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Four Features of Triumphant Prayer
(Luke 22:39–46)

And He came out and proceeded as was His custom to the Mount of Olives; and the disciples also followed Him. When He arrived at the place, He said to them, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” And He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and began to pray, saying, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.” Now an angel from heaven appeared to Him, strengthening Him. And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground. When He rose from prayer, He came to the disciples and found them sleeping from sorrow, and said to them, “Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not enter into temptation.” (22:39–46)

As Isaiah prophesied He would be, the Messiah our Lord was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3). The Gospels record that He grieved over Israel’s hardness of heart (Mark 3:5), the plight of a deaf man (Mark 7:34), the superficiality of Israel’s religious leaders (Mark 8:12), at the tomb of Lazarus (John 11:35), and over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41).

But the extremity of Christ’s grief came in Gethsemane on the night before His death, when He “offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety” (Heb. 5:7). Christ’s sorrow in facing death as the sin bearer is beyond comprehension. It defies description and surpasses understanding, because what Jesus endured is absolutely unique and without any parallel in human experience. The account of His temptation in the garden confronts those who read it with an incalculable mystery. It leaves them awestruck over Christ’s agony in facing the Father’s anger at the cross and stunned by the intensity of this greatest of all battles against temptation.

Satan’s objective throughout Christ’s life was to keep Him from going to the cross where, in fulfillment of God’s preordained plan, He would die as the substitute for sinners. That was the devil’s goal when he tempted Jesus at the beginning of His ministry (Matt. 4:1–11; Luke 4:1–13). In each of the three temptations, Satan offered to give Him what was rightfully His apart from suffering, death, and divine wrath. Preventing the Lord from getting to the cross was also his goal in this final and most severe temptation.

Satan would have his hour, called “the hour and the power of darkness” (v. 53). In the sovereign purposes of God this was the predetermined time for him to make his supreme effort to keep the Son of God from His propitiatory sacrifice. So intense was the conflict that in Mark 14:34 Jesus said, “My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death.” But when the battle was over, Satan would be vanquished. Jesus would emerge triumphant and a few hours later be nailed to the cross.

It was at the very end of Thursday or early Friday morning when Jesus came out from the upper room and proceeded as was His custom (cf. John 18:2) to the Mount of Olives; and the eleven remaining disciples also followed Him. It would have been warm enough during Passover to rest or sleep in the seclusion of the Mount of Olives, located just east of Jerusalem across the Kidron Valley (John 18:1). On the Mount of Olives was a garden (John 18:1) called Gethsemane (Matt. 26:36), which means “olive press.” It was a private garden, likely owned by a wealthy follower of Jesus who allowed the Lord and the disciples to sleep there. Behind the scene is another nameless individual who showed sympathy to Jesus during Passion Week, as did the owners of the donkey’s colt He rode on during the triumphal entry (Luke 19:33–35), the man carrying the water pitcher who led Him to the upper room (Luke 22:10), and the owner of the upper room (Luke 22:11–12). There was no longer any need to avoid Judas, who knew where Jesus and the apostles would be (John 18:2), since the divinely ordained time for the Lord’s arrest was at hand.

Christ’s supernatural conflict with Satan and His prayer to the Father are marked by four vital elements: anticipation, affliction, submission, and restoration.

ANTICIPATION

When He arrived at the place, He said to them, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” (22:40)

Jesus prayed in anticipation of and all the way through His temptation, which was real, since although He was incapable of sinning (John 5:19, 30), He could be tempted (Heb. 2:17–18; 4:15). The temptation the Lord faced, however, was different from that of believers. Christians are new creations (2 Cor. 5:17), incarcerated in unredeemed flesh (Rom. 7:18–25) and easily seduced by the remnants of their fallenness. Satan tempts them to hold on to sin and not mature. They fight against their attraction to sin, and to abandon it and embrace righteousness, holiness, and purity.

But Satan’s temptation of Christ was just the opposite. He was perfectly pure and righteous, and His absolute holiness motivated His every thought, word, and deed. While believers struggle to abandon sin and embrace holiness, Jesus struggled to set aside His holiness and embrace sin-bearing. He was not fighting against sinful impulses to become holy, but against holy impulses to allow Himself to be made sin for believers (2 Cor. 5:21). Satan tempts Christians to cling to sin; he tempted Jesus to cling to holiness.

Christ had always known it would be the greatest struggle of His pure, sinless eternal life to be separated from the Father and bear His wrath against sin. In His prayer recorded in John 17 He asked, “Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was” (v. 5). Thus He prayed that the Father would strengthen Him through the coming ordeal, and restore Him to eternal glory.

Although He was fully focused on the conflict, Jesus was still concerned about the apostles. He knew that they, too, would struggle with severe temptation that night, and that they needed to be ready to face it. Just as He prepared Himself through prayer, so also did they need to pray. Therefore when He arrived at Gethsemane He said to them, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” Leaving eight of the apostles at the entrance to the garden (Matt. 26:36), He took Peter, James, and John (Mark 14:33) in with Him. Jesus then left the three and went to pray alone, returning to them later and again charging them to pray that they not fall to temptation (v. 38; cf. Matt. 26:41).

Here is an example of the ever-present balance between divine sovereignty and human responsibility. Jesus had already prayed that the apostles’ faith would not fail (Luke 22:32), but that did not relieve them of their responsibility to pray. At least twice in the past Jesus had taught them to pray specifically that they would not be led into temptation (Matt. 6:13; Luke 11:4).

The lesson is clear. If even Christ did not face temptation without prayer, how much more did the apostles, and all Christians, need to do the same? Those who would pray properly must empty themselves of all self-confidence (which Peter and the apostles had already exhibited; Mark 14:31), spiritual pride, and over-estimation of their strength, and call for divine help. Jesus’ words are a warning against being caught prayerless when the full force of temptation hits, and are a promise that help awaits those who pray.

AFFLICTION

And He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and began to pray (22:41)

Luke’s account is brief, and does not include some of the details provided by Matthew and Mark. The latter reveal that after Jesus initially withdrew from Peter, James, and John and prayed, He returned to them twice, finding them asleep both times (Matt. 26:39–45; Mark 14:35–42). Luke notes that having moved about a stone’s throw away from the three apostles to a place where He would be alone, Jesus knelt down and began to pray. Standing was the customary posture for prayer (Matt. 6:5; Mark 11:25; Luke 18:11), but the Lord knelt, then “fell on His face and prayed” (Matt. 26:39). Mark adds that this was because He “began to be very distressed and troubled” (Mark 14:33), and the writer of Hebrews says that “He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears” (Heb. 5:7). Taken together, those passages reveal the intense agony of Christ’s struggle. This was the Man of Sorrows in His most sorrowful conflict.

A number of things depressed Jesus into such sorrow, including His rejection by the nation, the defection of the betrayer, Judas, the dissension among the remaining apostles and their imminent desertion of Him, His repudiation and denial by Peter, as well as the injustice of men, whereby the sinless Prince of truth and justice, the lover and source of righteousness, would be condemned in a corrupt court and slain by evil men. But all those things paled in comparison to the reality that the wrath of His Father against the sins of the elect would fall on His sinless being at the cross.

Triumphing over temptation involves experiencing sin’s painful assault, being repulsed by it, and agonizing in prayer to be delivered from it. Only loving holiness, hating sin, and feeling its agony can produce prayer that leads to triumph over temptation.

SUBMISSION

saying, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.” (22:42)

The goal of all true prayer is that God’s will be done. Those who genuinely feel the affliction caused by sin and temptation are motivated to submit to Him. In Psalm 40:8 David exclaimed, “I delight to do Your will, O my God,” while in Psalm 143:10 he pleaded, “Teach me to do Your will, for You are my God; let Your good Spirit lead me on level ground.” Jesus’ model prayer teaches those who address God in prayer to say, “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10; cf. Luke 11:2). The apostle John wrote, “This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him” (1 John 5:14–15). Submission to God’s will is foundational to prayer.

Jesus’ request, “Father, if You are willing,” highlights once again the contrast between His temptation and those of believers. He submitted to the Father’s will that He be made sin; believers pray that they might submit to God’s will by forsaking sin and embracing holiness. Mark records that Jesus addressed the Father using the intimate, endearing, affectionate term “Abba” (Mark 14:36), revealing the earnestness and intensity of His plea. No Jew would ever call God Father, let alone Abba. But the Lord uses this affectionate, personal term to refer to God, pleading for His intimate love to rescue Him if He wills.

The word “cup” is frequently associated with judgment in the Old Testament (Pss. 11:6; 75:8; Isa. 51:17, 22; Jer. 25:15–17; 49:12; Lam. 4:21; Ezek. 23:31–33; Hab. 2:16; Zech. 12:2). Here it also refers to the agony, guilt, and wrath associated with God’s judgment of Jesus on the cross. Some have imagined that the Lord’s plea, “if You are willing, remove this cup from Me,” was a sign of weakness on His part. But it was not weakness that prompted this request, rather the opposite. His absolute holiness demanded that He recoil at the thought of bearing sin, guilt, judgment, and wrath. No other response was possible for the eternally sinless Son of God.

Jesus accepted that the cross was God’s plan. In John 12 He said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (v. 24); “Now My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour” (v. 27); “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself” (v. 32). In Mark 8:31 “He began to teach [the disciples] that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again” (cf. 9:31; Luke 9:22, 44). On the final journey to Jerusalem Jesus

In spite of experiencing satanic assaults beyond the capacity of the human mind to experience or conceive and agonizing over the prospect of bearing sin, Jesus fully submitted to the Father’s will for Him to be the sin offering (2 Cor. 5:21) so that redemption of God’s elect would be accomplished. Therefore He prayed, “Yet not My will, but Yours be done.” Jesus soon demonstrated the reality of that submission when He said to Peter, “Put the sword into the sheath; the cup which the Father has given Me, shall I not drink it?” (John 18:11).

RESTORATION

Now an angel from heaven appeared to Him, strengthening Him. And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground. When He rose from prayer, He came to the disciples and found them sleeping from sorrow, and said to them, “Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not enter into temptation.” (22:43–46)

That an angel from heaven appeared to Jesus was unusual. Between His birth and His resurrection angels appeared only twice in Christ’s life, at His temptation in the wilderness (Matt. 4:11) and His temptation in the garden. This one was sent to Jesus as an affirmation of the Father’s care for Him, to strengthen His confidence that the Father would not ultimately forsake Him, but would restore Him (cf. John 17:5). The One who is above the angels, better than the angels, had a more excellent name than the angels, was worshiped by the holy angels, though for a while made lower than them (Heb. 1:4–2:18), was strengthened by an angel. In the midst of His prayer there was divine restoration.

Angels also minister, though not visibly as was the case with Christ, to those who prayerfully submit to God’s will. “Are they not all ministering spirits,” asked the writer of Hebrews rhetorically, “sent out to render service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation?” (Heb. 1:14; cf. Matt. 18:10).

The severity of Christ’s struggle prompted the angel’s strengthening of Him. Agony translates the Greek noun agōnia, which describes a state of extreme mental and emotional anguish and sorrow. The verb form of the noun refers to intense struggle, whether in athletic contests or combat. The Greek word translated fervently is related to a verb that means “to stretch.” Here it describes the severe strain the Lord was under—so much so that there was an unusual physical reaction. Only Luke the physician (Col. 4:14) records that His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground. This suggests a rare condition known as hematidrosis, which is characterized by blood oozing from the skin. It is most frequently caused by extreme mental and emotional strain, causing subcutaneous capillaries to dilate and burst, releasing blood to mingle with sweat. That was a graphic confirmation of the Lord’s statement, “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death” (Matt. 26:38; Mark 14:34; cf. Heb. 12:3–4).

When Christ rose from prayer in triumph, He came to the disciples and found them sleeping. They were not sleeping because they were tired, or because it was late at night, or because it had been a busy week, or they had recently eaten a meal, or taken a long walk, or because it was dark. They were sleeping because they were overwhelmed with sorrow, fatalism, and despair. The disciples had been told that they were going to abandon the Lord, that Peter would deny Him, and that He would be arrested and go to the cross. From their perspective, their world had collapsed. Fatalism crept in, and there seemed to be nothing left to pray for. Luke condensed Christ’s repeated warnings to watch and pray into one. “Why are you sleeping?” Jesus asked them. “Get up and pray that you may not enter into temptation.” After the third and final time He came and found the disciples asleep He 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” (Mark 14:41). There was no more time to pray or prepare; the enemy was at hand. But while Christ went to face the enemy victorious over temptation through prayer, the apostles would face the enemy and be defeated.

When the Lord Jesus Christ arose from the ground bloody, but unbowed, the battle was over; the devil defeated; the final temptation successfully overcome. He would triumph over His human enemies: Judas, the Jewish leaders, and the Romans. On the cross, He would defeat Satan (Gen. 3:15; 1 John 3:8) and be made sin for believers that they “might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). He would triumph over death by rising from the dead, and be exalted to the right hand of the Father (Acts 2:33; 5:31; 7:55–56; Rom. 8:34; Col. 3:1; Heb. 10:12; 12:2; 1 Peter 3:22) as King of kings and Lord of lords (Rev. 17:14; 19:16) forever (Rev. 11:15).

The cup was in Christ’s hand and He was about to drink it. And His hand was steady. No wonder Philip P. Bliss wrote,

“Man of Sorrows!” what a name
For the Son of God, who came
Ruined sinners to reclaim!
Hallelujah, what a Savior!