Gethsemane and Calvary
His chapter is in continuation of the last. Calvary will be a mystery to you until you understand the work that was done in Gethsemane. The difference between the two is as the difference between the soul and the body. For example: Jesus went to Gethsemane; He was led away to Calvary. In this change of expression, as shown in italics, you see exactly what I mean. Jesus died in the. garden; He was murdered on the hill. Jesus broke the typical and sacramental bread before going to Gethsemane, not before being violently led away to Golgotha. The bitterness of death was past, and the glory of tle resurrection was realised, before Jesus gave Himself up to the Jews. In Gethsemane you see the spiritual view of actions presently to be unfolded in most tragical horror and ineffable splendour, — the crucifixion and the resurrection of the Son of Man. “He sweat as it were ereat drops of blood,”’ — there is the Cross! He said: “Not My will but Thine be done,’ — there is the Sacrifice! There is the literal and infinitely pathetic realisation of the words, “I lay down My life; no man taketh it from Me; but I lay it down of Myself; I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” He said, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death,”’ — it was then that Jesus Christ died! Then came a word not to be carelessly spoken as if common speech: “Rise up, let us go,’ — there is the Resurrection! I think the loss will be yours if you fritter down this word so as to make it include but a movement of the body: literally, you may be right in so limiting it, but read in Gethsemane, in the light of what has just been endured, it comes to my mind with deeper meaning, like a tone of confidence soon to increase to a blast of triumph. When Jesus said, “If it be possible let this cup pass from Me,” we knew not how the strife would end: when He said, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death,’ we feared that His agony would become His destruction; but now that He says “Rise,’ we feel that we too have risen with Christ! There is a new sweet morning shining and breathing around us. From this moment Christ will go forward without a murmur: He will reveal Himself to the betrayer; He will be led as a lamb to the slaughter, nor will He chide or argue with men. The deed is wholly past, in all that is vital. On Calvary we see the crucifixion of Christ; in Gethsemane we see the crucifixion by Christ. In Gethsemane we may say, “He laid down His life;” on Calvary we may say, “Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.” Whatever was done in Gethsemane was also to be done with publicity and demonstrativeness on Calvary. An appeal must be made to public vision and to public feeling, and the great transaction of Gethsemane must become an historical fact attested by many witnesses. And now Calvary takes the first place, as the letter takes precedence of the spirit. We first see the murder, then the sacrifice: we see the Victim first, afterwards we see the Priest: first we see the Cross, by-and-by we see the Altar. Universal attention is arrested by the Cross, The little child listens and weeps: the heathen wonders and inquires: the hardened sinner stops and trembles. Not one of them could have first entered into the mystery of Gethsemane; they all begin with that which is material, and advance to that which is spiritual. May we not say without irreverence that Jesus Christ Himself could only go to Calvary by way of Gethsemane? In our own infinitely less degree we repeat this very process in all matters of vital importance. We cannot extemporise the great heroisms of life. First we must pass through a secret conflict as between God and ourselves, as between law
and desire, as between conscience and expediency. In solitude we must win the victory, or it can never be secured in public: the outward life will be spasmodic, irregular, sensational, unless we pass into the outer battle through the strife and triumph, say, if you will, the crucifixion and resurrection, of solitary agony and surrender.
What was this Cup from which Jesus Christ shrank in such fear and pain? It could not have been the cup of mere death, for He came to die, it was the purpose for which He was manifested. He approached His death with perfect intelligence, and with serenity inexplicable on common grounds. Besides, all this agony in anticipation of merely bodily suffering is not only unlike everything that we know about Jesus Christ, it is so far below the average of human fortitude, as to amount to a severe discredit if proved against Him. Not only so, it is incredible that any man who was in such mortal terror in antielpation of pain and death should not have spoken the one word which would have secured His escape. Pilate invited Him to speak it, and would have rejoiced in its utterance. It is, therefore, inadmissible on every ground that this cup could have had any reference to the anguish — terrible beyond expression as it must have been — of bodily crucifixion.
It was intolerable mental agony! It was sorrow of the soul! Was He then setting an example? Was His soul being made an offering for sin? Was He sorrowing because He was going to the Father? Was He taking away the sin of the world? Probably you will ask whether Christ was surprised at the wholly unexpected bitterness of the cup? JI think His words may be so read as not to express any surprise on the part of the Sufferer. You will remember that Jesus Christ’s prayers were sometimes intended to have a social effect; as, for example, when He said at the grave of Lazarus, “Because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that Thou hast sent Me.” A reverent and permissible application of this principle will give the following paraphrase of the prayer, “If it be possible let this cup pass from Me:” — “Father, the world will never believe that sin can deserve such sorrow as this; narrow and dim in its moral vision, the world will suppose that this cup need not have been so heavy and so bitter; if it be possible to take one drop of bitterness away, or to remove the whole cup, let it pass from Me: for their sakes to whom Thy love and righteousness shall be made known in ages to come I say it, that they may know the sinfulness of sin in Thy sight, and the impossibility of redeeming the sinner without great cost of suffering and sorrow.” — Thus I do not read the words as if Christ wished to escape; but as intended to show that the question of the possibility of human salvation by some other method was distinctly raised by Himself in the hour of His agony, and was determined by the cross. That deliverance from physical suffering could have been effected, without moral culpability, is obvious; “more than twelve legions of angels” could have been invoked; the ruffian bands could have been afflicted with blindness; or Jesus could have passed through His enemies again as he had once done before. The “possibility,” then, did not relate to the mere suffering to be occasioned by the cross;
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it was somehow, not yet explained, a question between Himself and His Father. We reverently wonder what it was! “This cup,” is indefinite. We seem to hear only part of what was said; as if Jesus was answering something that His Father had uttered. We have said that it was intolerable mental agony, but this seems but to substitute one indefiniteness for another. We want explicitness, we want a name! Perhaps there was something to come which He had seen, indeed, omnisciently, as all things are naked and open unto His eyes, but had not felt in all its mortal keenness until this hour. It is one thing to foresee a sorrow in its most vivid and appalling outline, and another to encounter it in actual experience. It was so, you remember, in your own case: you foresaw the dear one’s death; you knew it must come, and come soon; and to be ready for the stroke you said you would use yourself to do without that loved life, and by anticipation would afflict yourself with the cold of the inevitable loneliness. You thought you were ready. You said with tears that your heart was at last resigned. But when the stroke fell, what then of your preparedness! It may have been so even with Christ. He came to be killed; He came to lay down His life; He came to Calvary: yet though He knew all, He had not felt all. There was one element in the cup bitterer than every other. What was it? For the answer you must go to Calvary. Jesus had never allowed Himself to name it. Nay, He had even strengthened Himself by declaring that there was no such bitterness in the cup! Did He not say, “I am not alone, for the Father is with Me”? Had not His words latterly been tenderer than ever about the Father? Did He not draw the garment of this consolation the closer around Him as He neared the fierce wind that stormed upon Him to His destruction? He was quite sure of the Father’s presence: so sure (oh mystery of the heart!) that He began
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to doubt it! That was the cup! If you hesitate to think so, listen to His piercing, rending, mortal cry — *“My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me!”
That cry would seem to explain the agony of the garden. If we now go back to Gethsemane we shall be able reverently to conjecture what it was that came upon the heart of Christ with a shock that elicited the prayer — * Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from Me.” The withdrawment of the Father had been revealed to Him; omnisciently He had known that from eternity, but sympathetscally, He could not have known it until it was at hand. Even God’s heart-breaks over the sins of man always came upon Him by surprise; hence many a passage in the Old Testament which no literalist can ever explain. It was such surprise that came upon Christ in this dark hour. He had said that the Father was with Him, and now He was told that the Father was going away! He Himself was learning the very lesson He had taught to His disciples when He said to them, “It is expedient for you that I go away.” Now the iron that had pierced their hearts entered His own soul! In a way we can never understand on earth, it was expedient that the Father should go away from the Son. Out of this necessity came the prayer, “If it be possible let this cup pass from Me,” and the ery, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me!”
Yes, why 2? Not because of personal sin. Not because of incomplete work. Not because of defective testimony. At one point it would seem as if those who teach that Jesus Christ came into the world simply to declare the truth and the mercy of God, and not to die for human sin, were right, for He said, “I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do,”! — and yet He had not endured the cross! It would seem, too, as if He exvected even then
1 John xvii. 45.
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to ascend and be received up into glory: “And now I am no more in the world,... and nowI come to Thee.” He had finished, and yet He had not finished; as He was alone, yet not alone. But why was Christ forsaken? Was it that He might feel all the judgment against sin in one intolerable agony? Was this the supreme punishment due to sin? Some say so. Or was it that He might be in all points tempted as we are? Was it that in His own experience He might provide a sanctuary for men who know what it is to be in despair? Observe, that if this moment of forsakenness had not been in the life of Christ, there would not have been one ray of light in all that history for despavring souls; they alone would have been left without lot or heritage in the great Redemption. But now they have a fellow-sufferer in the Lord. Their darkness 1s as noonday compared with the infinite gloom of the Redeemer’s loneliness. He prayed to be glorified, He died forsaken! He died forsaken, but He rose again clothed with “all power in heaven and on earth.” So men may, by knowing “the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings,” come also to know “the power of His resurrection.”
What explanation of Christ’s work as Priest is suggested by the cry “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” If it implied the withdrawment of the Father because of punishment or suffering due to representative sin, it must be claimed by those who uphold the expiatory theory of the work of Christ as a distinct proof of that theory. If, on the other hand, it represented a state of despair into which every Christian soul may come, and was therefore intended as a solace and a hope to the victims of extreme despondency, it may be as distinctly claimed by the upholders of the moral theory. But apart from either this theory or that it was a terrible cry, Imasmuch as it seemed to be a confirmation of the justice of Christ’s sentence, and a sanction of His abandonment by His own disciples. How else could the Father have forsaken Him? Does God forsake the just? Does God turn away from those whose work He approves? For the answer to questions so vital we are not yet prepared.
Wee WORK OF CHRIST (AS EXPLAINED
INV TEE ELITIST DES.
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