“And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.” (Lk 22: 44 NIV)
“My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death…My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Matt. 26:38-39 NIV)
The agony of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane was not for Himself but for us.
Before His incarnation and all through His brief earth life, Jesus had known what the end-point of His Mission would be if humanity did not or failed to accept Him. Yet, because of Love for the few who deserved salvation and the possibility of strengthening these few to act as leaven for the rest of mankind, He undertook the Mission. Therefore, to assume that He turned suddenly fearful at the last moment is unreasonable. On the other hand, to expect Him to go into it joyfully (as would have been the case if this was indeed the high point and essence of His mission) is also unreasonable.
The scene in the garden of Gethsemane was as important as that on the cross for our salvation. Humanity was about to add another and even deeper link to the chain of their failures, one that, as Jesus indicated earlier in the parable of the Tenants, will result in the owner of Creation rejecting humanity on earth, especially all those who murdered His Son. Our earth was heading towards a terrible abyss.
In Gethsemane, just before the crisis of decision, when humanity, through its leaders and representatives, must decide whether to recognize the one sent by God or reject Him, Christ agonized and pleaded with His Father on our behalf. Indeed, the intense events on the last evening before His passion, faithfully documented from various perspectives in the gospels, are illuminating.
These events moved from the last meal with His disciples, during which He washed their feet and established the covenant of Love, to the final profound teaching on the Mount of Olives and were all great acts of Love and grace.
On this final occasion with His disciples, the Son of God declared the completion of His mission even before His death on the cross. Before the culmination of His mission on the cross, Jesus joyously declared that He had already fulfilled the Will of His Father – “I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world existed.” (John 17:1-5).
The Son was ready to return to the Father! As part of the Light, Jesus stood and always will stand in the Father’s will. He had finished the work the Father sent Him to do even before His death on the cross! He had finished the mission of granting the Truth, the basis for salvation, to humanity.
He had fulfilled the Will of His Father and thus glorified Him by accomplishing the work for which He was sent, and as He further emphasized, this work is to bring eternal life to all those who recognize the Father through Him. This eternal life lies solely and only in knowing God, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom He sent. “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” Salvation lies in nothing else!
Thereafter, Jesus’s last acts on earth were acts of profound Love. He started by dedicating His followers to the protection of the Father in the great intercessory prayer for His disciples and all who will accept Him through the disciples. They will remain behind in the world, subject to attacks by the darkness, and He asked for protection for them.
After this, He went into the valley, across the Kidron brook, and into the garden. Therefore, what happened in the garden was not a prayer that the Father’s Will may be changed, for the Father’s Will as concerns the mission has been fulfilled.
It is the Father’s Will, however, that human spirits are allowed to exercise their free will even when it goes contrary to Divine ordinance, subject to the Primordial laws of Creation that also bear God’s Will for His Creation. What remains is for the human spirits to decide whether to accept the Envoy of God or to reject Him, and of course, this choice will also be worked out in the Perfect Will of the Creator.
The awful consequences that will fall on humanity for murdering not just any messenger of God but His Son, the greatest gift the Creator had given us was before Jesus. He had to die a shameful, undeserved death if He was not to deny Himself, His Mission, and His relationship with God. Before Him, therefore, was this great yawning gulf – His death on the cross representing a heavy burden of sin on the very humanity He came to save on the one hand, and His denying Himself and therefore aborting or mitigating if not nullifying His whole Mission of Salvation on the other. This oppressed Him greatly as He told His disciples – “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
In the Garden of Gethsemane, in an agony that has not been the lot of any living being, an agony that could not be described in human words, except perhaps to state that His very sweat drops were like drops of blood, Christ pleaded on our behalf. He requested from the Father that if there was any other way than laying this crushing burden of sin on the ignorant, misled human spirits, a sin that would taint humanity for generations to come, the Eternal One may permit it. “He knew that the tortures awaiting Him were nothing but the consequences of the free will of man”
But everything must be subject to the Will of the Father manifest as the immutable Laws of Creation, including the free expression of human choices. They must be allowed to express their free will. God’s Perfection does not allow free will, once granted to man as part of his essence, to be arbitrarily interfered with.
Therefore, as Christ also knew, the solution lay with the human spirits, who must exercise their free will without interference. Thus, even this great intercession was not fulfilled simply because human beings would not cooperate with the Light. If Christ’s mission of bringing salvation in the Word is to be consolidated, He had to follow the path as determined by human spirits and their free will. The consequence, already foreseen, must play out if humanity does not accept Him as coming from the Father.
Yet, the living words of the Son of God cannot go in vain, and Christ’s request in the garden received the assurance of forgiveness from His Father, our God, for those among humanity who recognize their failings and repent. It was here that He asked and received forgiveness for all those who may still come to repent of this dastardly act, the forgiveness He freely proclaimed to us on the cross.
When He went into the garden, He took three of His disciples, who, as representatives of humanity, were to keep watch with Him. But although they were willing enough, their spiritual movement was not reflected in their bodies. They fell asleep, incapable of praying effectively, even for themselves, in this moment of the greatest peril that humanity had ever faced.
If they were alert to their responsibility as the chosen from out of humanity, the disciples, at this critical hour, were to stand spiritually as protection between their master and the darkness surrounding humanity. They only awakened after the darkness had attacked—“Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour has come, and the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners” (Matt 26:45). Without recognizing that the battle was spiritual, Peter, upon awakening from sleep, engaged in physically assaulting the representatives of the darkness.
At the end of this great vigil, Christ rose victorious, ready to face the malice of Satan and men. By His death, He would consolidate, i.e., put a seal to His Mission, and through His intercession, salvation for those who recognize and obey His word would not be compromised, for forgiveness had been assured.
The words of forgiveness from the Son of God as He hung bleeding on the cross are deeply revealing. “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” was a great indictment for humanity. It is an indication that His crucifixion is not only a sin against Him personally but also against the Father and the Holy Spirit. Thus, the forgiveness offered must be worked out in the Laws of Creation. Only those who come to the recognition of the wrong done here, who repent and seek forgiveness, will receive cleansing from this heavy burden of sin.
Obviously, those at the time who were still mocking Him (if you are the Son of God, come down from the cross…) and those today who glory in His crucifixion and death (claiming that it is a necessary sacrifice according to the Will of God) have not achieved the recognition of the evil done and therefore cannot receive the forgiveness offered.
How can His death be a necessary and God Willed happening when Judas, who betrayed Him for money, tried to return the money and subsequently committed suicide? How could it be the Will of the Father when, in the parable of the tenants, in which the Son of God depicted His mission and its likely consequence, the King, His Father, was set to destroy the wicked tenants who killed His Son? How can it be the purpose of Christ’s coming to die on the cross so that His blood will wash away our sins when He, at the eleventh hour of His mission, while before Pilate’s seat of judgment, declared that the reason for His coming was only to bear witness to the Truth?
It is self-delusion, based on spiritual indolence and intellectual conceit, to assume that it was the Will of the Creator for Christ to die on the cross; in other words, that God changed His Own Laws in just this instance. The expectation here, entirely based on conceit, is that the Creator must adjust and bend to the will of man.
This contention that the crucifixion of Christ could not have happened if it was not God’s will is only based on a poor conception of God as an arbitrary acting God who can do and does anything he likes. But God is perfect, and perfection does not allow for arbitrariness. Once determined in the perfection of Omniscience, every subsequent happening follows the Laws of Creation that manifest God’s unchanging Will.
Every human experience tells us that God, having graced us with the gift of Free Will, never interferes with our exercise of this gift. The Creator does not interfere directly in the affairs of Creation except through His Laws, in which everything is ultimately worked out. There are so many things, so many human activities in thoughts, words, and deeds, that are contrary to the Will of God but which the Creator apparently permits. This apparent lack of intervention swings in perfection and Omniscience.
Therefore, the fact that the Almighty did not interfere with the choice of humanity to kill His Son is not synonymous with approval or even condoning. Christ Himself, from His origin, was fully aware of the possibility of rejection and death in the hands of humanity and that this would cause further problems for humanity. This He brought out in the parable of the Tenants, in which Christ described His Mission from the owner of Creation, the necessity for it, the human response to it, and the consequences of this response (Mk 12:1-13; Matt.21:33-46).
In no part of this parable was it suggested that the killing of the Son was the Will of the Father or that the Father was so pleased as to offer unconditional forgiveness on the basis of this sacrifice. Indeed, the reverse was the case. (See also “Footprints of the Lord” by Uchenna Mezue)
As we remember Christ’s death and resurrection, we must reflect on the magnitude of God’s sacrifice of Love and the possibility of salvation and resurrection out of the World of Matter that it provides. But salvation does not lie in His murder on the cross or in His blood shed on the cross. Salvation lies only in the word of God, the Truth He brought! It lies in accepting the word and living it!
“…To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.” (Jn. 18:37 KJV)
ThePureGate.com 