After Matthew tells us about Jesus' deep sorrow--"even unto death", he describes how Jesus "fell with his face to the ground," (further evidence of His superhuman anguish). Then Christ "prayed, 'My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.'"
Minutes earlier Jesus had offered the Passover cup to His disciples describing as the "blood of the covenent. . .poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins" (Mt. 26:27-28). He announced it then, but now He is tasting its bitter contents. And it was this cup, the cup of His suffering and death, He was asking to be spared from.
In Gethsemane He teeters on the edge of the abyss, the shadows the Second Death, enveloping Him, and His soul recoils. "May this cup be taken from me!" What made this cup so awful?
This cup included more than physical suffering and death. In the Bible Jesus used, the Old Testament scriptures, a "cup" is used symbolically for God's judgment on the wicked. In our place, Jesus was accepting the results of our sin and drinking it "down to the very dregs" (Ps. 75:8: Isa. 51:17).
Three times Jesus asks if there is another way, if He can be spared. But the steel-black heavens are silent, because God's will--a plan to which Jesus had agreed way back in eternity--had already been sealed. And as One Who always placed His Father's will above all, Jesus surrendered.
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