Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to His disciples, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and distressed. Then He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.” And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” And He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “So, you men could not keep watch with Me for one hour? Keep watching and praying, that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, “My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Thy will be done.” And again He came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. And He left them again, and went away and prayed a third time, saying the same thing once more. Then He came to the disciples, and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Behold, the hour is at hand and the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. Arise, let us be going; behold, the one who betrays Me is at hand!” (26:36-46)

In a sermon entitled “The Man Christ Jesus” preached on April12, 1885, Charles Haddon Spurgeon commented, “It will not be enough for you to hear, or read [about Christ]; you must do your own thinking, and consider your Lord for yourselves. . . . The wine is not made by gathering the clusters, but by treading the grapes in the wine-vat: under pressure the red juice leaps forth. Not the truth as you read it, but the truth as you meditate upon it, will be a blessing to you. . . . Shut yourself up with Jesus, if you would know him.” Just before that he had said, “[Yet] I am never more vexed with myself than when I have done my very best to extol his dear name. What is it but holding a candle to the sun?” Spurgeon concludes, “I cannot speak as I would of Him. The blaze of this Sun blinds me!” (The Metropolitan Tabernacle, vol. 31 [London: Passmore & Alabaster, n.d.], pp. 209, 213).

Even when one’s best is done to study about and meditate on the Lord Jesus Christ, it becomes clear that the mystery is far too deep for human comprehension. We know and believe that He is fully God and also fully man, but to state and even sincerely believe such a paradox is not to understand it. It is far too profound even for Christian minds enlightened by the Holy Spirit to fathom. With humility, awe, and reverence we follow the Lord on His circuitous route to the cross.

By now it was probably near midnight on the Thursday of Passover week in A.D. 33 (or perhaps 30). Jesus’ three years of ministry were completed. He had preached His last public sermon and performed His last miracle. He also had celebrated the last Passover with His disciples. But infinitely more important than that, He had come to be the last and ultimate Passover Lamb, the perfect and only sacrifice for the sins of the world.

As we look further into our Lord’s last night before death, we grasp what we can of the sacredness of this powerful moment in His life and ministry. But we realize that no amount of study or insight can give more than a glimpse of the divine-human agony He experienced there.

One of Philip Bliss’s beautiful hymns contains the words,

Man of sorrows, what a name,

For the Son of God who came,

Ruined sinners to reclaim!

Hallelujah, what a Savior!

The hymn writer borrowed his description of Christ from Isaiah, who predicted that the Messiah would be “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3).

There is no record in Scripture of Jesus’ laughing, but there are numerous accounts of His grieving, His sadness, and even His weeping. He wept at the grave of Lazarus (John 11:35) and wept over Jerusalem at the time of His triumphal entry (Luke 19:41). Jesus knew sorrow upon sorrow and grief upon grief as no other man who has ever lived. But the sorrow He experienced in the Garden of Gethsemane on the last night before His crucifixion seemed to be the accumulation of all the sorrow He had ever known, which would accelerate to a climax the following day.

We cannot comprehend the depth of Jesus’ agony, because, as sinless and holy God incarnate, He was able to perceive the horror of sin in a way we cannot. Therefore even to attempt to understand the suffering of Jesus that night on the Mount of Olives is to tread on holy ground. The mystery is too profound for human beings to comprehend and even for angels. We can only stand in awe of the God-Man.

Like every other aspect and detail of Jesus’ life and ministry, His agony in the garden was integral to the foreordained, divine plan of redemption. It was part of Jesus’ preparation for the cross, where the climactic event in the work of that redemption would transpire.

Ever and always the teacher, Jesus used even this struggle with the enemy in the garden the night before the cross to teach the disciples and every future believer another lesson in godliness, a lesson about facing temptation and severe trial. The Lord not only was preparing Himself for the cross but also, by His example, preparing His followers for the crosses He calls them to bear in His name (see Matt. 16:24).

Matthew 26:36-46 reveals three aspects of Jesus’ striving in the garden: His sorrow, His supplication, and His strength. And in clear contrast to their Lord’s unremitting struggle we see also the disciples’ indifferent lethargy.

SORROW

Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to His disciples, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and distressed. Then He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.” (26:36-38)

After the eleven disciples echoed Peter’s boast and insisted on their loyalty to Jesus even to the point of dying with Him if necessary (v. 35), they then moved with Him to a place on the Mount of Olives called Gethsemane. Although He had not announced in advance where He was going, “Jesus had often met there with His disciples,” and it was that fact that enabled Judas to find Him so easily later that night (John 18:2).

The name Gethsemane means “olive press,” and the garden probably belonged to a believer who allowed Jesus to use it as a place of retreat and prayer. As William Barclay points out, the owner of Gethsemane, like the owner of the donkey on which Jesus rode into Jerusalem and the owner of the upper room, was a nameless friend who ministered to the Lord during His final hours. “In a desert of hatred,” Barclay observes, “there were still oases of love” (The Gospel of Matthew, vol. 2 [Westminster, 1958], p. 384).

It is likely that the garden was fenced or walled and had an entrance, perhaps even a gate. Jesus asked His disciples to sit at the entrance and keep Him from being disturbed while He went into the garden to pray. He did not use the normal word for praying (euchomai), which was often used of asking or petitioning other people, but the intensified proseuchomai, which was used only of praying to God.

Jesus had told the disciples two days earlier that “after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man is to be delivered up for crucifixion” (26:2). And just a few moments earlier He had told them, “You will all fall away because of Me this night” (v. 31). They knew they were at a crisis point, and, like their Lord, they should have seen it as a time for deep concern and fervent prayer. Luke reports that Jesus told the disciples now that they should “pray that [they might] not enter into temptation” (Luke 22:40; cf. Matt. 6:13), a warning He later repeated (Matt. 26:41). But there is no indication that they uttered a single breath of prayer, no hint that they called on the Father to strengthen them. In smug self-confidence, they still thought of themselves as loyal, dependable, and invincible. Like many believers throughout the history of the church, they foolishly mistook their good intentions for strength. The sinless Son of God felt a desperate need for communion with His heavenly Father, but His sinful, weak disciples, as so often they do today, felt no desperation about their weakness and vulnerability.

Leaving the other eight disciples at the entrance, Jesus took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, James and John. Through the years commentators have speculated as to why Jesus took only three disciples with Him and why He chose those particular men. As already mentioned, He probably left most of the disciples at the entrance to stand guard, lest He be interrupted before He finished praying. Some interpreters suggest that He chose Peter, James, and John because they were the weakest and needed most to be with Him. But the fact that they made more noticeable blunders than the others does not indicate they were the weakest but rather the most forward and presumptuous. They were, in fact, the obvious leaders among the Twelve and were the inner circle to whom Jesus gave special attention throughout His ministry.

It was surely for that reason that the Lord took those three with Him to pray. He wanted to teach them further about facing strong temptation with confidence in God rather than in themselves. In light of their self-declared dependability (v. 35), the disciples needed to learn the humility and poverty of spirit that is necessary before God can effectively use His people (see Matt. 5:3). He wanted Peter, James, and John to be convinced and convicted of their foolish smugness and feelings of invincibility. And He wanted them, in turn, to teach their fellow disciples that lesson.

Jesus did not take them along in order to have their companionship, sympathy, or help. He loved them deeply and doubtlessly enjoyed their company, but He knew them far too well to expect them to be of any assistance to Him in this crucial hour. He took them along for their benefit, not His.

His purpose also was to teach that, as important and helpful as the fellowship and support of other believers can be, there are times when one’s only help is direct communion with God in prayer. He wanted to show them vividly that, in His humanness, even the divine Son of God needed the sustenance of His heavenly Father.

Fallen, sinful humanity refuses to acknowledge its weakness, but the Unfallen, sinless Son of Man well knew His human weakness. When He became flesh and dwelt among men as a man, He accepted the weaknesses that are common to all humanity. He experienced the weaknesses of hunger, thirst, pain, and temptation. Now He was about to experience the supreme human weakness: death.

In acknowledging His human weakness and His consequent need for His heavenly Father’s presence and strength, Jesus did what the disciples saw no need for doing. It was because He looked to His Father that He endured and passed every temptation, including sin-bearing and death—the severest test of all. Every moment of Jesus’ life, from His first cry as an infant to His last cry from the cross, was lived in total submission to His heavenly Father. And through that sinless submission during His humanity He became a high priest who can fully “sympathize with our weaknesses, . . . one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15).

Every Christian at times faces temptations, trials, and heartaches that threaten to overwhelm him. In the depths of such testings, even our dearest and most spiritual friends are unable to provide the needed solace and strength. God expects believers to encourage and strengthen one another, and that is an essential means through which He builds up His children (see Luke 22:32; Acts 18:23; Heb. 10:25). But there are times when only direct, intimate communion with the Lord in intense prayer can provide the strength to meet their desperate need.

Jesus’ ministry began and ended with relentless temptation directly by Satan. After He was baptized by John the Baptist, Jesus went into the wilderness of Judea and fasted for forty days and nights. At the end of that period the devil tempted Him three times, and each time Jesus responded with Scripture (Matt. 4:3-10). While Jesus agonized in the garden on the last night of His earthly life, the devil tempted Him again three times, and each time He responded by praying earnestly to His Father.

On both occasions, the temptations were private, personal solicitations directly by Satan to Jesus, and apart from His own revelation we would know nothing of them. The two weapons He used were Scripture and prayer, weapons the Lord provides each of His children (see Eph.6:17-18).

As He went into the garden with the three disciples, Jesus began to be grieved and distressed. It was not that He had never experienced grief or distress over sin and death and over the isolation from His heavenly Father they would bring. He had always known that He had come to earth to suffer and die for the sins of the world. But the climax of His anguish now began to intensify as never before, as His becoming sin in our place and His consequent estrangement from God drew near. His very soul was repulsed by the encroachment of His sinbearing, not because of the physical pain He would endure but because of His taking upon Himself there the full magnitude and defilement of all man’s iniquity. His agony over that prospect was beyond description or understanding.

When Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus (John 11:35), it was not for Lazarus or for the grieving sisters, because He was about to restore His dear friend and their brother to life. He rather wept because of the power of sin and death over mankind, and possibly, even then, over the imminent prospect of His becoming sin.

But now a very deep and desolate kind of loneliness began to sweep over Him that caused Him to be severely distressed. In addition to the cross were personal disappointments that perhaps pressed Jesus into deeper depression. First was the treachery of Judas, an earthly lucifer who betrayed the loving and selfless Son of God, who graciously had taught and ministered to Judas for three years. Then there was the desertion of the eleven other disciples, made more tragic by the fact that, for them, He was Savior and Lord. He had been their teacher, healer, encourager, forgiver, supporter, and friend. Yet He would soon be forsaken by those He would never forsake. There would be outright denial by Peter, the one in whom Jesus had invested the most. In return, He would be the object of Peter’s shame and the cause for Peter’s cursing. Jesus would also be rejected by Israel, God’s chosen and covenant people, through whom He came in the flesh and to whom He came as Messiah, Redeemer, and King.

In addition to the rejections were the blatant injustices He would face. The very Creator of justice would Himself be subjected to the ultimate injustice of mankind. He would be vilified and defrauded in the petty courts of sinful, spiteful, lying men—and that in the name of God. The One whom angels praise and with whom God the Father is well pleased would be cursed and mocked by the vile and wicked multitudes, many of whom had a few days earlier sung His praises and attempted to make Him their king.

Jesus confronted a loneliness that no other man could experience. The Son of God, who communed with the Father and the Holy Spirit and with all the holy angels of heaven, would find Himself forsaken by His Father as He became sin. He would be so identified with iniquity that the hosts of heaven would have to turn their backs on Him. And the same sin that repulsed them repulsed Him, the sinless, holy, pure, and undefiled Son of righteousness.

As the mortal Son of man, the undying Son of God had to take death upon Himself, and that, too, was grievous and depressing. As part of His divine mission of redemption, Christ came to earth to “taste death for everyone” (Heb. 2:9). As Alfred Edersheim wrote, “He disarmed Death by burying its shaft in His own heart,” and death thereby had no more arrows (The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,1971], 2:539). But that last arrow of death caused the Lord inexpressible torment.

Although Satan’s activity is not mentioned in this event by the gospel writers, his evil presence is fully evidenced by the fact that he entered Judas (John 13:27), who went out from the upper room to carryout the betrayal. His words and activity are not recorded, but we can be certain of his participation and of his intent. At the first great episode of temptations in the wilderness, Satan tempted Jesus to demand His rights, first for food, then for protection, and finally for sovereignty over the world. Now he tempted the Son of God again to demand His rights. Jesus did not deserve to suffer, much less to die. He deserved honor, glory, and reverence, not the cross. Why, the devil perhaps whispered in Jesus’ ear, should the Author of justice be submitted to such gross injustice? Why should the Creator of life be submitted to the ignominy of death? He called Jesus to revolt against God and thus disqualify Himself from being the sacrifice for sin and the destroyer of Satan, death, and hell.

In all of those temptations—in the wilderness, in the garden, and throughout Jesus’ earthly life—Satan sought to make Him disobey God and to rebel as he had done. He knew that in Christ’s obedience to the Father was his (Satan’s) own destruction. Therefore the intent of every temptation of Jesus was to lead Him away from the cross God had planned. It was when Peter brazenly declared that Jesus would never be crucified that the Lord said to him, “Get behind Me, Satan!” (Matt. 16:23). Although Peter’s desire was to protect His Master, nothing he said could have been more contrary to His Master’s will and work, or more supportive of Satan’s effort.

After dismissing Satan-filled Judas from the upper room, Jesus said, “1 will not speak much more with you, for the ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in Me” (John 14:30). Jesus was speaking about the intense conflict with Satan He would soon experience in the garden, where the ruler of the world would make his final onslaught. Just as in the wilderness, he would engulf Jesus in three great waves of temptation, each designed for the single purpose of causing Him to avoid the cross, in open revolt against God, thus preventing the work of salvation and leaving all men under the damnation of hell.

From the time of Jesus’ arrest until His death, Satan seemed to have the upper hand in the events, but that was both temporary and by divine allowance. Jesus told the chief priests and the officers of the Temple when they came to arrest Him, “This hour and the power of darkness are yours” (Luke 22:53). That was Satan’s hour, and by the Father’s permission he attacked the Son with the full power of his malevolence. Satan’s purpose was to induce Jesus to compromise His holiness and to relinquish submission to the Father and thereby deflect Him from the cross. God’s purpose, on the other hand, was to prove the Son’s righteousness and to demonstrate the Son’s power over the severest temptations Satan could devise. Scripture nowhere teaches that Satan plotted to kill Jesus; rather, His death was by God’s foreordained plan (cf. Acts 2:22-23), which Satan wanted to thwart. Once it became apparent that he could not prevent the Lord’s death, Satan did all he could to make that death permanent. And when he failed at that, and Jesus arose, he inspired a conspiracy to deny His resurrection (see Matt. 28:11-15).

It is therefore hardly surprising that Jesus told Peter, James, and John, “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death.” Perilupos (deeply grieved) is related to the term from which we get periphery and carries the idea of being surrounded by sorrow. It is possible to die from sorrow just as from other strong emotions, such as fright and anger. Jesus’ anguish was enough to kill Him and doubtlessly would have done so had He not been divinely preserved for another kind of death.

The agony of this temptation was unequaled. It was Jesus’ most intense struggle with Satan, more agonizing even than the encounter in the wilderness. The magnitude of His grief apparently caused Jesus’ subcutaneous capillaries to dilate and burst. As the capillaries burst under the pressure of deep distress and blood escaped through the pores of His skin, it mingled with His sweat, “falling down upon the ground” (Luke 22:44). It was to this experience, no doubt, that the writer of Hebrews referred in saying that Jesus “offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death” (Heb. 5:7).

Jesus was not grieved because of fear He would succumb to Satan’s temptations. As mentioned above, He had already declared that Satan “has nothing in Me,” meaning that there was no sin or evil in Him in which temptation could take root. Nor was He grieved over a possibility of not conquering sin or surviving death. He had repeatedly spoken of His coming resurrection and even of His ascension. There was no doubt in our Lord’s mind about the outcome of the cross, by which He would become victor over sin, death, and the devil. Jesus was deeply grieved, to the point of death because of His having to become sin. That was the unbearably excruciating prospect that made Him sweat great drops of blood. Holiness is totally repulsed by sin. The prophet Habakkuk revealed this when he wrote, “Thine eyes are too pure to approve evil, and Thou canst not look on wickedness with favor” (Hab. 1:13).

In that deep sorrow Jesus knew His only solace was with His heavenly Father, and with each wave of temptation and anguish He retreated to a place of seclusion some distance away (see vv. 36, 39, 42). Luke reports that “He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw” (Luke 22:41), which amounted to thirty to fifty yards. The intensity of temptation and of Jesus’ prayer response increased with each of the three sessions and is reflected in the positions the Lord took. At first He knelt (Luke 22:41), but as the intensity escalated He fell prostrate on His face (Matt. 26:39).

While He went to be alone with His Father, Jesus asked His three dear friends to keep watch with Him, leaving them not only to watch but also to pray in view of temptation (see v. 41), just as He would be doing.

SUPPLICATION

And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” And He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “So, you men could not keep watch with Me for one hour? Keep watching and praying, that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, “My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Thy will be done.” And again He came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. And He left them again, and went away and prayed a third time, saying the same thing once more. Then He came to the disciples, and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest?” (26:39-45a)

These verses focus alternately on Jesus’ supplication to His heavenly Father and on the three disciples’ falling asleep. On the one hand is Jesus’ intense, self-giving desire to do His Father’s will, even to the point of becoming sin to save sinners and by prayer to deal with temptation cast at Him. On the other hand is the disciples’ indifferent, self-centered inability to watch and to confront the conflict and danger with intercession on their Lord’s behalf. While Jesus, understanding the power of the enemy, retreated to prayer, they retreated into sleep.

Again going a little beyond the three disciples, Jesus fell on His face and prayed to His Father. Except at the time when He quoted Psalm 22:1 as He cried out from the cross, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46), Jesus always addressed God as Father. In so doing He expressed an intimacy with God that was foreign to the Judaism of His day and that was anathema to the religious leaders. They thought of God as Father in the sense of His being the progenitor of Israel, but not in the sense of His being a personal Father to any individual. For Jesus to address God as His Father was blasphemy to them, and “for this cause therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God” (John 5:18).

Although Jesus consistently called God His Father, only on this occasion did He call Him My Father (cf. v. 42), intensifying the intimacy. The more Satan tried to divert Jesus from His Father’s will and purpose, the more closely Jesus drew into His Father’s presence. Mark adds that Jesus also addressed Him as “Abba! Father!” (Mark 14:36), Abba being an Aramaic word of endearment roughly equivalent to “Daddy.” Such an address would have been unthinkably presumptuous and blasphemous to Jews.

Jesus implored the Father, “If it is possible, let this cup pass from Me.” By asking, “If it is possible,” Jesus did not wonder if escaping the cross was within the realm of possibility. He knew He could have walked away from death at any time He chose. “I lay down My life that I may take it again,” He explained to the unbelieving Pharisees. “No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again” (John 10:17-18). The Father sent the Son to the cross, but He did not force Him to go. Jesus was here asking if avoiding the cross were possible within the Father’s redemptive plan and purpose. The agony of becoming sin was becoming unendurable for the sinless Son of God, and He wondered aloud before His Father if there could be another way to deliver men from sin.

God’s wrath and judgment are often pictured in the Old Testament as a cup to be drunk (see, e.g., Ps. 75:8; Isa. 51:17; Jer. 49:12). This cup symbolized the suffering Jesus would endure on the cross, the cup of God’s fury vented against all the sins of mankind, which the Son would take upon Himself as the sacrificial Lamb of God.

As always with Jesus, the determining consideration was God’s will. “I did not speak on My own initiative,” He declared, “but the Father Himself who sent Me has given Me commandment, what to say, and what to speak” (John 12:49; cf. 14:31; 17:8). He therefore said submissively, “Yet not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” This conflict between what I will and what Thou wilt reveals the reality of the amazing fact that Jesus was truly being tempted. Though sinless and unable to sin, He clearly could be brought into the real conflict of temptation (see Heb. 4:15).

But when the Lord returned to the three disciples, He found them sleeping. That discovery, though not unexpected, must have added greatly to His grief and distress. No one can disappoint and hurt us so deeply as those we love. Jesus was not surprised, because in His omniscience He was perfectly aware of their weakness and had predicted that it would, that very night, be manifested even in desertion (see v 31). But that knowledge did not alleviate the pain caused by their not being sensitive enough or caring enough to watch and pray with Him in the last hours of His life.

Just as these same three disciples had slept when Jesus was transfigured (Luke 9:28, 32), they were sleeping at the moment of the greatest spiritual conflict in the history of the world. They were oblivious to the agony and need of their Lord. Despite His warnings of their abandonment and of Peter’s denial, they felt no need to be alert, much less to seek God’s strength and protection. (How we can thank the Lord for the gift of the Holy Spirit, who continually prays for us! See Rom.8:26-27.)

It was probably after midnight, and the need for sleep at that hour was natural. Jesus and the disciples had had a long and eventful day, and they had just finished a large meal and walked perhaps a mile or so from the upper room to the Mount of Olives. But even the disciples’ limited and confused perception of His imminent ordeal and of their desertion of Him that He had predicted should have motivated and energized them enough to stay awake with Him at this obviously grave time.

In fairness, it should be noted that sleep is often a means of escape, and the disciples may have slept more out of frustration, confusion, and depression than apathy. They could not bring themselves to face the truth that their dear friend and Lord, the promised Messiah of Israel, not only would suffer mockery and pain at the hands of wicked men but would even be put to death by them. As a physician, Luke perhaps was especially diagnostic in viewing their emotional state, and he reports that, as we might expect, they were “sleeping from sorrow” (22:45).

But even that reason did not excuse their lack of vigilance. They did not fully believe Jesus’ predictions of His death and of their desertion primarily because they did not want to believe them. Had they accepted Jesus’ word at face value, their minds and emotions would have been far too exercised to allow sleep.

The startling events and controversies of the last few days—the institution of the Lord’s Supper, Jesus’ repeated predictions of His suffering and death, the prediction of their fleeing in the time of trial, and the obvious anguish He now experienced—should have provided more than sufficient motivation and energy to keep them awake. But it did not. Had they sought the Fathers help in prayer as Jesus did and as He exhorted them to do, they not only would have stayed awake but would have been given the spiritual strength and courage they so desperately needed.

The disciples’ predicted desertion of Jesus began here, as they left Him alone in His great time of need. His heart must have broken when He said to Peter, but also for the benefit of James and John, “So, you men could not keep watch with Me for one hour?”

Considering the circumstances, the rebuke was especially mild. It was not Jesus’ purpose to shame the disciples but to strengthen them and teach them their need for divine help. “Keep watching and praying,” He implored, that you may not enter into temptation.”

The Greek verbs behind keep watching and praying are present imperatives and carry the idea of continuous action, indicated in the NASB by keep. The need for spiritual vigilance is not occasional but constant. Jesus was warning His disciples to be discerning enough to know they were in spiritual warfare and to be prepared by God to resist the adversary. He was warning them of the danger of self-confidence, which produces spiritual drowsiness.

The only way to keep from being engulfed in temptation is to be aware of Satan’s craftiness and not only to go immediately to our heavenly Father in prayer when we are already under attack but to pray even in anticipation of coming temptation. Peter perhaps first began to learn that lesson on this night in the garden. And after serving faithfully as an apostle for many years, he admonished Christians: “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8). He also gave the assurance, however, that “the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation” (2 Pet. 2:9).

We cannot overcome Satan or the flesh by our own power, and we risk serious spiritual tragedy when we think we can. When a military observer spots the enemy, he does not single-handedly engage him in battle. He simply reports what he saw and leaves the matter in the commanding officer’s hands. In the same way, believers dare not attempt to fight the devil but should immediately flee from him into the presence of their heavenly Father. As our Lord taught, we are to pray for God not to “lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matt. 6:13).

As Jesus here acknowledges, doing what is right is often difficult, because although the spirit is willing, . . . the flesh is still weak. Regenerated people who truly love God have a desire for righteousness, and they can claim with Paul that they genuinely want to do good. But they also confess with Paul that they often do not practice in the unredeemed flesh what their regenerated spirits want them to do. And, on the other hand, they sometimes find themselves doing things that, in the inner redeemed person, they do not want to do (Rom 7:15-20). Like Paul, they discover that “the principle of evil is present in [them],” that there is a law of sin within their fleshly humanness that wages war against the law of righteousness in their redeemed minds (vv. 21-23).

In light of that troublesome and continuing conflict, Paul then lamented, “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” Answering his own question, he exulted, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin” (vv. 24-25). The only source of victory is the power of Jesus Christ.

The fact that Jesus again. . . came and found them sleeping indicates that the disciples fell asleep even after He had awakened and admonished them. Their eyes were heavy, and because they would not seek the Father’s help they found themselves powerless even to stay awake, much less to offer intercession for or consolation to their Master.

After He found the disciples sleeping the second time, Jesus left them again, and went away and prayed a third time. Although the gospels do not indicate it specifically, it would seem possible that, as already mentioned, Jesus had three sessions of prayer in response to three specific waves of Satanic attack, just as in the wilderness. It took three attempts for Satan to exhaust his malevolent strategy against the Son of God. Each time Jesus suffered more extreme torment of soul, but each time He responded with absolute resolution to do the Father’s will. After the third siege, our Lord said the same thing once more to His heavenly Father, that is, “Thy will be done” (see v. 42).

In these prayers, as in all His others, Jesus gives His followers a perfect example. Not only do we learn to confront temptation with prayer but we learn that prayer is not a means of bending God’s will to our own but of submitting our wills to His. If Jesus submitted His perfect will to the Father’s, how much more should we submit our imperfect wills to His? True prayer is yielding to what God wants for and of us, regardless of the cost — even if the cost is death. The nature or character of our praying in the face of temptation should be to cry out to the Lord for His strength to resist the impulse to rebel against God’s will, which is what all sin is.

We can be sure that the more sincerely we seek to do God’s will, the more severely Satan will attempt to lure us from it, just as he did with Christ. And like our Lord, our response should be prayerful, single-minded determination to draw near to God.

After the third time of supplication Jesus was the victor and Satan was the vanquished. The enemy of His soul was defeated, and Christ remained unscathed in perfect harmony with the will of His Father, calmly and submissively ready to suffer and to die. And in that death He was prepared to take upon Himself the sins of the world. If the very Son of God needed to cry out to His heavenly Father in time of temptation and grief, how much more do we? That was the lesson He wanted the eleven, and all His other disciples after them, to learn.

After the third session of prayer, Jesus came to the disciples, and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest?” Even after the two rebukes and heartfelt admonitions from the Lord, the three men were still sleeping. Their eyes were still heavy (cf. v. 43) because they were controlled by the natural rather than by the spiritual. They were so totally subject to the flesh and its needs that they were indifferent to the needs of Christ. They were even indifferent to their own deepest needs, because, just as Jesus had warned a short while before, they were about to be overwhelmed by fear for their own lives and by shame of Christ. Yet instead of following their Master’s example through agonizing in prayer, they blissfully rested in sleep.

Jesus was teaching the disciples that spiritual victory goes to those who are alert in prayer and who depend on their heavenly Father. The other side of that lesson, and the one the disciples would learn first, was that self-confidence and unpreparedness are the way to certain spiritual defeat.

STRENGTH

“Behold, the hour is at hand and the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. Arise, let us be going; behold, the one who betrays Me is at hand!” (26:45b-46)

The word behold is used to call attention to something. As Jesus walked back to the three disciples, the men coming to arrest Him were already within sight. In fact, they arrived “while He was still speaking” (v. 47). As they approached, Jesus could make out the Roman soldiers from Fort Antonia and the chief priests and elders. Most clearly of all, He could see Judas, who led the motley contingent.

With great sadness, Jesus said, “The hour is at hand.” He was not sad because He was unwilling to face the cross but because He was about to become sin. And His sadness was made the more bitter because His beloved disciples would not stand with Him as He gave His all for them. With a strength made even more magnificent by its contrast with their weakness, the Son of Man graciously submitted to being betrayed into the hands of sinners.

There was nothing more that Jesus needed to do and nothing more the disciples were willing to do. “Arise,” Jesus therefore said, “let us be going; behold, the one who betrays Me is at hand!” Rather than being weakened and deterred by the temptations, Jesus became stronger and more resolved; and instead of waiting for His enemies to come to Him, He went out to meet them.

With the courage of invincibility, Jesus had made the ultimate and final act of commitment to His heavenly Father, who He knew would raise Him from the dead on the third day As He moved toward the crowd who came to arrest Him, He also resolutely moved toward the cross. “For the joy set before Him [He] endured the cross, despising the shame” (Heb. 12:2).

Because Jesus resisted every ploy and temptation of Satan, the adversary fled from Him that night, and he will likewise flee from every believer who resists him in God’s power (James 4:7). “Walk by the Spirit,” Paul declared, “and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh” (Gal. 5:16).

Matthew 26:36-46 gives the pattern and sequence of spiritual tragedy, which may be summarized in the words: confidence, sleep, temptation, sin, and disaster.

Self-confidence always opens the door to temptation. The first step of a believer’s falling into sin is false confidence that he is able to be faithful to the Lord in his own power. Like the disciples on the Mount of Olives, he is certain he would never forsake Christ or compromise His Word.

Following self-confidence comes sleep, representing indifference to evil and lack of moral and spiritual vigilance. The sleeping believer has little concern for what he reads or listens to, even when it is clearly unchristian and debasing.

The third step is temptation, which Satan’s system is constantly ready to place in the way of God’s people. As with Jesus, the temptation appeals to one’s personal rights and calls for rebellion against God.

The fourth step is sin, because a believer who is spiritually self-confident, who is indifferent to sin, and who does not turn to the Lord for help will inevitably fall into sin. No person, not even a Christian, has the capacity within himself to withstand Satan and avoid sin.

The fifth and final stage in the sequence is disaster. Just as temptation that is not resisted in God’s power always leads to sin, sin that is not confessed and cleansed leads to spiritual tragedy.

That is the pattern the disciples followed that last night of Jesus’ earthly life and that every believer follows when he does not depend wholly on the Lord.

But this passage also contains the pattern for spiritual victory, manifested and exemplified by Jesus. The way of victory rather than tragic defeat is confidence in God rather than self, moral and spiritual vigilance rather than indifference, resisting temptation in God’s power rather than in our own, and holding to obedience rather than to the rebellion of sin.