What do we do when our Gethsemane moments come? When the diagnosis is terrifying, when the sorrow is crushing and the hour feels dark? We follow Jesus’s pattern. We bring our honest agony to the Father, but then, by faith, we pivot. We submit our will to His, trusting His character when we cannot see His plan, and we pray, “Father, not my will, but Yours, be done.”

Have you ever felt discouraged and tempted to give up? Have you ever felt overwhelmed with intense, soul-crushing pressure when the truth that you know in your head is put to the test in real life? These kinds of experiences of darkness and pressure—spiritual exhaustion—have characterized the lives of God’s people all throughout history. The Puritans called these experiences the Dark Night of the Soul.

The Psalms are filled with expressions of this kind of spiritual oppression. Listen to David in Psalm 55: “My heart is in anguish within me; the terrors of death have fallen upon me. Fear and trembling come upon me, and horror overwhelms me.… Oh, that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest; yes, I would wander far away; I would lodge in the wilderness; I would hurry to find a shelter from the raging wind and tempest.” You’re just so overwhelmed, you just want to escape from it all. That’s how David felt.

And this is how Jesus felt in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Last Supper is over. Jesus has poured his final teachings into his disciples, and now he leads his closest friends out of the city, across the Kidron Valley, and up the familiar slopes of the Mount of Olives to a garden where he was accustomed to pray. And here in the garden, Jesus experiences a dark night of the soul—he experiences such a weight of agony that he sweats drops of blood. No wonder, as he says in Luke 22:53, this is the hour of the power of darkness.

This kind of intense pressure is also what Jesus’s disciples felt. For three years, they have followed him, and now, their discipleship will face its most severe test. And as we will see, it is a test they will fail. The scene in the Garden of Gethsemane show us a profound contrast of responses under intense spiritual pressure. On the one side, we see the perfect Son of Man, the Last Adam, facing the cup of God’s wrath with agonizing, yet submissive prayer. And on the other side, we see his chosen disciples facing the same crisis with sorrowful, yet sinful, weakness.

The Submission of the God-Man

First, we see the custom of Jesus’s prayer. Luke 22:39 says, “And he came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives.” That phrase, “as was his custom,” is a small but profoundly significant detail. Luke wants us to understand that this agonizing prayer was built upon a lifetime of consistent, habitual communion with his Father. Throughout his ministry, we see Jesus withdrawing to lonely places to pray. His strength for this ultimate trial was sourced from the deep well of a consistent, daily dependence on his Father.

There is a vital lesson here for us. Crisis moments do not create our character; they reveal it. They expose our habits. When the pressure comes, we will not suddenly develop a new spiritual discipline; we will default to the ones we have already cultivated. Jesus’s habit was prayer. What is yours? This scene compels us to see that the strength we will have in future times of intense pressure is being determined by the habits of communion we are building today. If you are not right now cultivating habits of prayer, then when the pressure comes, you won’t be adequately prepared.

And that brings us to the content of his prayer. He prayed, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me.” What is Jesus praying for here? Some have mistakenly believed that Jesus is recoiling from the physical pain of the cross. And while in his humanity he certainly did not desire that suffering, the physical pain was nothing compared to the true horror of this cup.

Throughout the Old Testament, the “cup” is a consistent and terrifying symbol of God’s holy and undiluted wrath against sin. The psalmist says in Psalm 75:8, “For in the hand of the LORD there is a cup with foaming wine, well mixed, and he pours out from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs.” The prophet Isaiah warns Jerusalem in Isaiah 51:17, “O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the LORD the cup of his wrath, who have drunk to the dregs the bowl, the cup of staggering.”

This cup is the full measure of divine judgment. It is the infinite fury of a perfectly holy God against every sin of every person who would ever believe, from all of history, collected and concentrated into one vessel of staggering wrath. This is the cup that was now being presented to the Son. And in his perfect, sinless humanity, he recoils from it. This is the genuine, holy revulsion of a Son who has known nothing but perfect, unbroken, eternal fellowship with his Father. But he is about to become what he has never been: sin (2 Corinthians 5:21). He is about to bear what he has never borne: the curse (Galatians 3:13).

This is the agony of our Substitute. This is the cost of our redemption. Jesus is looking into the abyss of hell on our behalf, and his holy soul is overwhelmed. This is not a sign of weakness; it is a sign of moral perfection. Only the one who had never tasted sin could fully appreciate the horror of this cup. And so he pleads, “Father, if there is any other way… let it be so.”

But there was no other way. And that brings us to Jesus’s amazing expression of submission: “nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” With these words, the course of our salvation is secured.

In a garden, the first Adam stood before a choice. He was given a clear command from his loving Father, and in an act of rebellion, he essentially said, “Not your will, but mine, be done.” In that moment, he plunged all of humanity into sin, condemnation, and death.

Read More