Matthew 20:22

‘But Jesus answered and said, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?” They say to him, “We are able.”

Jesus then turns to the two young men who are standing there, possibly a little embarrassed, but certainly hopeful. They are totally involved with the request. And He points out to them that they do not know what they are asking. For if they did they would have recognised that they were now seeking places of intense and continual suffering.

So He asks them whether they think that they really will be able to drink the cup that lies immediately ahead for Him (the ‘I' is emphatic), the cup that He is about to drink and of which He must drink (Matthew 26:39; Matthew 26:42). This picture of the cup as a symbol of the drinking of suffering and of the undergoing of the wrath of God is a regular one in the Old Testament. The Psalmist declares, ‘In the hand of the Lord there is a cup and the wine is red' and it is for all the wicked of the earth (Psalms 75:8). Isaiah tells us that Jerusalem had ‘drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of His fury' (Isaiah 51:17). God tells Jeremiah to ‘Take the cup of the wine of this fury at my hand and cause all the nations, to whom I send you, to drink it' (Jeremiah 25:15). See also Jeremiah 49:12; Lamentations 4:21; Song of Solomon 23:31; Habakkuk 2:16; Psalms 60:3; Isaiah 51:17; Isaiah 63:6; Obadiah 1:16). In the words of Job, ‘let him drink of the wrath of the Almighty' (Job 21:20). A similar picture is taken up in the New Testament (Matthew 26:39; Matthew 26:42; Revelation 14:10; Revelation 16:19; Revelation 18:6). It is the cup that Jesus must drink to the full and it is to be given to Him by His Father (John 18:11). It is a cup the content of which we will never be able to appreciate in spite of all the information that we have been given and the passage of two thousand years of study.

But the two eager young men who stand before Him have no inkling of this. They think rather, either of the cup of the exertions and trials that will be involved in establishing the Messianic Rule, or the cup of authority and power which they will drink at the King's table. And they feel capable of drinking both. So they boldly declare, ‘we are able'. The one thing that they had no thought of was an ignominious cup. However, these words will soon catch up with them, when they will be given the opportunity to prove them, for in a few days time, at the first whiff of His cup, they will forsake Him and flee along with the others. That at least the twelve were united about. But this must be said for them, that they remained together and did not flee from Jerusalem.