Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Mark 14:32

And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane: and he saith to his disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray.

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.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

32 42. The Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

See the notes at Mat 26:36-46.

Mar 14:36

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.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Mar 14:32-36

Which was named Gethsemane.

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!

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

See Poole on “Mat 26:36“, and following verses to Mat 26:46.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

And they came to a place which is named Gethsemane,…. At the foot of the Mount of Olives, where the olives, which grew in great plenty on the mount, were pressed: and where our Lord began to be bruised, for our sins:

and be saith to his disciples: to eight of them:

sit ye here while I shall pray; at some distance from hence;

[See comments on Mt 26:36].

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

The Agony in the Garden.

      32 And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane: and he saith to his disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray.   33 And he taketh with him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy;   34 And saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch.   35 And he went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him.   36 And 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.   37 And he cometh, and findeth them sleeping, and saith unto Peter, Simon, sleepest thou? couldest not thou watch one hour?   38 Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak.   39 And again he went away, and prayed, and spake the same words.   40 And when he returned, he found them asleep again, (for their eyes were heavy,) neither wist they what to answer him.   41 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.   42 Rise up, let us go; lo, he that betrayeth me is at hand.

      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 (John xvii.); 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 (v. 9), it is likely, with his family.

      II. Even into that retirement he took with him Peter, and James, and John (v. 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 (ch. x. 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 (v. 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. xv. 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, Matt. xvi. 23. When the devil had tempted him in the wilderness, it is said, He departed from him for a season (Luke iv. 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. ii. 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. v. 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 (v. 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 (v. 35); He fell on the ground, and prayed. It was but a little before this, that in prayer he lifted up his eyes (John xvii. 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 (v. 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 (v. 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 sy 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. xliii. 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. iii. 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 (v. 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, Luke xviii. 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. ii. 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, 2Co 12:7; 2Co 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, v. 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 (v. 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.

Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary

Which was named ( ). Literally, “whose name was.” On Gethsemane see on Mt 26:36.

While I pray ( ). Aorist subjunctive with really with purpose involved, a common idiom. Matthew adds “go yonder” ( ).

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

Gethsemane. See on Mt 26:36.

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

THE AGONY IN THE GARDEN, V. 32-34

1) “And they came to a place,” (kai erchontai eis chorion) “And they came to a plot of land,” a piece of land, a location at the foot of the Mount of Olives East of Jerusalem, near the brook Kedron, Joh 18:1.

2) “Which was named Gethsemane:” (hou to onoma Gethsemane) “Which name means “oil press,” garden of our Lord’s passion agony “unto death,” Mar 14:24; It was a place where He frequently went to pray, a thing known to Judas, who led the arresting party there, Luk 22:39; Joh 18:2-3.

3) “And He saith to His disciples,” (kai legei tois mathetais autou) “And He instructed His disciples,” as follows: (to those who had promised not only never to deny but also to die in colleague with Him, Mar 14:31)

4) “Sit ye here,” (hathisate hode) “You all just sit here,” Mat 26:36; He also instructed them to pray or be praying that they enter not into temptation, Luk 22:40.

5) “While I shall pray.” (heos proseukoomai) “While I pray for a while,” at a distance, with a little more privacy, Mat 26:36.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

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.

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 is derived from , away from home, or 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 allas 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 Fathers will. See Expository Times, vol. vi., No. 10, pp. 433, 434.

Mar. 14:41. The meaning of being uncertain, and the punctuation being equally undetermined, Christs 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 Lords 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 teachingonly 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 Gods 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 Satans 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 Lords 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 virtues sake. Sufferingand by that I mean all the pains and trials, physical, intellectual, spiritual, which attack mankindis 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. Christs suffering did not shake His confidence in God.All things are possible unto Thee; remove this cup from Me. There was the recognition of Gods 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 natures cupboard is empty and cannot be replenished? Nay; we remember it lay as helpless but a year ago; but creeping beneath the suns 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 Gods 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 Gods ability, the result will be disappointment and unbelief; and according to the estimate we had of Gods ability there will follow this bitterness. Howbeit, not what I will, but what Thou wilt.

II. The complete submission of Christs will to the Fathers.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 souls 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 Gods 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 Fathers 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 Lords 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 ChristHis 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 insightwe 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 wronga 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 Gods 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 Masters 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 themharmless 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 wayseither 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 publicbut 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 Gods 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 dothis, 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 mens 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 Peters eagerness, when he drew his sword, without staying for his Lords commission, and smote off a servants 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 Peters 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 Gods 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 silentas 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 wayseither 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 reasonacts 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 farmay 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 ones neighbour, and so are not mortal or damning sins. They are the spots of Gods 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 thingthe 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. Christs 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.

Christs 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 Israelsins of disobedience and stubbornness, sins of scorn and ingratitude, sins of cruelty and hypocrisywhen 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 kneltwhen we recall that which touches us more nearly, the sins of redeemed Christendom, and Christian Churches, of Christian nations, of individual Christiansyour 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 willthe will already, perhaps, sufficiently sluggish or reluctantthat 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 Gods goodness and providence which are a great trouble at times to excellent Christians. There are, of course, obvious sources of relief for this calamitywise 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 Gods 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 Christs 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 Sons 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 Christs agony.In our reverential contemplation of Christs 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 Lords 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.

Christs 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 beingnear 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 eartha 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.

Christs two wishes.Christ is not two Christs, but one; yet has He two wishesa general wish, and a particular wish. His particular wish is to escape this suffering, His general wish that Gods will be done. The one is the wish for His own sake, the other the wish for Gods 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. Christs 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 Christs sufferings, not for His Son, but for His Sons 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 Fathers 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 Augustines 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 hearts 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 Friendcan 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.

Troublegreat, searching, overwhelming troublehas 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 thatall 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 ones 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 depthof shadow, dark, dreary, and deathlikeof 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 Gordons 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 carts 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 Fathers 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 Gods 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. Gods 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 Lords 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 Saints Rest, and its realistic vision of the better country. Quaint and beautiful is his prayera formula of devout submissionto 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 Crey, 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 assassins daggerhis 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 stateweak, 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 worlds 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.

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

1. FRIDAY 1. STRONG CRYING AND TEARS 14:32-42

TEXT: 14:32-42

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 sorrowfuleven 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.

THOUGHT QUESTIONS 14:32-42

803.

Why did Jesus go to Gethsemane? Did this visit fill a need in His heart? Show what significance this place had in the life of our Lord.

804.

What did Jesus want Peter, James and John to do while He was praying? Cf. Mar. 14:37.

805.

How would you explain the words greatly amazed, and sore troubled?

806.

How is the word soul used in Mar. 14:34?

807.

Was there any possibility of Jesus dying in the garden? Could this possibility be the cup which He asked might pass away?

808.

Is the hour of Mar. 14:35 the same as the cup of Mar. 14:36? Discuss.

809.

What is the meaning of the expression Abba as in Mar. 14:36 a?

810.

Didnt Jesus know the will of the Father?why then make the request He did?

811.

Wasnt the will of our Lord constantly the will of God?how shall we reconcile this fact with the request which includes my will and your will?

812.

What did Jesus want the three apostles to do that they did not do?what is included in the expression watch?

813.

Notice how Jesus addressed Peter, i.e. in namewhy?

814.

About what were the three to pray?

815.

What temptation was here present?

816.

Explain the little phrase the spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weakdo it in its context.

817.

Why repeat the prayer as in Mar. 14:39?

818.

What question did Jesus ask the disciples as in Mar. 14:40? Why no answer?

819.

In what attitude were the words, sleep on now, and take your rest spoken? Was Jesus ironic? critical? sympathetic? sad? explain.

820.

What was enough as in Mar. 14:41 b?

821.

Who were the sinners into whose hands the Son of man was betrayed?

COMMENT

TIME.Thursday evening, April 6th (14th Nisan), A.D. 30. With the Jews the 15th of Nisan had begun.
PLACE.Jerusalemthe Garden of Gethsemane.

PARALLEL ACCOUNTS.Mat. 26:36-46; Luk. 22:40-46.

OUTLINE.1. The place and persons of the Saviours agony, Mar. 14:32-34. 2. Surrender in prayer, Mar. 14:35-36. 3. Disappointing disciples, Mar. 14:37-38. 4. He prayed and wept alone, Mar. 14:39-40. 5. The Saviours hour and the disciples failure, Mar. 14:41-42.

ANALYSIS

I.

THE PLACE AND PERSONS OF THE SAVIOURS AGONY, Mar. 14:32-34.

1.

The place:Gethsemane.

2.

The persons:disciplesand the three.

3.

His agony:greatly amazedsore troubledexceeding sorrowful.

II.

SURRENDER IN PRAYER, Mar. 14:35-36.

1.

The place of surrender:he went forward a little, and fell on the ground,

2.

The struggle of the surrenderif it were possible, the hour might pass away from him.remove this cup from me.

3.

The victory in surrenderhowbeit not what I will, but what thou wilt.

III.

DISAPPOINTING DISCIPLES, Mar. 14:37-38.

1.

He came for comfort and found them asleep.

2.

He called Peter by his old name of Simonis one hour too long to watch for me?

3.

He helped them (when they should have helped Him) with a warningwatch (be spiritually vigilant) and prayin this way you (like me) will escape temptation. You have assented to my will but you can never carry it out without being spiritually awake and in prayeryour flesh is too weak for such action.

IV.

HE PRAYED AND WEPT ALONE, Mar. 14:39-40.

1.

Away from the apostlesalone with

Godthe same needthe same answer.

2.

Still asleepyielded to the fleshno

human answer to spiritual need.

V.

THE SAVIOURS HOUR AND THE DISCIPLES FAILURE, Mar. 14:41-42.

1.

Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? (Ralph Earle)

2.

You have slept long enough (Thayer).

3.

The great hour of the worlds redemption has come. (Ralph Earle)

4.

Let us go to meet the betrayer.

EXPLANATORY NOTES

I.

THE PLACE AND PERSONS OF THE SAVIOURS AGONY.

Mar. 14:32. And they come. We are taken back, and look on. To a place which was named Gethsemane. The word means oil-press. And, no doubt, originally there would be, in the spot, an olive-oil press. The real locality cannot now be precisely determined; neither is it necessary. There is an enclosed spot, lying at the base of the western slope of the mount of Olives, which is called Gethsemane (El-Jesmaniye), It is kept by the Latin Christians, and contains eight extremely aged olive trees. If, says Dr. Wilson, the Gethsemane of the Bible be not here, and we can see no reason for disturbing the tradition regarding it, it cannot certainly be far distant, as must be apparent from the incidental notices of the evangelists. (Lands of the Bible, vol. 1, p. 481.)

And He saith to His disciples, Sit here, until I shall pray. Until My prayer shall be past. The great crisis was at hand; and it was casting its dark shadow before on the spirit of our Lord. He felt that He must get into comparative retirement, in order that He might, without distraction, grapple with the appalling difficulties of the trial, and open up His heart, in the time of extremity, to His Father.

Mar. 14:33. And He taketh with Him Peter and James and John. The elite of his elect, who had been witnesses of the counterpart scene, the transfiguration (chap. ix. 2). They were admitted by their own brethren to be a representative triumvirate, and primi inter pares. For, even among those who are good and true, some are better fitted than others for posts of eminence, and for intimacy of intercourse.

And began to be dismayed. Stunned, as it were. That is the radical idea of the word. (See G. Curtis, Grundzuge, p. 206.) He was astonished. Probably never before, within the limitations of His finite experience, had the sphere of our Lords vision, in reference to sins, and their desert and effects, been so vast. Probably never before had the corresponding sphere of His emotions, in relation to these sins, been so profoundly agitated and heaved. This state of things now began. And, as it began, it caused an amazement, that culminated in consternation. Wycliffe translates the verb to drede (to dread) ; Coverdale, to waxe fearefull.

And greatly distressed. Comp. Php. 2:26. Tyndales version is borrowed from Luke, to be in an agony.

Mar. 14:34. And He saith to them. Namely after the terrible experience had begun to roll in on His spirit.

My soul is exceeding sorrowful. The idea is, My soul is sorrowful all round and round. It was a kind of moral midnight within the periphery of His soul. At no point in the circumference was a single gleam of light.

Unto death. Not a mere rhetorical addition. The weight of woe was literally crushing out the Saviours life. In bearing it He was making more literal sacrifice of Himself than ever had been made on literal altar. The sacrifice would have been complete, then and there, had it not been that it appeared to Him and to His Father that certain momentous purposes of publicity, in reference to the conclusion of the tragedy, would be better subserved by shifting the scene.

Remain here and watch. He had wished His chosen three to be near Him in His woe; and yet, as it advanced, He felt that He must retire even from them, and be alone with Himself and His Father. Of the people none could be with Him in the agony, none on the altar. Still He wished that His chosen ones should not be at a great distance, and hence He said, Remain here. He desired to be the object of their active sympathy, and hence He said, and watch.

II.

SURRENDER IN PRAYER.

Mar. 14:35. And He went forward a little. Still farther from the spot where the eight disciples had been asked to halt (Mar. 14:32).

And fell on the ground. Gradually. The verb is in the imperfect. He would kneel first of all (Luk. 22:41).

And prayed. He continued in prayer. The verb is in the imperfect. He kept addressing His heavenly Father. His aim in thus addressing His Father is brought out in the next clause.

That. In order that.

If it were possible, Very literally, if it is possible, We are taken back to the very time when the Saviours prayers were uttered, and to the spot whence they were uttered, and we hear the very words which He used. Possible: the reference is not so much to absolute as to relative possibility, possibility in consistency with the great objects contemplated in the mission of the Saviour.

The hour might pass from Him. The hour that was imminent, and that embraced within its compass His betrayal, His arrestment, and the desertion of His disciples. He did not pray that the hour of the atoning sacrifice might pass by. It was the incidental woes, inflicted so superfluously and wantonly by men, and to no small extent by His own chosen disciples, it was these apparently these more particularly at least, to which the cry of His spirit referred.

Mar. 14:36. And He said, Abba Father. The filial element in His spirit rose up and overshadowed all the other elements of relationship. Mark alone records the bilingual appellation, Aramaic and Greek. No doubt it would be genuine; and most likely it would be current in certain bilingual home circles, more especially at moments of earnest address on the part of children. At such moments there is often a tendency to emphatic redundancy or repetitiousness of expression. Comp. Rom. 8:15, and Gal. 4:6. As employed by our Lord, the dual form of the appellation is delightfully fitted to suggest that, in His great work, He personated in His single self not Jews only, but Gentiles also.

All things are possible to Thee. Literally true. A thing is a think; and all things thinkable are possible to almightiness. To imagine that there are actual limits to Gods power is merely to bewilder oneself in nntbinkabilities. In the preceding verse the reference is to conditional possibility: hence the if, In this the reference is to absolute possibility: hence the all.

Remove this cup from Me. The Reheims translation is, transferre this chalice from Me. Not that our Saviour rued His enterprise, or desired to back out of it. Infinitely far from that. The cup, which He felt it so dreadful to drink, 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., etc. All these incidental and unessential ingredients were put into the cup by men, wilfully and wantonly. Hence the petition, Remove from Me this cup, this cup as it is. Without these superadded ingredients the potion would have been unquestionably bitter enough; and it need not be doubted that, in consideration of that bitterness, the exquisite sensibility of our Lord would be conscious of a feeling of shrinking and instinctive recoil. But still He had come for the very purpose of tasting death for every man, and was no doubt willing and wishful to die.

But not what I will, but what Thou wilt. But the question is not, What will I? but What wilt Thou? The reference in the word will, in so far as it is applied by the Saviour to Himself, is to that which Peter calls the sensitive will, and the schoolmen voluntas sensualitatis. The more literal translation however of the verb is wish rather than will. The question with the Savior was not, What do I wish? but What does My Father wish? There was infinite submissiveness to the wish and will of His Father. If the Father deemed it best that the cup, just as it was, should be drained, the Son was absolutely acquiescent. It is easy to conceive of the greatest possible diversity in the circumstantial incidents of the atoning sacrifice. The Saviour would have wished them to have been different from what they were. Who would not? But on almost everything that is done in the world, or that has to be endured, the foul fingers of sin are laid.

III.

DISAPPOINTING DISCIPLES.

Mar. 14:37. And He cometh. To His disciples, viz. at some intermission in the agony of His spirit, when He had got strength through prayer. See Luk. 22:43.

And findeth them sleeping. So far were they from profoundly realizing the solemnities that were imminent.

And saith to Peter. Peter is no doubt singled out, partly because he was the leader of the three, and partly because he had singled himself out but a little before. See Mar. 14:29; Mar. 14:31.

Simon, sleepest thou? Although thou sawest that I was in such distress, and although I expressly desired thee to keep awake and watch?

Couldst thou not watch one hour? Hadst thou not strength for that? Surely thou wilt not say so. Why then not use thy strength to watch, when I desired it, that I might have the consolation of thy sympathy? Note the expression one hour. It seems to indicate that our Savior had suffered an entire hour of agony. How long that period! when we remember that every moment would be stretched to its utmost.

Mar. 14:38. Watch ye. The three disciples, we may suppose, had waked up when Peter was addressed. What our Lord said to one, He meant for all; and here He expressly addresses all.

And pray, that ye may not enter into temptation. They were in danger of losing confidence in Him as the Messiah. There was therefore much need for faithful watching and earnest praying.

The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. The Saviours gracious apology for the languor of His disciples. Even while He spoke to them, they had but imperfectly waked up. He saw them struggling with the oppressive languor, but ineffectively. And yet, true, as well as gracious, though His apology was, the spirit was nevertheless to be somewhat blamed. If it had been sympathetic to the quick, it would have roused the flesh. Some have supposed that the words, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, are the Saviours explanation of His own distress. Unnatural. The supposition proceeds on the false assumption that the Saviours horror was a weakness, and that it would have been more magnanimous and glorious to have had no experience of shrinking from the ingredients of the dreadful cup.

IV. HE PRAYED AND WEPT ALONE.

Mar. 14:39, And again He went away. His agony returned on Him, Perhaps the very lethargy of His disciples might call up before His view the whole appalling succession of incidental and unessential woes that were about to overtake Him.

And prayed, saying the same words. More literally, as the Rheims, has it, saying the selfsame word. The term word is used collectively, as when we speak of the word of God.

Mar. 14:40. And when He returned, He found them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy. Were, so to speak, weighted, or, according to the better reading, weighed down. The for introduces, not a reason for, but an illustration of, their sleepiness. It would appear that they had not deliberately surrendered themselves to sleep. They did not lie down, for instance. They sat, and, to a certain extent, sought to keep themselves awake, But ever and anon, and prevailingly, their eyelids closed.

And they wist not what to answer Him. They knew not what they could say to Him in reply. They had no excuse which they could honestly plead. Wist, or wissed as it were, that is knew, is now obsolete, but is connected with an interesting group of words, wise, wisdom, wizard, and the German wissen to know. On another line it is connected with the Anglo-Saxon witan, the Dutch weten, and the Gothic vitan, to know, around which we have another group of words, wit, wits, witty, witless, witch, outwit, to-wit.

V. THE SAVIOURS HOUR AND THE DISCIPLES FAILURE.

Mar. 14:41. And He cometh the third time. After a third retirement for a solitary endurance of His overwhelming agony.

And saith to them, Sleep on now. A rather unhappy translation, almost suggesting irritation and irony on the part of our Lord. Peter actually thinks that our Lord spoke in a taunting manner. But the verb rendered sleep on, a translation got from Coverdale, is simply sleep, the translation of Tyndale, the Geneva and the Rheims; and the expression rendered now means literally the remainder, that is, the remainder of the time that is available. Tyndale and the Geneva render it henceforth. Sleep the remaining interval! It was in compassion that our Lord thus spoke. His own struggle was meanwhile past. He did not feel the same need of the intense active sympathy of His disciples which, in the crisis of His agony, He had so fervently desired. He saw too that they were still overpowered with drowsiness, notwithstanding the persevering efforts they were making to wake up. He hence spoke to them soothingly; and, as Cardinal Cajetan expresses it, indulgently, that they might get the refreshment they so much required, Sleep for the interval that remains. I can now calmly wait and watch alone.

And take your rest. Or, as the Rheims has it, and take rest. Rest yourselves, that is, refresh yourselves. The word is so rendered in 1Co. 16:18; 2Co. 7:13; Phm. 1:7; Phm. 1:20.

It is enough. An expression that has given almost infinite trouble to critics. It fairly puzzled the Syriac translator. He renders it, the end is at hand. Our English translation is just a reproduction of the Vulgate version (sufficit), which must, one should suppose, have been dashed off in a fit of despair. But howsoever dashed off, or otherwise introduced, there it stands; and Luther, in his version, simply accepted it, without any attempt at an independent judgement; as did Erasmus also, and Tyndale, and Coverdale. Henry Stephens, the lexicographer, was much perplexed with the word, and in particular with its Vulgate translation; but at length he found a solitary passage, in one of the apocryphal Odes of Anacreon (xxviii. 33), in which the term would seem to bear no other interpretation. It afforded him great relief. Beza too found in the same ode a corresponding relief, and speaks indeed of the passage Occurring to him, in the midst of his doubts, as if it had been he, and not Henry Stephens, who had first alighted on it. He makes no reference at all to Stephens. The translation of the Vulgate, thus fortified out of Anacreon, was thenceforward regarded as confirmed. It was accepted by Castellio, the Geneva, Piscator, Erasmus Schmid, Sebastian Schmidt. It is found in all the Dutch versions. the earlier, the later, the latest. So too in Diodati, Zinzendorf, Rilliet; and in many other versions, Accepting the translation (and Wetstein hunted up another passage from Cyril on Hag. ii.9), the great body of expositors have interpreted the expression as a repetition in earnest of the ironical expression that precedes, as if our Lord were now saying plainly, ye have had enough of sleep, See Diodati, Petter, and Schleusner. But Wolf supposes that the Saviour refers to His own sufferings, I have suffered enough for the present, and it only remains that I endure the sufferings that are to come! Neither phase of thought seems satisfactory, Grotius felt this, and imagined that the phrase must have an idiomatic import, corresponding to the technical expression employed in the Roman amphitheatre, when a gladiator was wounded, Habet, He has it, he has got it, he has got the fatal wound. The Saviour, according to Grotius, as it were says, It is all over with Me now. The time is past for any benefit to Me from your sympathy. An unlikely interpretation, both on philological and on moral grounds, but accepted nevertheless by Principal Campbell, who renders the phrase All is over, Bengels translation corresponds to a degree, only he gives it a turn in the direction of the disciples, not of the Saviour, it is over, viz. with your rest, So Felbinger. Kypkes interpretation is, The time is up. Heumann again, and Wahl, and Godwin, would render the phrase, it is past, or It is away, that is, My agony is past. Le Clerc, The thing is past, My resolution to go on is taken. There are other modifications of idea suggested by other expositors. But the great objection to all such interpretations is that the verb does not mean, to be away, to be past, or to be over, or to be all over. It means, when used intransitively, to have off, to hold off, to be distant. Such is its meaning in all the other passages of the New Testament in which it occurs with its intransitive signification. So Mat. 15:8 and Mar. 7:6, their heart is far from Me, is distant from Me. So Luk. 7:6, when He was now not far distant from the house. So Luk. 15:20, when he was yet a great way off, that is, when he was yet a long way distant. And Luk. 24:13, A village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs, that is, which was distant from Jerusalem. We see no reason for departing, in the passage before us, from this, the words accredited and ordinary signification. But the question arises, to what, or to whom, does the Saviour refer, when He says is distant? He refers, as we apprehend, not to a thing, but to a person, of whom He was thinking much, as is evident at once from the last clause of this verse, and from the next verse. But, though thinking much of him, He did not feel inclined expressly to name him. The reference we take to be to Judas, He is distant, He is at a distance. The expression is thus not the unmasking of a previous sarcasm. It is the gracious utterance, partly to His own mind, and partly to the minds of His lethargic disciples, of a reason for indulging them in a few minutes more of rest. We shall lose much of the true significance of the whole scene, and of the grandeur of the Saviours demeanor, if we imagine that there was anything like hot haste and semi-irritation on the part of our Lord. There is not the slightest need for supposing that all the words, recorded by the evangelist, were spoken in rapid succession. It was, we believe, far otherwise. After our Saviour had got relief from the overwhelming pressure of His agony, and had graciously approached His disciples, and sympathised with them in their feelings of oppression, He would most probably seat Himself beside them, and say soothingly, Sleep for the remainder of the little time that we still have, and refresh yourselves. Then He would add, as a reason for this indulgence, the word before us, a word which did not demand, on the part of the disciples, any mental determination regarding the subject of the proposition. It was enough that they knew that, whether a person or a thing were referred to, distance was affirmed. They might indeed have waked up, and inquired, who is distant? what is? who is? But this was not necessary, if they understood that the reason for making a final effort to shake off their drowsiness was yet at a distance. After the Lord had said (He) is at a distance, we may suppose that He paused, and turning His eyes in the direction of Jerusalem, wrapped Himself up in His own meditations. At length, when the moving lights of the band around Judas became visible, the Lord broke silence, and spoke as follows.

The hour has come. The hour, the crisis time, the beginning of the end.

Lo, the Son of Man is delivered up. Is in the act of being delivered up, viz. by Judas. The verb is in the present tense. The event was now so imminent that the Saviour speaks of it as transpiring.

Into the hands of sinners. Literally, of the sinners. The word is used, as often elsewhere, in its emphatic acceptation, and hence Godwins translation does justice to its spirit, of the wicked. Such was the character of the white-washed men who bore sway in the Sanhedrim, and of the others who would co-operate with them in their eagerness to get rid of all who might disturb them in their hypocritical repose.

Mar. 14:42. Rise up. Rouse yourselves up. There was no longer time for repose.

Let us be going. Let us voluntarily lead ourselves on, viz. that we may confront the traitor and his band. How sublimely does the heroism of our Lord reveal itself!

Lo, he who delivereth Me up is at hand. Instead of naming Judas, the Lord described him, and, in the description, verified His own former predictions regarding Himself. (James Morison)

FACT QUESTIONS 14:32-42

985.

What is the meaning of the word Gethsemane? What do we know of its location?

986.

Why did Jesus separate Himself from His disciples?

987.

In what sense were the three apostles the elite of the elect?

988.

What is the meaning of the word dismayed as in Mar. 14:33?

989.

Why use the word began in connection with amazed?

990.

How else could we say greatly distressed?

991.

What thought or idea is behind the expression my soul is exceeding sorrowful?

992.

Was there literal danger of death in the garden? Explain.

993.

Discuss: none could be with Him in the agony, none on the altar.

994.

Show the meaning of the imperfect verbs of fell and prayed.

995.

Jesus did not pray that the hour of the atoning sacrifice would pass awaywhat then is included in the expression the hour might pass from Him?

996.

What element in the spirit of Jesus arose to overshadow all other elementsshow how touchingly and beautifully fitting is the bilingual use of the term Father.

997.

Explainall things are possible to thee.

998.

Jesus did not request that the cup the Father gave Him to drink would be removedwhat cup then is referred to in Mar. 14:36?

999.

Show how the expression Not what do I wish, but what does my Father wishgives a better meaning to not what I will, but what thou wilt.

1000.

Why single Simon out of the group?

1001.

What temptation was imminent when He said that ye enter not into temptation?

1002.

What was the Saviours gracious apology for the languor of His disciples?

1003.

Why go again to pray the same words?

1004.

What is meant by the expression and they wist not what to answer Him.?

1005.

How or in what manner did Jesus say sleep on now? What did He mean?

1006.

Give at least three meanings to the little expression it is enough.

1007.

Do you agree with Morisons preference? Discuss.

1008.

Who were the sinners of Mar. 14:41?

1009.

How does the sublime heroism of our Lord show itself?

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

(32) While I shall pray.Literally, till I shall have prayed.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

131. SUFFERINGS IN GETHSEMANE, Mar 14:32-42 .

(See notes on Mat 26:36-46.)

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

‘And they come to an enclosed place which was named Gethsemane, and he says to his disciples, “You sit here, while I pray.” And he takes with him Peter, and James and John and began to be filled with great awe and to be in anguish. And he says to them, “My soul is filled with deep sorrow even to death. You remain here and watch.” ’

Arriving at Gethsemane Jesus tells His disciples to remain where they were while He will go some way off in order to pray. ‘Gethsemane’ probably means ‘press of oils’. It was obviously a place frequented often by Jesus and therefore well known to Judas who would guess where He was, or might even have been told (Joh 18:2). The impression is clear that Jesus was in charge of events and moving them towards their inevitable conclusion. If He had to die, and He had known that that was inevitable almost from the beginning, it would be at a time of His own choosing. The name may have been seen by Mark as significant. Jesus was to be trodden under in the oil press of God.

‘You sit here while I pray.’ He left the group of disciples, possibly by the entrance of the enclosed place, while He went on with the Inner Three. In what He had to face He wanted to be alone with His Father, for none of them could appreciate what He was facing. But the three were privileged to be witnesses of His travail and He wanted their company. He did not want at this time to be totally alone.

‘He takes with Him Peter, James and John.’ They were closest to Him and He wanted them with Him. They were to be observers from a short distance of His travail and were to pray for strength in what lay ahead for them.

The words that follow, ‘filled with great awe — in anguish — sorrowful to the point of death’ stress the awfulness of the experience He was going through. This was something inexplicable. What Jesus was experiencing we can never know for He was drinking of the cup of the wrath of God against sin. He was facing His destiny as the Suffering Servant, enduring the pain and anguish deserved by our sin. And the three disciples, who the last time they had gone alone with Jesus had seen His glorious transfiguration, now saw the awful darkness and the battle of the soul that He was facing. There are deliberate indications in both passages in the tradition that the two experiences are at the same time two sides of the same coin. (For Mar 14:40, ‘they did not know what to answer — heavy with sleep’, compare Mar 9:6, ‘he did not know what to answer, for they were sore afraid’, and Luk 9:32, ‘now Peter and they that were with him were heavy with sleep’).

‘You remain here and watch.’ It is interesting that Jesus has not urged prayer on His disciples, either at the entrance or here. Perhaps He could see that they were emotionally drained. Or perhaps He simply expected them to pray. But He never told anyone to pray simply for form’s sake. Prayer is too deep a thing for that. He always saw it as an awesome experience. In contrast how glibly we exhort to pray, perhaps because our prayers carry so little significance.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

In Gethsemane Jesus Faces Up To What Lies Ahead As He Prepares For The Cross (14:32-42).

As the hour approached Jesus was becoming more and more aware of the appalling nature of the trial that lay before Him. It was not death He feared, but the awful cup from which He must drink, the cup of the wine of the wrath of God poured out without mixture into the cup of His indignation (Rev 14:10).

Analysis.

a And they come to an enclosed place which was named Gethsemane, and He says to His disciples, “You sit here, while I pray” (Mar 14:32).

b And He takes with him Peter, and James and John and began to be filled with great awe and to be in anguish (Mar 14:33).

c And He says to them, “My soul is filled with deep sorrow even to death. You remain here and watch” (Mar 14:34).

d And He went forward a small distance 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 to you. Remove this cup from me. However not as I will, but as you will” (Mar 14:35-36).

e And He comes and finds them sleeping and says to Peter, “Simon, are you sleeping? Could you not watch one hour. Watch and pray that you enter not into testing. The spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak” (Mar 14:37-37).

d 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 did not know what to answer Him (Mar 14:39-40).

c And He comes the third time and says to them, “Sleep on now and take your rest” (Mar 14:41 a).

b “It is received. The hour is come. Behold the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners” (Mar 14:41 b).

a “Arise, let us advance to meet them, look, he who betrays me is at hand” (Mar 14:42).

Note that in ‘a’ the disciples are to sit there while He goes to pray, and in the parallel they are to rise because the time has come. In ‘b’ He is filled with great awe and anguish even to death, and in the parallel He is betrayed into the hands of sinners. In ‘c’ He calls on the three to remain and watch, and in the parallel He informs them that they can now sleep on and rest. In ‘d’ He goes off and prays, and in the parallel He does the same. Centrally in ‘e’ He comes back and finds them sleeping and gently rebukes them.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

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.

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.”

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

Mar 14:32-42 . Comp. on Mat 26:36-46 . Comp. Luk 22:40-46 .

Mar 14:33 . ] used in this place of the anguish (otherwise at Mar 9:15 ). The word occurs in the N. T. only in Mark, who uses strongly graphic language. Comp. Mar 16:5-6 . Matthew, with more psychological suitableness, has .

] See on Mat 26:38 , and comp. Sir 37:2 ; Clem. 1 Corinthians 4 : , Test. XII. Patr. p. 520.

] Comp. Test. XII. Patr. p. 527: .

] the hour , hora fatalis . It passes over from the man, when the latter is spared from undergoing its destiny.

Mar 14:36 . ] ; so spoke Jesus in prayer to His Father. This mode of address assumed among the Greek-speaking Christians the nature of a proper name, and the fervour of the feeling of childship added, moreover, the appellative address , a juxtaposition, which gradually became so hallowed by usage that here Mark even places it in the very mouth of Jesus, which is an involuntary Hysteron proteron. The usual view, that is an addition by way of interpreting, is quite out of place in the fervent address of prayer. See on Rom 8:15 . Against the objections of Fritzsche, see on Gal 4:6 .

] carry away past. Hahn was wrong, Theol. d. N. T. I. p. 209 f, in deducing from the passage (and from Luk 22:24 ) that Jesus had been tempted by His . Every temptation came to Him from without. But in this place He gives utterance only to His purely human feeling, and that with unconditional subordination to God, whereby there is exhibited even in that very feeling His , which is incompatible with incitements to sin from His own .

] The following interrogative shows how the utterance emotionally broken off is here to be completed. Hence somewhat in this way: but there comes not into question, not: .

Mar 14:41 . . . .] as at Mat 26:45 , painful irony: sleep on now, and take your rest! Hardly has Jesus thus spoken when He sees Judas approach with his band (Mar 14:42-43 ). Then His mood of painful irony breaks off, and with urgent earnestness He now goes on in hasty, unconnected exclamations: there is enough (of sleep)! the hour is come! see, the Son of man is delivered into the hands of sinners! arise, let us go (to meet this decisive crisis)! see, my betrayer is at hand! It is only this view of , according to which it refers to the sleep of the disciples, that corresponds to the immediate connection with what goes before ( . . .) and follows; and how natural is the change of mood, occasioned by the approaching betrayers! All the more original is the representation. Comp. Erasmus, Bengel (“suas jam peractas habet sopor vices; nunc alia res est”), Kuinoel, Ewald, Bleek. Hence it is not: there is enough of watching (Hammond, Fritzsche). The usus loquendi of , sufficit (Vulgate), depends on the passages, which certainly are only few and late, but certain, (pseudo-) Anacreon, xxviii. 33; Cyrill. in Hagg. ii. 9, even although the gloss of Hesychius: , , , is critically very uncertain. [166] Others interpret at variance with linguistic usage: abest , sc. anxictas mea (see Heumann, Thiess), or the betrayer (Bornemann in the Stud. u. Krit. 1843, p. 103 f.); , in fact, does not mean the being removed in itself , but denotes the distance (Xen. Anab. iv. 3. 5; Polyb. i. 19. 5; 2Ma 11:5 ; 2Ma 12:29 ). Lange also is linguistically wrong in rendering: “ it is all over with it,” it will do no longer . The comparison of , nothing stands in the way , in which, in fact, , is not intransitive, but active, is altogether irrelevant.

[166] See Buttmann in the Stud. u. Krit. 1858, p. 506. He would leave without any idea to complete it, and that in the sense: it is accomplished, it is the time of fulfilment, the end is come , just as Grotius, ad Mat 26:45 ( peractum est ), and as the codex Brixiensis has, adest finis , while D and min. add to : . The view deserves consideration. Still the usual it is enough is more in keeping with the empirical use, as it is preserved in the two passages of Anacreon and Cyril; moreover, it gives rise to a doubt in the matter, that Jesus should have spoken a word equivalent to the of Joh 19:30 even now , when the consummation was only just beginning.

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

3. Gethsemane and the Betrayal; or, the Lords 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.)

A. Gethsemane. Mar 14:32-42.

32And 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

43And 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, . 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 (); which is addressed by Jesus to the sleep-oppressed disciples. According to Marks representation, Judas stands suddenly before our Lord, like some unearthly appearance. The traitor had given to the enemy a distinct, previously appointed signal (), 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 (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; .Matthew has . Luke, instead of either expressions: (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; is a stronger term than , 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: 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, is certainly an explanatory addition. [Meyer remarks, in loc., that the common view that 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 . Luke uses appropriately (inclination of the will), not (act of will). Accordingly, 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 ().This is the opposite of : 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,. 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. Hres. 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 youths 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 menThese 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 Guyons 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 despairupon the sin of that world which could break through the barriers separating the disciples of Christ from the world. In Christs experience of this judgment, there are two points to be marked: the realization of His being perfectly deserted; the manifestation of the worlds 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 Lords 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 Lords secret place of prayer, forms a page black as midnight in the history of the world and of the Church.Gods providence has changed this terrific curse into a cup of blessing for the lost world, through Christs 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 Gods 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:Gods 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 Israels 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 Gods 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 and is found here, just as in Matthew. Most MSS. are in favor of the first; the sense favors the second. If we retain , the terminus ad quem is wanting: unless there he a reference to drawing near to God in prayer, . Luke uses an expression denoting separation.

[17]Mar 14:43.After Judas, A., D., K., Lachmann, Tischendorf read .]

[18][Mar 14:45.The second 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 .

[20][In Mat 14:26 the words employed are , and .Ed.]

Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange

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 “

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

32 42. ] OUR LORD’S AGONY AT GETHSEMANE. Mat 26:36-46 . Luk 22:39-46 (see Joh 18:1 ). The same remarks apply here also.

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Mar 14:32-42 . In Gethsemane (Mat 26:36-46 , Luk 22:40-46 ).

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

Mark

‘STRONG CRYING AND TEARS’

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.

Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren

NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Mar 14:32-42

32They came to a place named Gethsemane; and He said to His disciples, “Sit here until I have prayed.” 33And He took with Him Peter and James and John, and began to be very distressed and troubled. 34And He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death; remain here and keep watch.” 35And He went a little beyond them, and fell to the ground and began to pray that if it were possible, the hour might pass Him by. 36And He was saying, “Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.” 37And He came and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? 38Keep watching and praying that you may not come into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” 39Again He went away and prayed, saying the same words. 40And again He came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy; and they did not know what to answer Him. 41And He came the third time, and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? It is enough; the hour has come; behold, the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. 42Get up, let us be going; behold, the one who betrays Me is at hand!”

Mar 14:32 “Gethsemane” “Gethsemane” means “oil press” in Hebrew. It apparently was a private garden just outside the city limits of Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives. It was illegal to have gardens within the city because the manure needed for the plants made the city ceremonially unclean. Apparently Jesus came to this garden quite often. It is even possible that during Passion Week He bivouacked here with His disciples. Judas knew the place well.

“‘Sit here until I have prayed'” In the parallels in Mat 26:41 and Luk 22:40 Jesus asks them to pray that they would not enter into temptation.

Mar 14:33 “He took with Him Peter and James and John” This was the inner circle of leadership among the disciples. They were present with Jesus on several special occasions when the other disciples were not. Apparently this led to both special training and jealousy on the part of the other disciples. Exactly why Jesus had an inner circle is uncertain. The list of the Twelve is always in four groupings of three. The groups never change. It is possible that the groups formed a rotating schedule for the disciples to go home periodically and check on their families. See Special Topic at Mar 3:16.

NASB”began to be very distressed and troubled”

NKJV”he began to be troubled and deeply distressed”

NRSV”began to be distressed and agitated”

TEV”Distress and anguish came over him”

NJB”he began to feel terror and anguish”

Jesus was in a deep state of anxiety! These are strong terms in Greek. As modern readers we are on very holy ground here in the garden as we see the Son of God in what may have been His most vulnerable human moment. Jesus must have related this account to His disciples after His resurrection. Apparently it was meant to be helpful for those who face temptation and for those who seek to understand the agony and cost of Jesus’ Calvary experience.

“‘My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death'” This is an astonishingly emphatic statement of concern, fear, and grief on Jesus’ part. Although the text itself does not provide the reason, it seems that what Jesus feared was the disruption in the intimate fellowship He had always known with the Father. This is characterized by Jesus’ words in Mar 15:34. This is one of the most human moments we are allowed to witness in Jesus’ struggle of faith.

This was an Old Testament idiom (cf. Psa 42:5) which expressed the tremendous intensity which was involved in the redemption of sinful mankind. All of Psalms 42 reflects Jesus’ experience of rejection and death as does Psalms 22. Something of the struggle can be seen in the parallel of Luk 22:43-44 (although the UBS4 rates their omission “A” [certain]) , which records that an angel came to minister to Him and He sweat great drops of blood. The victory over the evil one was won here in the garden. The insidiousness of Satan’s temptation in Matthew 4 and of Peter’s supposedly helpful, but extremely destructive, comments in Mat 16:22, are fully revealed in this passage.

“‘remain here and keep watch'” This is an aorist active imperative followed by a present active imperative. They were on guard duty watching for Judas and the mob, but they fell asleep!

Mar 14:35 “fell to the ground and began to pray” These are two imperfects. Usually this tense means continual action in past time, but it is obvious this cannot be what is meant here. The other typical usage of this Greek verb tense is the beginning of an action in past time. Praying prostrate shows the intense emotion.

Mar 14:35 “‘if it were possible'” This is a first class conditional, which is assumed to be true from the author’s perspective. Jesus knew YHWH was able to do anything (cf. Mar 14:36, “all things are possible for You!”).

“the hour”

SPECIAL TOPIC: THE HOUR

“the hour might pass Him by” This is an aorist active subjunctive. Jesus is asserting that YHWH is able to do anything and Jesus is hoping that He might be spared the cross (cf. Mar 14:36). This was exactly Satan’s temptations in the wilderness, cf. James Stewart’s The Life and Teaching of Jesus Christ, pp.39-46). From Mat 26:39; Mat 26:42; Mat 26:44 and Mar 14:39; Mar 14:41 we learn that Jesus prayed this same prayer three times, which was a Jewish way of showing intensity.

Mar 14:36 “‘Abba'” This is Aramaic for the familiar term that children call their fathers at home, dad, daddy, pop, papa, etc. Jesus knew family intimacy with YHWH (cf. Heb 1:2; Heb 3:6; Heb 5:8; Heb 7:28). His death will provide this intimacy to us.

This context is the only time the Aramaic word Abba is used (i.e., in the Greek text) by Jesus. Jesus reveals the intense struggle He faced in this moment of fleshly temptation (i.e., He describes His intense emotions; He fell on the ground; He prayed three times). Here He played His trump card, His best chance of changing the Father’s mind about Calvary. He calls YHWH by the most intimate family term! But still every prayer was concluded with “not my will, but Thine.” God the Father demonstrates His love for fallen humanity by not responding to Jesus’ expressed will. There needed to be an ultimate sacrifice for sin, but it was not easy or without great cost, emotionally and physically, for Jesus and for the Father!

Jesus knows us because He knows all the temptations of humanity (yet without sin). Fear and terror and discouragement and disillusionment are not sin! The victory was won at Gethsemane.

“‘Father'” The Gospel of Mark often uses Aramaic words and phrases (cf. Mar 3:17; Mar 5:41; Mar 7:34; Mar 14:36; Mar 15:34). Aramaic would have been the spoken language of Jesus and the disciples. Mark translates each of these, which shows he was not writing for Jewish readers, but Gentile readers, probably Romans because of all the Latin terms and phrases found in Mark. See Special Topic: Father at Mar 13:32.

“‘this cup'” This was an OT metaphor for one’s destiny (cf. Psa 16:5; Psa 23:5; Jer 51:2; Mat 20:22). It was usually used in a judgmental (i.e., negative) sense (cf. Psa 11:6; Psa 75:8; Isa 51:17; Isa 51:22; Jer 25:15-16; Jer 25:27-28; Jer 49:12; Lam 4:21; Eze 23:31-33; Hab 2:16). This idiom is often associated with drunkenness, which is another OT metaphor for judgment (cf. Job 21:20; Isa 29:9; Isa 63:6; Jer 25:15-16; Jer 25:27-28). Jesus wants out! Fear is not sin. He faced fear with faith; so must we!

“‘yet not what I will, but what You will'” The pronouns “I” and “You” are in the emphatic position in the Greek. This was Jesus’ continuing submission to the Father’s will. In this context the true humanity and faith of Jesus shines forth! Though His human nature cries out for deliverance, His heart is set on fulfilling the will of the Father in substitutionary atonement (cf. Mar 10:45; Mat 26:39).

Mar 14:37; Mar 14:40 “found them sleeping” These disciples had also fallen asleep during the Transfiguration (cf. Mat 26:43 and Luk 9:32). They were not evil or even thoughtless, but human! Before we are too quick to condemn the disciples, let’s note that in Luk 22:45 the phrase “they were asleep from sorrow” describes that they were unable to bear the pain of Jesus’ prophecy about His own death and their subsequent scattering. Though Jesus longed to have human fellowship and intercession at this time of ultimate crisis in His life, He had to face this moment alone, and He faced it for all believers!

Mar 14:37 “‘Simon'” This is the only time Jesus calls him “Simon” since He renamed him in Mar 3:16. The rock (i.e., Peter) was anything but stable, sure, and trustworthy. Peter must have remembered this “reverse” name change with great pain. I am sure that he got the message!

Mar 14:38 “‘Keep watching and praying'” This is a Present active imperative and a present middle (deponent) imperative. The following context reveals the enemy.

“‘that you may not come into temptation'” There have been several theories as to what “temptation” refers to in this context:

1. Jesus’ immediate prophecy in Mar 14:27

2. to the disciples sleeping instead of praying, Mar 14:37; Mar 14:40

3. to the disciples desertion of Jesus in Mar 14:56

4. to Peter’s denial in Mar 14:69-72

5. to governmental or religious trials (cf. Mat 5:10-12; Joh 9:22; Joh 16:2)

The term “temptation” (peirasmos) had the connotation of “to tempt or try with the goal of destruction” (cf. Mat 6:13; Luk 11:4; Jas 1:13). It is often contrasted with another Greek term for test (dokimazo) which had the connotation of “to try or tempt with a view toward strengthening.” However, these connotations are not always present in every context. Theologically it can be said that God does not test or tempt His children to destroy them, but He does provide opportunities for spiritual growth through trials (cf. Gen 22:1; Exo 16:4; Exo 20:20; Duet. Mar 8:2; Mar 8:16; Matthew 4; Luke 4; Heb 5:8). However, He always provides a way through (cf. 1Co 10:13). See Special Topic: Greek Terms for Testing at Mar 1:13.

“‘the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak'” This may be a comment on Peter’s and the other disciples’ words in Mar 14:29; Mar 14:31. Jesus understands this tension completely (cf. Mar 14:36).

The use of “spirit” in connection with mankind’s human spirit speaks of our inner life and thoughts (cf. Psa 51:10; Psa 51:12; Psa 51:17).

In Paul’s writings “spirit” is often contrasted with “flesh” (cf. Rom 8:1-11).

Mar 14:40 “they did not know what to answer Him” They had no explainable reason (cf. Mar 9:6) except the weakness of the flesh (cf. Luk 9:32).

Mar 14:41 “‘Are you still sleeping and resting'” It is hard to interpret this Greek idiom. Is it a question? Is it irony? Is it a statement? Although the meaning is uncertain, it is obvious that Jesus has won the victory and He now stands erect, ready to face the night trials, the morning beatings and the crucifixion.

“It is enough” This term caused several scribal changes in the Greek manuscript tradition. Does this phrase refer to the disciples’ sleep? It can be translated (1) “it is enough”; (2) “it is settled”; or (3) “it is over” (cf. NJB “it is all over”). It was used in the Koine Greek papyri found in Egypt of something paid in full (cf. Moulton and Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament, pp. 57-58). This, then, would be something of a parallel to Joh 19:30, “it is finished” or “it is paid in full.” Possibly it refers to Judas and his betrayal, which must have weighed heavily on Jesus. Jesus won the spiritual victory in Gethsemane!

Mar 14:41-42 These staccato statements are emphasized by having no conjunctions or connectors (asyndeton) between them. The events were unfolding just as Jesus had predicted. The hour had come.

“the hour has come” See Special Topic at Mar 14:35.

“‘betrayed'” This term (paradidmi) normally means “delivered into the hands of” (cf. Mar 9:31), but its connection with Judas in most English translations intensify the meaning of “betray.” See fuller note at Mar 14:10 d.

Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley

came = come.

Gethsemane. See note on Mat 28:36.

pray. Greek. proseuchomai. App-134.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

32-42.] OUR LORDS AGONY AT GETHSEMANE. Mat 26:36-46. Luk 22:39-46 (see Joh 18:1). The same remarks apply here also.

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Mar 14:32-42

8. THE AGONY IN GETHSEMANE

Mar 14:32-42

(Mat 26:36-46; Luk 22:39-46; Joh 18:1)

32 And they come unto a place which was named Gethsemane: and he saith unto his disciples,–“Gethsemane” means a place of oil presses, and doubtless this place had once been used for pressing out olive oil, but it was at this time a garden. (Joh 18:1.)

Sit ye here, while I pray.–[He was approaching the last fearful trial–his betrayal and crucifixion. As it came nearer and nearer, he felt it the more keenly and sensitively. He dreaded the trial and the pangs of the crucifixion with more than human sensitiveness. He felt all the weakness of humanity in the temptation. He knew Judas was then gone to bring the band to arrest him. He dreaded the conflict, and besought help from his Father in prayer. All through his ministry, when questions of importance pressed upon him, he went to his Father in prayer. So he said to the disciples, “Sit ye here, while I pray.” Matthew (Mat 26:36) says: “While I go yonder and pray,” showing he would go away from them to pray alone.]

33 And he taketh with him Peter and James and John.–[He left the eight, we may suppose, near the entrance to the garden, and took these three apostles that seem to have been favorites with him–at least, he several times chose them to be with him on special occasions, while the others were not. He carried these only a short distance, and left them to watch for the coming of the soldiers while he went alone to pray.]

and began to be greatly amazed, and sore troubled. –[Struck or overcome with horror and dread at the fate that was awaiting him. He wrestled with this dread, and was oppressed with a great sorrow. His feelings as a human being prevailed and in the anguish of his soul he was “sore troubled”–depressed in soul and heart.]

34 And he saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death:–[He told the disciples that went with him that the sorrows that were oppressing him were such as to produce death, or that he would prefer to die rather than bear them, they were so heavy. Mental dread of impending evil is often more excruciating than the suffering of physical pain when it comes. When the resolution is once formed that we will submit to or go through the ordeal of trial, a composure of mind and heart comes that strips the ordeal of more than half its terrors. Jesus was human, with our fleshly weaknesses and temptations, with its dread of suffering intensified by the recoil of the divine element within him from sin and its consequences. We may imagine the divine element, with its hatred and horror of sin, drew back from the public manifestation before the world as a sin offering, as though God had sinned.]

abide ye here, and watch.–[He told them to tarry there and watch while he went still forward in prayer. He did not wish to be surprised in his devotions by the coming of his enemies, so he asked them to watch while he prayed. Matthew (26 :38) says: “Abide ye here, and watch with me.” In this hour of agony Jesus desired human sympathy. He had encouraged and comforted his disciples in every hour of trouble and weakness, but now he desired them to watch with him that he might not be disturbed by the traitor and the mob in his hour of communion with God.]

35 And he went forward a little,–[Luke (22:41) says: “He was parted from them about a stone’s cast.” He went a little distance from them, so that they could not hear or see his wrestling with God. The fact that they slept while he was undergoing these sorrows shows he was not in hearing or sight of them. When beyond their reach, in agony of soul he threw himself prostrate on the ground.]

and fell on the ground, and prayed–[Kneeling is the ordinary attitude of prayer to God, but in deep distress, and in his helplessness, man throws himself prostrate before his maker as a bodily expression of the complete helplessness of soul he feels, and of his throwing himself upon God as his only help.] that, if it were possible, the hour might pass away from him.–[In the above attitude he prayed this prayer. Matthew records it: “He went forward a little, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.” The human dread of death was drawing back with terror from the suffering he was to endure, intensified by the divine horror of being held up before the universe as a sinner. Jesus died as a sinner. He died for sins not his own. His prayer was that the cup of suffering–the horror of woe that was rapidly coming upon him–might pass from him. This was the fleshly element of his nature pleading for exemption from the suffering that is coming upon him. While God heard him, he did not grant the prayer as Jesus asked it should be granted. God hears prayer that he does not grant. It is not sinful to make prayers God cannot grant. The prayer of Jesus was answered by his being strengthened to bear the suffering.]

36 And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee;–[“Abba” means “father.” It is the Hebrew word preserved here, with its translation, “Father,” given. He calls him Father, and tells him all things are possible to him. All power is in his hands; therefore he asks him to so use that power that he may escape the sufferings that would come upon him in that hour, or to pass this cup of suffering from him.]

remove this cup from me:–[He means the cup of suffering he was then to drink. The flesh seemed to get the upper hand of him for a moment. He shrank back from the suffering and he prayed that God would take it away. But he recovered his faith and added: “Nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.”]

howbeit not what I will, but what thou wilt.–He dreaded the sufferings, and would like to escape them, he yet had rather endure them than that God’s will should not be performed, or that his purposes should not he carried out. On the day previous, looking forward to this hour, he said “Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. But for this cause came I unto this hour.” (Joh 12:27.) This shows the dread of the hour–the drawing back of the flesh from the hour–yet he adds: “For this cause (to suffer) came I unto this hour.” Luke (Luk 22:44) says: “Being in an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became as it were great drops of blood falling down upon the ground.” The anguish was so deep and excruciating that it wrung from his face great drops of bloody sweat that in their abundance fell to the ground. This suffering of the soul was greater than bodily suffering.]

37 And he cometh, and findeth them sleeping,–[They were poor watchers; yet they understood but little of the wonderful occurrences passing before them, or of the fearful struggles going on in the soul of Jesus. They had undergone the excitement and labors of the eventful day. It is now far into the night. Luke says he “found them sleeping for sorrow.” (22 :45.) While they did not understand the full meaning of what was going forward, they saw Jesus was oppressed–that things were not going well. They were disappointed and downcast in spirit. That, added to their bodily weariness, caused them to sink into a heavy sleep.]

and saith unto Peter, Simon, sleepest thou?–[Jesus addressed Peter. He was more forward than the others in asserting he would die with him before he would deny him.]

couldest thou not watch one hour–Wast thou unable–not strong enough to watch as short a period as sixty minutes?

38 Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation :–That ye be not overcome and oppressed with these trials of your faith, so as to deny me. The word “temptation” here properly means what would try their faith in the approaching calamities, his rejection and death.

the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.– [He followed up the reproof of their failing to watch with and for him with the admonition that they should both watch and pray for themselves, lest they enter into temptation, while this conveys a general lesson to all to watch themselves, to watch their surroundings, to watch the influences that control them, to watch lest they have too much self-confidence (this was Peter’s weakness and the occasion of his downfall), lest they run into temptations that they cannot bear, it had a special reference to the temptations that would soon be upon them by virtue of his trial and crucifixion. The reason he gives is, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” He recognizes the two elements in man–the spirit and the flesh.]

39 And again he went away, and prayed, saying the same words.–[He left and went again, and made the same earnest prayer. He repeated the prayer to God earnestly and fervently in the same words. He was not afraid of worrying his Father with his petitions and repetitions.]

40 And again he came, and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy; and they knew not what to answer him. –[They had lost much sleep; they were worn and wearied. They understood enough to know dark clouds hung around the pathway of their Master. The earthly prospects failed, their eyes were heavy, and after Jesus left them they quickly fell asleep again: and they did not know what response to make him or excuse to give him for sleep. But clearly Jesus, as he returns each time, is growing in composure and resignation. His prayer is not answered by releasing him from the hour, but he is becoming resigned and submissive to it as the will of his Father. To become resigned and submissive to any fate is to take away its bitterness–is to prepare to meet it. The angels watched over him, and when he was tired they readily gave the help needed to enable him to bear the burdens laid upon him by God. God answered him not by taking the trial from him, but by strengthening him to bear it. God so treats every child that humbly, trustingly, and faithfully seeks to do his will. He will not always take from us our burdens, but he will give us strength to bear them.]

41 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.– [When he returns from his prayer the third time he finds them asleep again. But the struggle is over with him. The spirit has overcome the flesh. He can without a struggle now submit to the will of his Father, even by going to the cross and the grave. So he says to them, “Sleep on now, and take your rest.” He knew their bodies needed rest.]

42 Arise, let us be going: behold, he that betrayeth me is at hand.–[“While he yet spake, Judas, one of the twelve, came, and with him a great multitude with swords, and staves, from the chief priests and elders of the people.” (Mat 26:47.) He is betrayed into their hands, and willingly now gives himself a ransom for the sins of the world.]

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

Alone in the Hour of Trial

Mar 14:32-52

When the soul is overwhelmed, it seeks to be alone, and yet not too far from human sympathy and help. The three most trusted might enter the enclosure, but even they could not share the depth of the Masters anguish, which was so great as to threaten His very life. He cried to Him who could save Him from dying before His trial and sentence, and was saved from what He feared. Our Lord did not shrink from physical suffering, but from the horror of becoming sin-bearer for the race, and putting away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. His disciples failed Him, but as He submitted to the Fathers will His spirit rose triumphant. Sleep on now-the past is irrevocable. The disciples fled as fast as their feet would carry them. If only they had prayed, they would have been steadfast and unmovable. There are good reasons for supposing that the young man mentioned here was Mark himself.

Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary

CHAPTER 67

Gethsemane

And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane: and he saith to his disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray. And he taketh with him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy; And saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry 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 from him. And 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. And he cometh, and findeth them sleeping, and saith unto Peter, Simon, sleepest thou? 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. And again he went away, and prayed, and spake the same words. And when he returned, he found them asleep again, (for their eyes were heavy,) neither wist they 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. Rise up, let us go; lo, he that betrayeth me is at hand.

(Mar 14:32-42)

We come now with the Son of God into his favorite place of prayer, the garden of Gethsemane. The word Gethsemane means olive press. What a fitting place Gethsemane was for the events which transpired on this dark, dark night. Here, the Lord of glory wept in agony of soul, prayed with a heavy, broken heart, and began to have his soul crushed in anticipation of being made sin for us. So heavy was the burden of his heart that the pores of his flesh poured with a bloody sweat!

I never read this passage and its parallels in Mathew, Luke, and John without a great sense of utter ignorance and inability. How can a mortal man of sinful flesh comprehend what our Master experienced in Gethsemane? It is simply impossible. You can imagine how utterly insufficient I feel in attempting to explain, to any degree, the meaning of this passage. This portion of Holy Scripture contains things which the wisest of faithful, godly men cannot explain. As we look at our Savior and his disciples as they are set before us in this passage, I will direct your attention to those things that are obvious.

The Cause of Sorrow

And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane: and he saith to his disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray. And he taketh with him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy; And saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry 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 from him. And 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 (Mar 14:32-36).

What was the cause of this great heaviness and sorrow? What was it that crushed our Masters heart? What so greatly disturbed him? Certainly, it was not the fear of physical pain, the fear of death, or even the fear of dying on the cross. That which crushed our Saviors heart was the anticipation of being made sin for us. The heavy, heavy burden that crushed his very soul was the enormous load of sin and guilt, the sin and guilt of all Gods elect which was about to be made his.

Our Saviors great sorrow was caused by his anticipation of being made sin for us. It was, wrote J.C. Ryle, a sense of the unutterable weight of our sins and transgressions which were then specially laid upon him. He who knew no sin was about to be made sin for us! He who is the only man who really knows what sin is, the only man who sees sin as God sees sin, was about to become sin! He who is the holy, harmless, undefiled Lamb of God was about to be made sin, about to be made a curse for us! The holy Son of God was about to be made sin and forsaken by his Father!

Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, 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 curse of his own righteous law which, like thunderbolts of vengeance from heaven, was directed at him. No wonder the verse closes by telling us that in consideration of these things our Savior began to be very heavy! That which crushed our Saviors very heart and soul was the very thing for which he had come into the world: The prospect of what he must endure as our Substitute.

The Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate God, our Mediator and Surety, died in our place, in the place of Gods elect, as our Substitute. By his own blood, when he was made sin for us, when he was slain in our stead, he satisfied the justice of God for us, magnified his holy law, made it honorable, and purchased for us the complete, everlasting forgiveness of all our sins. He died, the Just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. Christ died at Calvary so that God might be both just and the Justifier of all who believe. It is written, By mercy and truth iniquity is purged (Pro 16:7; Rom 3:19-28; Eph 1:7).

Since the Lord Jesus Christ died as the sinners Substitute, since he has met and fully satisfied the justice of God for us, believing sinners have no reason ever to fear condemnation by God, accusation before God, or separation from God (Rom 8:1-4; Rom 8:31-39). Let every believing sinner ever rejoice and give thanks to the lord Jesus Christ. Since Christ died for me, I cannot die! If you are in Christ, if you believe on the Son of God, there is no possibility of condemnation for you. No sin shall ever be laid to your charge. You cannot be separated from the love of God in Christ.

It was the enormous load of our sin and our guilt that crushed our Saviors heart in Gethsemane (Isa 53:4-6), a load of sin and guilt that would have crushed us in hell forever; but a load that can never come upon us now, because Christ died in our place!

Let us never look lightly upon sin. What a horrible, monstrous, ignominious thing it must be! Nothing so displays the exceeding sinfulness of sin as the death of our Lord Jesus Christ at Calvary. When the holy Lord God found sin on his own darling Son, he poured out all the fury of his holy wrath and unmitigated justice upon him, he forsook him, and he killed him without mercy! If God finds sin on you, he will do the same thing to you, forever!

The Saviors Prayer

And saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry 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 from him. And 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 (Mar 14:34-36).

In his time of great heaviness, sorrow and distress, we find our Lord Jesus in prayer. What an example he sets before us. The first one to whom we should turn in every time of trouble is our heavenly Father. Our God should be the first to hear the words of our complaints. He may or may not relieve our trouble; but it is good for our souls for us to unburden our hearts at the throne of grace. There, and only there, will we discover the all-sufficiency of his grace. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need (Heb 4:16). Is any among you afflicted? let him pray (Jas 5:13).

But what was our Lord praying for in the garden of Gethsemane? Let us never entertain idle curiosity about the things of God, especially when discussing the heart-wrenching agony of soul endured by the Son of God to save us. Still, this agony of soul which the Lord Jesus endured for us is recorded in all four Gospel narratives. Matthew and Mark both tell us that our Savior uttered this prayer in much the same words three times. Luke adds the details about his bloody sweat and an angel coming to minister to him.

And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done.

(Mat 26:39-42)

And he was withdrawn from them about a stones cast, and kneeled down, and prayed, Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him. And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

(Luk 22:41-44)

While the apostle John does not specifically deal with our Lords prayer in Gethsemane, he does give us a hint at the meaning of his prayer. In John 12 we see our Savior in a similar position and experience six days before the betrayal in Gethsemane

And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father honour. Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again. The people therefore, that stood by, and heard it, said that it thundered: others said, An angel spake to him. Jesus answered and said, This voice came not because of me, but for your sakes. Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. This he said, signifying what death he should die. (Joh 12:23-33)

Here we see our Savior in great agony of soul. His agony was clearly related to his death at Calvary. Yet, he set his face steadfastly toward the cross without flinching. While he certainly has his death at Calvary in mind, our Lord Jesus, obviously, was not asking that he might be kept from that appointment for which he came into this world. He had come to this place on purpose, that he might be betrayed by Judas, arrested, and hanged upon the cursed tree by the hands of wicked men to fulfill the will of his Father as our covenant Surety (Heb 10:1-10).

If the Lord Jesus was not praying to be saved from dying in our place as our sin-atoning Substitute, what was he praying for his Father to do here? Our dear Savior was here, once more, under the assault of hell. Satan was making his last effort to keep him from fulfilling his Fathers purpose of grace in redemption. He was doing everything he could to keep the Seed of the woman from crushing his head.

I have no doubt at all that our Savior, being overwhelmed with the prospect of being made sin, in this state of soul agony, was as a man fearful of dying before he had finished his work, before he reached the cross. He was fearful of dying in the garden of Gethsemane. There is no other event in his humiliation to which the words of Heb 5:7 might reference. Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared.

We must never forget that our Lord Jesus is both God and man in one glorious person. As God he could never know fear. Yet, he could not be a man tempted in all points like as we are if he did not know fear. These two, distinct natures in Christ, the divine and the human, are obvious throughout the Gospel narratives, especially in those passages dealing with his temptations, sufferings, and death. Here in Gethsemane we see the man Christ Jesus begging for relief from this great trial of agony. Yet, his submission and resignation to the Fathers will is submission and resignation to his own will as God.

The hour from which our Lord prayed for release was not the hour for which he had come into the world, but this hour in the Garden. The cup which he prayed might pass from him was not the cup of his Fathers wrath. That cup Jehovahs Servant took with determinate purpose and resolve. The cup he wanted to pass from him was the fear of dying in the Garden before he could take the cup of his Fathers wrath and drink it for us.

Christs Example

What a remarkable example our Savior set before us of submission to the will of God. And 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 (Mar 14:36).

For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps: Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously: Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.

(1Pe 2:21-24).

This is the highest measure of practical godliness and holiness. Let men brag and boast to themselves and before others as they may about their imaginary godly deeds. The surrender of my will to Gods will in all things is godliness: to bear patiently whatever my Father sends, to desire only what God has purposed, to want nothing but what God wills, to prefer pain to pleasure, if that is my Fathers will, to willingly be as passive before God as wet clay in the potters hands. That is godliness.

Nothing can make us happier in this world than submission to the will of God. Nothing brings us so much heartache and misery in this world as having our own way. May God give us grace to willingly submit to his will. Submit to his eternal will of predestination and his performed will in providence, and learn to live in peace. Like Eli of old, regarding all matters, may God the Holy Spirit teach us to say, It is the Lord, let him do what seemeth him good. Submit to his revealed will in Scripture, and walk in obedience to him.

Horrid Indifference

And he cometh, and findeth them sleeping, and saith unto Peter, Simon, sleepest thou? 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. And again he went away, and prayed, and spake the same words. And when he returned, he found them asleep again, (for their eyes were heavy,) neither wist they what to answer him. (Mar 14:37-40).

What fickle, slothful, sinful creatures the very best of Gods saints are in this world! We have a painful illustration of this fact in the slothful indifference of Peter, James, and John. But we have an even more painful illustration of it in ourselves. How horribly we sleep when we ought to pray, ignore our Lord when he is near, and quickly let slip those things we ought to hold fast! Again, we see clearly that Gods people, all who are born of God, so long as they live in this world, are people with two diametrically opposite, warring natures (Rom 7:14-23; Gal 5:17; Psalms 73). The spirit is ready and willing, it truly is; but the flesh is sinful and weak.

Therefore, we must ever watch and pray. We must always be on guard, as soldiers in hostile, enemy territory, knowing that there is a malicious traitor within. We must fight the battles daily. We must wage warfare against our flesh daily. Our rest is yet to come.

Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that are unruly, comfort the feebleminded, support the weak, be patient toward all men. See that none render evil for evil unto any man; but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves, and to all men. Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. Quench not the Spirit. Despise not prophesyings. Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. Abstain from all appearance of evil. And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it. (1Th 5:14-24)

Sleep On

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. Rise up, let us go; lo, he that betrayeth me is at hand. (Mar 14:41-42)

What reason we have to give thanks to our dear Savior for his steadfast resolve as our Surety. How we ought to admire and love him! He cometh the third time, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: it is enough. These words, It is enough, are related only by Mark. Did the Lord Jesus here speak as though the work of our redemption was already done? It certainly appears that he did. The word enough carries the idea of a debt paid in full. Our Lord is not now chastising his sleeping disciples, but speaking for their comfort and ours. He is saying, It is done, the work is complete, I have finished the work of my obedience. The hour is come. The appointed hour of his death, the appointed hour of redemption had come. Rise up, let us go. The blessed Savior says here, I must finish the work my Father gave me to do for you. I must go yonder to die in your place.

Nothing could keep our Savior from Calvary. Nothing could keep him from dying for us. Nothing could prevent him from accomplishing that death at Jerusalem for which he had come into this world. And, blessed be his name, nothing can keep him from saving those whom he redeemed with his own precious blood at Calvary! Let us ever find and take our rest in him (Mat 11:28-30).

Fuente: Discovering Christ In Selected Books of the Bible

they came: Mat 26:36-46, Luk 22:39, Joh 18:1-11

while: Mar 14:36, Mar 14:39, Psa 18:5, Psa 18:6, Psa 22:1, Psa 22:2, Psa 88:1-3, Psa 109:4

Reciprocal: Heb 5:7 – when

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

IN GETHSEMANE

And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane. My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch.

Mar 14:32; Mar 14:34

A mere intellectual solution of the mystery of this Divine sorrow over human guilt and woe is impossible. There are depths here which such lines can never fathom, which human insight can never penetrate. The sacred wonder has commanded the sympathetic, heart-broken gaze of all the ages; and they have each been arrested, moved, renewed, cleansed by the great mystery of the suffering of the Christa suffering which characterised His whole earthly life, but was gathered up, concentrated, intensified in this one last experience.

I. Our Lords longing for human sympathy.Christ took with Him the favoured three who had been with Him on the Mount of Glorification; but it was not that, as then, they might witness to the future Church concerning these scenes of deep, mysterious agony, but that they might be nigh at hand, as human helpers, if, indeed, any human help were possible. He felt the need of some soothing presence, supporting sympathy, and human comfort and cheer. Tarry ye here, and watch with Me! What a deep and touching pathos there is in such a human cry, and in such a desire to clasp the hand of loving friends in this last extremity of human sorrow! His pure humanity is thus made manifest. In all our affliction He is afflicted. He suffers as we suffer. He is tried as we are tried. He hath borne our griefsthe very same griefsand carried our sorrows. He is our brother in tribulation, and in all the woe of crushed and bruised and bleeding hearts!

II. The sacredness of human sorrow and Divine communion.He saith to His disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray. There is a close connection between the inner and the outward life, but all the deeper experiences of the inner are necessarily secret. There are things which those closest to us can neither share nor even know. The Saviour met His foes with lion-hearted courage. He never felt a tremor of the heart amid their maddest rage. He never crouched or bent before purpled iniquity, or brutal lawlessness, or priestly hate. His was the nobleness and dignity of triumphant innocence amid the scornful villainy of those who pronounced false sentences, which the future was sure to reverse. But the secret of His matchless silence and imperturbable repose is here. Gethsemane was needful to nerve and invigorate the moral nature. He paid His tribute to human weakness, to human dependence, to human suffering there, that He might be the hero and play the noble part in presence of His enemies. He brought heaven to His aid by prayer and fellowship there, that His strength might be equal to the strain put upon it when He met the onset of the foe. It is a natural necessity; it is a human condition of triumph. The fullness of life and its noblest ongoings and victories depend upon secret prayers and secret discipline. He said, even to those on whose sympathy He most depended, Sit ye here, while I shall pray.

III. The overwhelming depth and fullness of the Redeemers sorrow.The character of this overwhelming sorrow is what we must here mainly contemplate. It is a revelation of the innermostthe spiritual elements of the Atonement for sin. We should be involved in nameless perplexity about the possible meaning of His own words of hope and comfort if we supposed that it was merely death, or even premature and cruel death on the Cross, which was here so greatly troubling Him. No! this was not shrinking from death. The experience was unique, and it was intensely and exclusively spiritual. He was here agonised and overborne by His contact with the sin of the people. This was the bearing in His own spirit of the consequences of the sin of the world. He was suffering, though guiltless, because He was reckoned with the transgressors, and must suffer the results of sin which was not His own. He was bearing our griefs and carrying our sorrowsthe griefs and sorrows born of sin. There is nothing more marvellous and heart-moving than the Divine protest against human sin which is made and expressed in the fact that the Divine Christ was involved in the experience of its deepest and bitterest woe.

Illustration

There was nothing to correspond to this intense shrinking in the stoning of St. Stephen; nothing in St. Pauls bright anticipation of a death which he knew must be that of martyrdom; nor in the unshrinking courage of St. Polycarp; nor in the last hours of a thousand others who have laid down their lives for the Masters cause. No, to hint even that it was physical pain which drew from His lips that exceeding bitter cry is to degrade Him below the level of the Christian martyr. The Agony finds its explanation alone in the one great cardinal truth of the Christian faith; that He made His soul an offering for sin, that God laid upon Him the iniquity of us all; that He gathered up as it were the sins of the whole world, and then, as though He were Himself the sinner, by an inexplicable mystery which we shall never fathom, but before which we must bow the head in awe, was made a curse for us, was wounded for our transgressions.

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

Chapter 9.

Sin and the Sin-Bearer

“And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane: and He saith to His disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray. And He taketh with Him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy; And saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry 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 from Him. And 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. And He cometh, and findeth them sleeping, and saith unto Peter, Simon, sleepest thou? 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. And again He went away, and prayed, and spake the same words. And when He returned, He found them asleep again (for their eyes were heavy), neither wist they 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. Rise up, let us go; lo, he that betrayeth Me is at hand.”-Mar 14:32-42.

The Lord’s Sorrow.

There is no paragraph in the whole of Scripture which I more shrink from handling than I do this. These brief verses take us into the Inner Sanctuary of our Lord’s sorrow. Sometimes I feel that the best and only way of reading them is to read them in silence upon our knees. It seems something like sacrilege to criticise and discuss the Lord’s sorrow. And yet I would have you turn aside for a moment and see this great sight and notice how “the Lord of all, above, beneath, was bowed with sorrow unto death.” We will enter Gethsemane with bared head and unshod feet, remembering that the place whereon we stand is holy ground; but still we will enter and gaze on this subduing sight and seek to understand something of its meaning. Possibly, as we watch and wonder, there may steal into our souls a fuller realisation of

“All our redemption cost,

All our redemption won;

All it has won for us the lost,

All it cost Him, the Son.”

“Greatly amazed.”

Let me begin by calling attention to the fact of Christ’s sorrow. All the evangelists bear testimony to it. Look at the description Mark gives in these verses. “And taking with Him Peter and James and John, He began to be greatly amazed and sore troubled.” To be “greatly amazed!” The word in the original Greek is an exceedingly strong one. It is peculiar to Mark. He uses it in one place to express the effect upon the crowd when Jesus came down from the Holy Mount. “All the multitude, when they saw Him, were greatly amazed.” The evangelist uses it again to describe the effect produced upon the women, when, on the morning of the Resurrection, they found Christ’s tomb opened, and, instead of the dead body of the Lord, found in it a white-robed angel. “They were amazed!” says Mark. They were startled, staggered, bewildered, affrighted. And it is the same strong word Mark employs here to describe our Lord’s condition in the Garden. Not only “greatly amazed”; He was “sore troubled.”

“Sore troubled.”

And this again is a most expressive word. It expresses, one commentator says, “the distress which follows a great shock.” Judging it by the derivation suggested by some authorities, the word would seem to mean, “out of one’s usual surroundings,” “homeless.” “He began to be greatly amazed and homeless.” Treading the winepress alone, He felt the solitariness, the distress of the homeless. Now listen to the expression of our Lord’s own feeling. “My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death.” “Exceeding sorrowful,” or, as the Greek might be rendered, to convey the exact meaning of the word, “My soul is sorrowful all round and round.” Christ found Himself in the Garden in a weltering sea of trouble. “My soul is sorrowful all round and round-even unto death.” It was a killing sorrow. It was literally crushing out the Saviour’s life. For our Lord died, as the thrust of the Roman spear revealed, not as the result of the nails which were driven into His hands and feet; He died of a broken heart. His soul was sorrowful all round and round even unto death. There is no need for me to quote what the other evangelists say about Christ’s sorrow in the Garden; there is no need for me to remind you of the agony and bloody sweat of which Luke (xxii. 44) speaks, and of the “strong crying and tears” of which the writer to the Hebrews (Mar 14:7) speaks. What Mark tells us is sufficient in itself to show us that here we are in the presence of some deep, mysterious, unutterable woe. “Behold, and see,” says the Prophet, “if there be any sorrow like unto My sorrow” (Lam 1:12). And it is in the Garden that incomparable sorrow is to be witnessed. He was a Man of Sorrows all His life through. Right away from His early years He had grief to carry and burdens to bear. But it all came to a climax and a head in the Garden. There was never sorrow in the world like this.

“Deep waters have come in, O Lord!

All darkly on Thy human soul;

And clouds of supernatural gloom,

Around Thee are allowed to roll.

And Thou hast shuddered at each act,

And shrunk with an astonished fear,

As if Thou couldst not bear to see,

The loathsomeness of sin so near.”

The Springs of Christ’s Sorrow.

I pass on from the fact of Christ’s sorrow to the sources of it. Why was our Lord so “stunned” in the Garden, and what was this “cup” which He prayed His Father to take away from Him? Several answers have been given. Some have said that in Gethsemane our Lord was overwhelmed with the fear of death, and that “death” was the cup which He begged the Father to take away from Him. And on the strength of this explanation, sceptics have revelled in pointing out that many ordinary and everyday men have been braver than Christ. They would have us believe that, however noble His life may have been, there was something timid and craven about His death. They tell us that, in the matter of courage, many of Christ’s followers-those frail women who faced the beasts in the Roman amphitheatre, or who served as living torches in Nero’s garden, a girl like Margaret Wilson who was drowned in the waters of the Solway singing with her latest breath the twenty-fifth Psalm-they say that these were braver than the Master.

No Fear of Death.

I confess that if their representations of things were correct, I should feel sore troubled, for courage is an element in the perfect character, and a Christ Who lacked courage would be something less than a perfect Christ. But when men say that it was from the mere physical pain of dying Christ shrank in the Garden, they do greatly err. Christ had faced death before, as in the wild storm on the sea, with perfect calm. When the morrow came and the awful suffering of the Cross had to be endured, He bore Himself like a king! The thought of death, the physical act of dying, never troubled Jesus Christ. He often talked of it. He could have avoided it if He had been really afraid of it. But instead of seeking to avoid it, He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem. No, it was not the act of dying that made Him feel amazed and homeless. Had there been nothing but death in His purview, He would have carried into the Garden the triumphant and exultant spirit with which He left the Upper Room. It was something else, not dying, something far more awful than death, that brought desolation and anguish to our Lord’s soul.

Human Sin.

What was that something? I answer, it was human sin. Now in seeking to understand the connection between human sin and the suffering of the Lord, notice this truth, which Dr Fairbairn admirably emphasises; Christ being Who He was, was bound to suffer in this sinful world. His very purity and sinlessness made suffering inevitable. There is a sort of adaptation, Dr Fairbairn says, between a sinful man and a sinful earth. They suit each other. He has never known any home but this; he has never been accustomed to anything better; and so he does not realise its essential misery and woe. But Christ had had another home. He came down to earth from a heaven, where all is holiness and obedience and perfect happiness and health. And the result was our Lord felt the disorder and unhappiness of earth as no man could possibly feel them. A child brought up among the lepers at Molokai would get accustomed to the sight of festering limbs and rotting stumps, and would never realise the horror of them. The loathsomeness of it all would be a matter of course to him. But a visitor like Stevenson, knowing that all the world was not a lazar-house, coming from a place where men lived happy lives immune from this dread disease, saw Molokai in all its naked ghastliness, and his brief visit there was unmitigated pain and sorrow to him. In just the same way it was Christ, the visitor from another and happier sphere, who realised most the misery and woe of this disordered and sin-stricken world.

The Pure Soul and the Awfulness of Sin.

Then, again, Jesus was not only familiar with a better and happier life and so saw the misery of the world by contrast, but His very purity made Him exquisitely sensitive to the pain and shame of sin. The finer the nature, the greater the exposure to pain. Take a simple illustration: the finer the ear, the greater the sensitiveness to discord. A violin slightly out of tune inflicts no discomfort on a man with a dull and unmusical ear; it is sheer torment to a man whose ear is fine and sensitive. And it is with the soul as it is with the ear. The purer the soul the keener its sense of the awfulness of sin. It is not the sinner who feels the horror and shame of sin most keenly, but the saint. That is why the most poignant confessions of sin come, not from the lips of the worst of men, but from the lips of the noblest and best. Now the Man Christ Jesus was an absolutely pure soul. A soul whose sensitiveness had never been dulled or blurred by sin. And so He felt sin, the shame of it, the awfulness of it, as no one else in the world ever did. Take one illustration. A brutal crowd once dragged into His presence a woman who had forgotten her womanliness. They were untouched apparently by the awfulness of the sin; they were unmoved by any sense of pity for the fallen woman; all they thought about was the opportunity of putting Christ into a corner. But the Lord Himself, when the woman was brought into His presence, hung His head. The pity of it, the tragedy of it, the vision of that woman’s defiled soul filled Him with horror. The brutal crowd thought nothing of the sin except in its legal aspect; it blistered and scorched the pure soul of Christ.

The Shame and Ruin of Sin.

Again, Christ saw the extent of sin and the ruin it caused, as no one else did or could. “He knew,” we are told, “what was in man.” Sometimes perhaps we wish we had the power of reading character. But if all the hidden wickednesses of the hearts of men and women were revealed to us, faith would fail, reason would wellnigh totter, and we should cry out to God to take away from us a faculty that inflicted upon us such heartbreaking pain. You remember the story about Drummond? The students in Edinburgh used to make him their father confessor. They used to tell him of their failures and sins. But the revelation of human wickedness thus made to him was almost more than he could stand. He was found one Sunday night with haggard and drawn face, leaning on the mantelpiece, unable to take bite or sup. And when invited to eat, broke out into a cry of sheer pain, “Oh, the sins of these men, I wonder how God can stand it!” Well, Jesus knew what was in man. He saw the sin and evil of the human heart. It was spread before Him like an open book. What pain it caused Him, who can tell?

The Sorrow of the Sin-Bearer.

Now all this has its pertinency, but it scarcely gives us the key to the special horror of Gethsemane. We can, however, find that key in Christ’s realisation of what being the world’s sin-bearer meant and involved. Christ’s agony in the Garden was caused not simply by the thought of the wickedness of those who were going to be involved in His death; it was caused even more by the realisation of what was to happen to Himself. For He was to lose the touch of His Father’s hand and the sight of His Father’s face. The clue to the mysterious agony of the Garden is in that terrible cry, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” The spitting, the scourging, the piercing pain of the nails, these were nothing. But the hiding of His Father’s face! That was the “cup” He would fain have been spared. But that was the cup which He drank. “He Who knew no sin became sin for us.” Or, as Paul puts it in another tremendous word, “He hath redeemed us from the curse of the Law having become a curse for us.” And because Christ drank that bitter cup in the Garden, you and I are able to take the cup of Salvation; and because He tasted death, you and I shall never see death; and because He became “homeless,” you and I have an eternal home in the Father’s house of many mansions.

Fuente: The Gospel According to St. Mark: A Devotional Commentary

2

On this verse see the comments at Mat 26:36.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

THE history of our Lord’s agony in the garden of Gethsemane is a deep and mysterious passage of Scripture. It contains things which the wisest divines cannot fully explain. Yet it has upon its surface plain truths of most momentous importance.

Let us mark, in the first place, how keenly our Lord felt the burden of a world’s sin. It is written that He began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy; and saith unto them, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death,”-and that “he fell on the ground, and prayed, that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him.”

There is only one reasonable explanation of these expressions. It was no mere fear of the physical suffering of death, which drew them from our Lord’s lips. It was a sense of the enormous load of human guilt, which began at that time to press upon Him in a peculiar way. It was a sense of the unutterable weight of our sins and transgressions which were then specially laid upon Him. He was being “made a curse for us.” He was bearing our griefs and carrying our sorrows according to the covenant He came on earth to fulfill. He was being “made sin for us who Himself knew no sin.” His holy nature felt acutely the hideous burden laid upon Him. These were the reasons of His extraordinary sorrow.

We ought to see in our Lord’s agony in Gethsemane the exceeding sinfulness of sin. It is a subject on which the thoughts of professing Christians are far below what they should be. The careless, light way in which such sins as swearing, Sabbath-breaking, lying, and the like, are often spoken of, is a painful evidence of the low condition of men’s moral feelings. Let the recollection of Gethsemane have a sanctifying effect upon us. Whatever others do, let us never “make a mock at sin.”

Let us mark, in the second place, what an example our Lord gives us of the importance of prayer in time of trouble. In the hour of His distress we find Him employing this great remedy. Twice we are told that when His soul was exceeding sorrowful, “He prayed.”

We shall never find a better receipt than this, for the patient bearing of affliction. The first person to whom we should turn in our trouble is God. The first complaint we should make should be in the form of a prayer. The reply may not be given immediately. The relief we want may not be granted at once. The thing that tries us may never be removed and taken away. But the mere act of pouring out our hearts, and unbosoming ourselves at a throne of grace will do us good. The advice of James is wise and weighty: “Is any afflicted? Let him pray.” (Jam 5:13.)

Let us mark, in the third place, what a striking example our Lord gives us of submission of will to the will of God. Deeply as His human nature felt the pressure of a world’s guilt, He still prays that, “if it were possible,” the hour might pass from Him. “Take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.” [Footnote: Men are so apt to run into error on the subject of the divine and human natures in Christ, that the following quotation may be worth reading.

“There are two distinct wills in Christ . But although they be truly distinct and different one from the other, yet they are not contrary one to the other, but they are subordinate each to other; the human will of Christ being always subject to His divine will, and most ready to be ordered and ruled by it . Therefore here we see that He doth submit His will, as He was man, to the divine will of God the Father, which divine will of the Father was also Christ’s own will. This truth we are to hold and maintain against those old heretics, which were called Monothelites, because they held there was but one kind of will in Christ, namely His divine will. This heresy sprung up in the Eastern church about 600 years after Christ; and it did very much molest and trouble the church for many years. It was a branch of the gross heresy of Eutyches which sprung up 200 years before. This Eutyches confounded the two natures in Christ, holding that as there was but one Person after the personal union, so there was but one nature in Christ, viz. the divine nature, the human nature being swallowed up. To maintain this the better, his followers maintained that Christ had but one kind of will. This heresy was condemned by the sixth general council at Constantinople, as well as by other ancient councils. And the fathers of the church in those times, did confute it by these very words of our Saviour which we have now in hand.”-Petter on Mark.]

We can imagine no higher degree of perfection than that which is here set before us. To take patiently whatever God sends-to like nothing but what God likes-to wish nothing but what God approves-to prefer pain, if it please God to send it; to ease, if God does not think fit to bestow it-to lie passive under God’s hand, and know no will but His-this is the highest standard at which we can aim, and of this our Lord’s conduct in Gethsemane is a perfect pattern.

Let us strive and labor to have “the mind that was in Christ” in this matter. Let us daily pray and endeavor to be enabled to mortify our self-will. It is for our happiness to do so. Nothing brings us so much misery on earth as having our own way. It is the best proof of real grace to do so. Knowledge, and gifts, and convictions, and feelings, and wishes, are all very uncertain evidences. They are often to be found in unconverted persons. But a continually increasing disposition to submit our own wills to the will of God, is a far more healthy symptom. It is a sign that we are really “growing in grace, and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ.”

Let us mark, lastly, in these verses, how much infirmity may be found even in the best Christians. We have a painful illustration of this truth in the conduct of Peter, James, and John. They slept when they ought to have watched and prayed. Though invited by our Lord to watch with Him, they slept. Though warned a short time before that danger was at hand, and their faith likely to fail, they slept. Though fresh from the Lord’s table, with all its touching solemnities, they slept. Never was there a more striking proof that the best of men are but men, and that, so long as saints are in the body, they are compassed with infirmity.

These things are written for our learning. Let us take heed that they are not written in vain. Let us ever be on our guard against the slothful, indolent, lazy spirit in religion, which is natural to us all, and especially in the matter of our private prayers. When we feel that spirit creeping over us, let us remember Peter, James, and John in the garden, and take care.

The solemn counsel which our Lord addresses to His disciples should often ring in our ears: “Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak.” It should be the Christian’s daily motto from the time of his conversion to the hour of his death.

Are we true Christians? and would we keep our souls awake? Let us not forget that we have within us a double nature-a ready “spirit” and weak “flesh”-a carnal nature inclined to evil, and a spiritual nature inclined to good. These two are contrary one to the other. (Gal 5:17.) Sin and the devil will always find helpers in our hearts. If we do not crucify and rule over the flesh, it will often rule over us and bring us to shame.

Are we true Christians, and would we keep our souls awake? Then let us never forget to “watch and pray.” We must watch like soldiers-we are upon enemy’s ground. We must always be on our guard. We must fight a daily fight, and war a daily warfare. The Christian’s rest is yet to come. We must pray without ceasing, regularly, habitually, carefully, and at stated times. We must pray as well as watch, and watch as well as pray. Watching without praying is self-confidence and self-conceit. Praying without watching is enthusiasm and fanaticism. The man who knows his own weakness, and knowing it both watches and prays, is the man that will be held up and not allowed to fall.

Fuente: Ryle’s Expository Thoughts on the Gospels

Mar 14:32-42. THE AGONY IN GETHSEMANE. See on Mat 26:36-40; comp. especially Luk 22:39-46.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

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.

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.

Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament

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, , to be in a consternation. The word implies the most shocking mixture of terror and amazement: the next word, , which we render, to be very heavy, signifies to be quite depressed, and almost overwhelmed with the load: and the word , 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 Fathers 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 stones 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 Lords 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.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Mar 14:32-42. Gethsemane.On the other side of the brook Kidron, in a garden called Gethsemane (= oil-press) Jesus took the three most intimate disciples aside to help Him bear the burden of surrender. It has been suggested that they were not physically close enough to Jesus to hear the words of His prayer. Then, later, they must have been spiritually close enough to interpret the scene aright. Mk. uses a forcible phrase in Mar 14:33. Jesus began to be full of terror and distress (Weymouth). The second verb implies perplexity. Rville holds that the last part of Mar 14:38 was obviously spoken by Jesus of Himself, and did not merely refer to the sleeping condition of the disciples. The words describe the torments He was enduring. Perhaps the boldest interpretation of Gethsemane is given in Heb 5:7-10. Php 2:8 may also refer to it. The disciple who was ready to die with Jesus is unable to watch with Him one hour. The closest companions of Jesus cannot share His inner travail. Neither on the mount of transfiguration nor in the garden do they know what to answer (cf. Mar 14:40 with Mar 9:6; Rendei Harris, Memoranda Sacra, p. 92).

Mar 14:37. The name Simon has not been used since Mar 3:16. Is this significant?

Mar 14:41. it is enough: HNT and Wellhausen say, Enough of sleep. De Zwaan has discovered that the word is often used in papyri on receipt-forms. It may then refer to Judas. He has received (the bribe). He has succumbed to the temptation. This is attractive (Exp. 1905, p. 459f., Moulton and Milligan, Vocabulary, pp. 57f.).

Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible

Verse 32

Gethsemane; on the declivity of the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem.

Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament

PRAYER ONE

32 And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane: and he saith to his disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray. 33 And he taketh with him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy; 34 And saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch. 35 And he went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. 36 And 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.

It is of interest to note the special association the Lord had with Peter, James and John. He confided in them what he would not with the other disciples (“began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy; 34 And saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death” He shared his innermost feelings with them at this very difficult time of His life.

began

This was the start of His feelings, until this time He had either controlled his emotions or at this time started feeling this way. This word means to commence or rehearse from the beginning.

to be sore amazed

The term is used of fear or fright and by the construction it is indicated that this fear was caused from outside Him. This would fit the realization of what is coming upon Him very soon.be very heavy

This heaviness seems to be on His part. The realization is upon Him and he allows the heaviness to come upon him.

I don’t mean to imply that I know what was going on with the Lord, but it would be my impression from the construction that the realization that His time was very near struck Him maybe even unexpectedly, and as a man His mind just wrapped itself around the facts and the full force of them struck Him and His mind just went into heavy mode. Not that His divinity was out of control or not in control, but that his manhood suddenly realized what was about to face Him.

exceeding sorrowful

This was a simple expression of what He was feeling to His closest associates. He was very sorry. Whether sorry for Himself or for the apostles and their coming torment we are not told but It would seem that a little of both might be included. The whole situation was going to be terribly hard for all involved.

“Fell” seems to have a relationship to prostration as well as moving from the standing position to prostration. This is often the position for worship in the Bible and we ought to consider it more in our churches today. We seem to be rather flip about worship today. If we aren’t rocking on out, we are wandering around greeting one another and when that is over we hear lots of fluff about how God owes us a great life even though we have no idea of how to really worship.

It is hard to relate what is seen in churches today to the Biblical concept of worshiping God. Might some take a look into the concept in the Word rather than seeking information from somebody’s blog or website. God sets the standard we are to follow not the local church growth analyst.

prayed

While laying face to the ground the Lord was meeting His Father on serious business. When you have serious business to do with the God please consider Christ’s method of approach to the Father that approach by prostration. Much of the unanswered prayer people complain about might well be due to improper life and approach to the fulfiller of prayer.

Some might bring up Luk 22:41 and his use of kneeling rather than lying down or prostrate. The translation is unfortunate since the term Luke used normally means lay, put or lay down rather than simply kneel, though it is translated kneeled four times elsewhere. Mat 26:39 translates the act as “fell on his face.”

hour might pass from him

His simple request was that the Father might allow this hour of trouble to pass from Him. I am sure that in His heart He knew that He must walk through these trials set before Him, but thehope of a man dreading the pain and coming death seems to speak forth.

There is also the possibility that there was a dread over and above this. There may have been dread of the coming separation from God and pain of the sins of the world. We are not told much of these things in the word, but taking the sin of all mankind upon one’s self cannot be a pleasant task to look forward to. We have no idea just what that meant to the Lord or how it affected Him but there certainly must have been ramifications.

Abba Father

Abba is a Chaldee (transliterated) word meaning father while the term translated father is a Greek word. The Greek speaking Jews often combined the two words together in prayer. On the other hand Barnes states that it is a Syriac word. Lightfoot has an extended discussion on the terms if you would like further information. (Matthew and Luke mention only one father as opposed to Mark’s two. Matthew and Luke mention only the Greek father.)

Some preachers over the years have said that this just means Christ was saying Papa to God the Father. I have seen nothing but interpretation in their comments; there is nothing in the meaning of the words to indicate that this informal common term would be used by neither the Greek Jew nor even us today. I do not see Christ speaking to the Father in such a familiar, common way either. There is little indication that God the Father has a mature Father and child Son relationship, they are equal and to indicate there is such a childlike quality to the Lord nears sacrilege in my mind. If they were on such an informal childish relationship I suppose that Christ would have shortened it to Pa in His teen years according to these men. Some even go so far as to say that it means dada a term used by infants.

Take away this cup

This seems best related to the whole thought of the coming persecution and the cross, while some might suggest that it only related to the persecution. I see nothing to indicate that it is the trouble alone. Indeed, we do not know if the Lord knew of the pre cross events well enough to know what it would be like, nor that it would be something to dread. He would only have known of His coming death for certain.

The important point being that He was sorely tempted and yet withstood with the help of the Holy Spirit and was willing to submit Himself to the will of the Father.

It should be noted that such temptation in the face of trouble and torment is not wrong and it is not sin for we know Christ lived this life without sin. Bowing to temptation is that which is sin.

Fuente: Mr. D’s Notes on Selected New Testament Books by Stanley Derickson

14:32 (10) And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane: and he saith to his disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray.

(10) Christ suffering for us the most horrible terrors of the curse of God, in that flesh which he took upon him for our sakes, receives the cup from his Father’s hands, which he being just, drinks right away for the unjust.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

Jesus’ sufferings in Gethsemane 14:32-42 (cf. Matthew 26:36-46; Luke 22:40-46)

This incident contrasts Jesus’ humility and dependence on the Father with Peter’s self-confidence (Mar 14:27-31). It is a remarkable revelation of the humanity of Jesus.

"So far from sailing serenely through his trials like some superior being unconcerned with this world, he is almost dead with distress." [Note: Moule, p. 117.]

This is Mark’s third mention of Jesus praying (cf. Mar 1:35; Mar 6:46). In each instance Jesus affirmed His commitment to the Father’s will that Satan was constantly testing.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

Jesus apparently took His inner circle of disciples (cf. Mar 5:37; Mar 9:2) with Him to teach them about suffering and to receive help from their intercession for Him (cf. Mat 26:38). The other disciples were to pray as well (Luk 22:40). This was apparently a favorite place that Jesus and the disciples had visited previously (cf. Luk 22:39; Joh 18:2).

The words "distressed" (Gr. ekthambeisthai) and "troubled" (Gr. ademonein) together "describe an extremely acute emotion, a compound of bewilderment, fear, uncertainty and anxiety, nowhere else portrayed in such vivid terms as here." [Note: R. G. Bratcher and E. A. Nida, Translator’s Handbook on Mark, p. 446.] The prospect of bearing God’s wrath for the world’s sins and experiencing separation from His Father grieved Jesus deeply (Gr. perilypos, cf. Mar 6:26). This was much more than any mere martyr has ever had to endure.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

CHAPTER 14:32-42 (Mar 14:32-42)

IN THE GARDEN

“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.

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary