcut off his right ear. [We have seen that the apostles were but scantily armed, there being only two swords in their possession. See Joh_18:16). He knew Malchus by name, and he also knew his kindred-- Joh_18:26.] c51 But Jesus answered and said, Suffer ye them thus far. And he touched his ear, and healed him. [Some think that Jesus spoke these words, "Suffer ye thus far," to those who held him, asking them to loose him sufficiently to enable him to touch the ear of Malchus. But the revision committee by inserting "them" make Jesus address his disciples, commanding them not to interfere with those who were arresting him, making it a general statement of the idea which the Lord addressed specifically to Peter in the next sentence.] a52 Then d11 Jesus therefore said asaith dunto Peter, aPut up again thy dthe sword into the sheath: aits place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. dthe cup which the Father hath given me, shall I not drink it? [By the healing of Malchus' ear and the words spoken to Peter, Jesus shows that the sword is not to be used either to defend the truth or to advance his kingdom. Had he not thus spoken and acted, Pilate might have doubted his words when he [691] testified that his kingdom was not of this world ( Joh_18:36). While we know better than to rely upon the aid of the sword for the advance of truth, we are often tempted to put undue trust in other "carnal weapons" which are equally futile. Wealth and eloquence and elaborate church buildings have but little saving grace in them. It is the truth which wins. By using the word "cup" John gives us an echo of the agony in Gethsemane, which suggests that he expects his readers to be conversant with the other Gospels. The other Evangelists, having shown that Jesus was fully resolved to drink the cup, do not regard it as necessary to repeat these words.] a53 Or thinkest thou that I cannot beseech my Father, and he shall even now send me more than twelve legions of angels? 54 How then should the scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be? [Jesus still addresses Peter. Had it accorded with the divine purpose that Jesus should resist this arrest, angels and not men would have been his proper and infinitely more effective rescuers. But, on the contrary, it was God's purpose that he should be arrested, as the Scripture had foretold.] 55 In that hour bJesus answered and said unto them athe multitudes, cthe chief priests, and captains of the temple, and elders, that were come against him, Are ye come out, as against a robber, with swords and staves? ato seize me? c53 When aI sat bwas daily with you in the temple teaching, cye stretched not forth your hands against me: band ye took me not: cbut this is your hour, and the power of darkness. a56 But all this is come to pass, that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled. [The party which came to arrest Jesus was large. The word "band" used by John to describe part of it is speira, which is the Greek name for the cohort, a division of the Roman army which in the time of Augustus contained 555 men. Ten cohorts, or a legion, were usually quartered in the castle Antonia, at the northwest corner of the temple enclosure. That the whole cohort was present is not likely ( Mat_27:27), but there was a large enough body to represent it. The [692] Evangelists therefore properly style it a great multitude. Moreover, it was a motley crowd. Its strength and diversity suggest the fear that Jesus might miraculously defend himself. Each part of the crowd found courage in the strength possessed by the other part, the priests relying upon the solidity of the soldiers, the soldiers superstitiously trusting to some spiritual power residing in the priests, etc. Now, because of these fears, the preparation was as great as if some band of robbers was to be taken. The questions of Jesus, therefore, show two facts: 1. By their extensive preparation the rulers bore an unintentional testimony to his divine power. 2. By their failure to arrest him openly in the temple, they bore witness to his innocence. With his divinity and his innocence, therefore, Jesus challenges them, referring to their own conduct for testimony thereto. In conclusion, he cites them to the Scriptures which they were fulfilling. Our Lord's dual reference to the Old Testament at this sacred time should cause us to handle them with awe and reverence.] b50 And aThen all of the disciples left him, and fled. b51 And a certain young man followed with him, having a linen cloth cast about him, over his naked body: and they lay hold on him; 52 but he left the linen cloth, and fled naked. [All the predictions of Jesus had failed to prepare the apostles for the terrors of his arrest. Despite all his warnings, each apostle sought his own safety. The young man who fled naked is usually presumed to be Mark himself, and it is thought that he thus speaks impersonally after the manner of Matthew and John. The manner of his description shows that he was not an apostle. As Mark's mother resided in Jerusalem ( Act_12:12, Act_12:25), Canon Cook advances the theory that the Lord's Supper was eaten in the upper room of her house, and that when the disciples retired with Jesus from thence to Gethsemane, Mark slipped from his bed, threw his sindon about him, and followed after them. The sindon, or linen vestment, was very costly, not being worn even by the middle classes: no apostle would be thus attired.] [693]
[FFG 689-692]
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv36, 38, 41, 45 See note on the meaning of the cup. (See…
cup
See note on the meaning of the cup. (See Scofield "Mat 26:39").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv32, 35, 43, 46 The beginning of the agony:
The beginning of the agony:
v. 32. And they came to a place which was called Gethsemane; and He saith to His disciples, Sit ye here while I shall pray.
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v. 33. And He taketh with Him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed and to be very heavy;
v. 34. and saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death. Tarry ye here and watch.
During the discussion which followed the prediction of Christ they had reached the goal of their journey, Gethsemane. At the entrance Jesus turned to the greater number of the apostles, eight of them, since Judas had left, and bade them sit down while He prayed. As in many other trying situations, He wanted to lay the matter which was oppressing Him into the hands of His heavenly Father. No matter how great the cross and the affliction, the Christian is always safest if He places it in the hands of God, for then the strength for bearing it will be forthcoming, 1Co 10:13. Only His three intimate disciples, Peter, James, and John, He took with Him into the garden. And now began the agony of Christ. "Note: He had known during all the years of His ministry what He would have to endure at its end, in the great Passion. He had repeatedly talked to His disciples about it. But now that the hour was upon Him, now that He realized with vivid intensity what it meant to be burdened with the load of the whole world’s sin and guilt, it rose before His dazed senses a! an appalling revelation. He was amazed, horrified, He was oppressed with a dismal fear. Excessively sorrowful, with a sorrow which no human tongue could express, was His soul, even unto death. The load which had been placed upon Him, the guilt which was searing His soul, threatened Him with death, brought Him face to face with the king of terrors. He, as the greatest of all sinners, felt the curse of death upon the sins He was bearing a million-fold. The anguish caused Him to cling to the three disciples with the pitiful appeal: Remain here and watch! "Such anguish Christ, our dear Lord, wanted to suffer for the honor of His heavenly Father and for the benefit of us men, in order that we might henceforth have a Lord over such anguish, when our face becomes pointed and thin, when our eyes grow dark and sightless, our tongue cannot speak, and our head cannot think: that we then cling to this Man who has conquered this terror and drowned it in Himself. Therefore our anguish also cannot be so great as it was in His heart, for Christ conquered the greatest anguish in His innocent heart, and in His clean, pure blood He has extinguished and overcome the bitter rage and the poisonous, fiery darts of the devil, in order that we might comfort ourselves with His victory. The devil surely shot his fiery darts into Him and pressed them into His heart, saying: Thou art no longer in God’s grace, etc. And these darts He has extinguished in His innocent heart, in His delicate body, and in His pure blood, and has let them enter so deeply that they have become dull and no longer have any power over us. This the suffering of other saints cannot accomplish,... but that of Christ only."
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv32, 35, 37, 40, 43 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
When they go to Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives, Jesus encourages three of his disciples to stay awake while he prays. Twice he awakens them, and the third time he tells them to wake up because it is time for the betrayal.
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They came to the place
The word "they" refers to Jesus and his disciples.
distressed
overwhelmed with sorrow
deeply troubled
The word "deeply" refers to Jesus being greatly troubled in his soul. AT: "extremely troubled" (See: Metaphor)
My soul is
Jesus speaks of himself as his "soul." AT: "I am" (See: Synecdoche)
even to the point of death
Jesus is exaggerating because he feels so much distress and sorrow that he feels like he is about to die, though he knows he will not die until after the sun rises. (See: Hyperbole and Generalization)
watch
The disciples were to stay alert while Jesus prayed. This does not mean that they were supposed to watch Jesus pray.
translationWords
Gethsemane
pray
Peter
James (son of Alphaeus)
John (the apostle)
trouble
soul
watch
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv32, 33, 35, 37, 41, 43, 44 14:32 Gethsemane (Aramaic, “oil press”) remains an olive grove…
14:32 Gethsemane (Aramaic, “oil press”) remains an olive grove to this day. It is called a garden in John 18:1, and Luke 22:39 indicates that it was a favorite place for Jesus and his disciples.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.