Recapitulation
As Jesus led His disciples up the path to Gethsemane, the
olive garden named for the press there, on the western slope of Mount Olive, He
had abruptly but calmly asserted their future disloyalty over their protests to
the contrary. His purpose was
twofold. 1) He wanted them to know that He
was remaining supremely loyal to them even though He knew that they would fail
Him. His love for them was NOT dependent
on their performance. 2) He did not want
them to give up just because of failure. “The wounds of a friend are better
than the kisses of an enemy (Prov. 27:6)”
Temptation Solution
Jesus’ solution is twofold as well. He told them to “watch and pray.” How does this work?
Did God Predetermine Their Failure?
If they are going to fail, how will any amount of watching
and praying change a future already “unalterably foreseen?” First, some
clarification. Some say that since God
is sovereign, we do not really have free will—or that our will is so corrupt we
never choose rightly. A few may even say
that prayer is pointless, because God is unchangeable. Yet, Jesus commands us to watch and
pray. This kind of misunderstanding can
easily arise when we do not have all the facts.
God is sovereign but He does not create evil.
In
creating men and angels, He wanted them to be like Him—to do good and to
love. Moral good and real love can only
result from free choice, otherwise it is amoral. Morality always requires a free choice. Not
the power to do anything we want—but the ability to choose between certain
limited moral paths. A third of the
angels chose to follow Lucifer. Adam and
Eve chose to eat from the wrong tree.
And we choose between good and evil daily. And the Lord continually pleads with us to
choose life and to serve the One Who offers life.
A Spiritual Partnership
So,
was God standing by breathlessly to see what we would choose? No, He knew us from all eternity. “For
whom He foreknew, He also foreordained [to be] conformed to the image of His
Son . . .” (Rom. 8:29 ASV). Based on
His prior knowledge of our choices, He set in motion His plan to make us like
Him. It’s a plan that involves our
choices and His plans and His power. It
requires our alertness to the spiritual happenings around us and our connection
to Him through prayer—a spiritual partnership.
Chosen but Free
So, Judas and the Eleven were not merely doing what they
were preprogrammed to do. They were
making actual choices by exercising their own wills—the result of which Jesus
accurately predicted. But some might
argue, “Isn’t our will corrupt? Don’t we
always choose to do evil?” That IS our natural bent – to do evil – but,
as Jesus points out, even evil people choose love sometimes (Matthew 5:46). It is not only believers who do that. And of course, no one does this all the
time. We are all deserving of eternal
separation from the perfection of heaven.
The reason? We are responsible
for our choices—whether good or evil—because God has given us the right and the
freedom to choose.
Why Pray?
So how does watching and praying help? In the apostles’ case, Jesus told them what
He knew about some of their future bad choices, He still wanted them to watch
and pray. In our own situation, Jesus
also knows about our own future choices and wants us to watch and pray. Why?
Jesus, Our Example
In our context, Jesus took three witnesses to watch how He
prayed in light of a difficult decision He needed to make this very night. He experienced a difficult struggle between
His own will and that of the Father. As
His prayer this night amply illustrated, Jesus did not want to go to the cross. However, He did want to do the will of His
Father and so He submitted His own will to Him.
This is perfectly in line with the Lord’s Prayer which includes the
line: “Our Father . . . Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
What was the difficult decision the disciples would be faced
with this very night? First of all, it would
be over their loyalty to Jesus. And
ultimately, to their decision to return to Him and not let this failure end the
way Judas’ decision did. Jesus knew they
would fail this night but that they would learn from His example and not let
this be the end of the road. So, He had
them observe so they would later recall and learn.
Why Watch?
But in order to be able to pray for divine assistance in
this upcoming decision, they needed to watch out for it. They had already (wrongly) concluded that
they were not susceptible to such a terrible decision. So they had concluded that the danger was
passed. But Jesus wanted them to know
that their failure this night would be their own decision and they should have
prayed that their wills be lined up with God’s even as Jesus had done. So it is with us. Even mature believers must be alert to
possible temptations and pray that we would do God’s will and not our own (1
Corinthians 10:13).
Living in Two Worlds
Jesus made a very telling point in verse 41: “The spirit
indeed is willing but the flesh is weak.”
We live in two worlds—a spiritual and a physical realm—just as Jesus did
while here on earth. The physical realm
is far more visible and obvious to us.
The spiritual realm requires the use of a sense beyond the five physical
senses we were born with—a spiritual sense that is activated by faith. It is not born of our imagination but of
God’s promises and revelation found in His Word.
Moral Choices are Primarily a Spiritual Battle
This weakness of the flesh that Jesus talks about is a
reminder that moral choice involves primarily a spiritual battle although it
heavily impacts the physical world we live in.
We need divine assistance. The
disciples experienced this weakness in the normally innocent act of sleeping at
the end of a long and tiring day. But
Jesus pointed out the need to watch out for even the seemingly innocent calls
of the flesh—because they can easily overcome the determination of the spirit
to follow God’s will. The innocent and
the good can be the enemy of the best if we don’t watch and pray. Even though Jesus’
spiritual senses were strong, He prayed three times the same prayer. We need this spirit of perseverance far more
than Jesus. And not every temptation we face is so innocent as sleep.
Thy Will be Done
After praying, Jesus knew that every preparation had been
made and that ‘the hour was now at hand.’
He knew what was about to happen and He faced it knowing that it was the
will of the Father. It seems that the
fact of His betrayal hurt Him at least as deeply as the pain of the cross. His friend (See verse 50) Judas was betraying
Him into the hands of “sinners.” This word
was normally applied to persons who broke the laws of God without even a
thought as well as to those who collaborated with non-Jews. Perhaps both ideas are in view here since the
Sanhedrin—the Jewish leadership council— had been looking for a way to kill Him
before they even had any crime to accuse Him of and now would be handing Him
over to the Romans. They were
collaborating with people who had no loyalty to God. “He could have called ten thousand angels” (Matthew
26:53) but He chose to die for the sins of the world.
Considering the Spiritual Dimension of Temptation
What great trial are you facing? Does it involve a struggle between your own
will and God’s? Are you considering the
possibility that this struggle is not just a physical struggle—that it also
involves a spiritual dimension? Are you
watching out for this possibility? And
then, how are you praying as you grapple with this decision? Are you continuing to pray? Finally, perhaps you have made a poor
decision already and you are afraid that God might not be too happy with
you. Is this really true in light of
Scripture? Will He forgive you
entirely? Did He know what you would do
even before it happened? Remember, God
is love and that is His free choice—to love us.
That is why Jesus submitted His will to the Father and went to the
cross—for us—despite the temptation to drop the whole thing. The saying, “It’s just the way I am . . .” is
a copout. We can’t change history but we
can change our future choices.
© 2018 Eric Thimell
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