We continue from yesterday's meditation on the cup Jesus had to drink in the Garden of Gethsemane. The cup Christ drank was more than enduring humiliation at the hands of evil men and more than being crucified; it was about putting on and fully clothing Himself in our sin as God’s sacrificial Lamb.
We find it difficult to be holy because our natural tendency, our default nature, is toward sin. It was completely different for our Lord Jesus, because He had never known sin. He has always been Holy. He was born of a virgin through the Holy Spirit and was not conceived in the usual way, so He did not have a sinful flesh nature. He remained sinless throughout His life so that He could die as an innocent substitutionary Lamb for us and as us. The apostle Peter was with Him for more than three years, yet he said about Christ: “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth” (1 Peter 2:22).
As the Holy One, Christ's struggle that day in the garden was to put on sin and become the living embodiment of sin. His striving was not against sin but to be clothed in sin, even though every fiber of His Holy being was repulsed by sin. “Your eyes are too pure to approve evil, and You cannot look on wickedness with favor” (Habakkuk 1:13). How wonderful is His love! “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). The temptation Christ faced was to abandon His holiness and embrace sin—every sin, past, present, and future—for all humanity.
Perhaps one might say that Jesus wasn’t tempted because He was holy, but in reality, He was tempted far worse than we are so that He could truly understand what we feel when tempted.
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet he did not sin (Hebrews 4:15).
What was truly different was that Christ would be separated from His Father for a time. When Christ hung on the cross, the world's sins were laid upon Him, and the Father, who cannot look at sin, left Christ for a time. Sins of the deepest kind would stain the perfect character of Christ; every sin you and I have ever committed was laid on Him, not just sins of the present but also those of the past and future. That is why He cried out from the cross; “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Those who believe there are many ways to God cannot explain why the Father refused to choose any other option but for His Son to drink the dregs of the cup of wrath. There was no other way. If there had been, God would have taken it rather than send His Son to suffer for mankind's sins.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, a spiritual battle unfolded in the unseen realm against Jesus. If we could have glimpsed into the spiritual realm in the Garden, we might have seen powerful, demonic forces trying to persuade Christ to turn away from obeying the Father's will. Jesus faced a choice: would He surrender His own will to fulfill the Father's plan? God invites us all to lay down our own desires and walk the path of the cross with Jesus. Some believe Satan was trying to prevent Christ from going to the cross, while others think the struggle in the garden was about convincing Jesus to say no to the Father's will. Satan didn't realize what would be accomplished through Christ’s crucifixion; otherwise, he would have stopped his minions from executing it. Paul the apostle captured this, saying, “None of the rulers of this age understood it. For if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8). Thank you, Lord, for your great love for us.
The video teaching on Jesus in Gethsemane is one of 64 YouTube videos. Here’s the link to it: https://youtu.be/GLBuK6QlBnU
The complete written Study 60 in Luke is at the following link: Jesus at Gethsemane.
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