Luke 22:39-46

III. Gethsemane: Luke 22:39-46.

The Lamb of God must be distinguished from typical victims by His free acceptance of death as the punishment of sin; and hence there required to be in His life a decisive moment, when, in the fulness of His consciousness and liberty, He should accept the punishment which He was to undergo. At Gethsemane Jesus did not drink the cup; He consented to drink it. This point of time corresponds to that in which, with the same fulness and liberty, He refused in the wilderness universal sovereignty. There He rejected dominion over us without God; here He accepts death for God and for us. Each evangelist has some special detail which attests the independence of his sources. Matthew exhibits specially the gradation of the agony and the progress toward acceptance. Mark has preserved to us this saying of primary importance: “ Abba! Father! all things are possible unto Thee. ” Luke describes more specially the extraordinary physical effects of this moral agony. His account is, besides, very much abridged. John omits the whole scene, but not without expressly indicating its place (Luke 18:1). In the remarkable piece, Luke 12:23-28, this evangelist had already unveiled the essence of the struggle which was beginning in the heart of Jesus; and the passage proves sufficiently, in spite of Keim's peremptory assertions, that there is no dogmatic intention in the omission of the agony of Gethsemane. When the facts are sufficiently known, John confines himself to communicating some saying of Jesus which enables us to understand their spirit. Thus it is that chap. 3 sheds light on the ordinance of Baptism, and chap. 6 on that of the Holy Supper.

Heb 5:7-9 contains a very evident allusion to the account of Gethsemane, a fact the more remarkable, as that epistle is one of those which, at the same time, most forcibly exhibit the divinity of Jesus.

Vers. 39-46. The word came out (Luke 22:39) includes His leaving the room and the city. The name, the Mount of Olives, which is used here by our three Syn., may designate in a wide sense the slope and even the foot of the mount which begins immediately beyond the Cedron. This is the sense to which we are led by John's account, Luke 18:1. The north-west angle of the enclosure, which is now pointed out as the garden of Gethsemane, is fifty paces from the bed of the torrent.

Ver. 40. Jesus invites His disciples to prepare by prayer for the trial which threatens their fidelity, and of which He has already forewarned them (Luke 22:31). The use of the word εἰσελθεῖν, enter into, to signify to yield to, is easily understood, if we contrast this verb in thought with διελθεῖν, to pass through.

In Matthew and Mark, Jesus has no sooner arrived than He announces to His disciples His intention to pray Himself. Then, withdrawing a little with Peter, James, and John, He tells them of the agony with which His soul is all at once seized, and leaves them, that He may pray alone. These successive moments are all united in Luke in the ἀπεσπάσθη, He was withdrawn (Luke 22:41). There is in this term, notwithstanding Bleek's opinion, the idea of some violence to which He is subject; He is dragged far from the disciples by anguish (Acts 21:1). The expression, to the distance of about a stone's cast, is peculiar to Luke.

Instead of kneeling down, Matthew says, He fell upon His face; Mark, upon the ground.

The terms of Jesus' prayer, Luke 22:42, differ in the three narratives, and in such a way that it is impossible the evangelists could have so modified them at their own hand. But the figure of the cup is common to all three; it was indelibly impressed on tradition. This cup which Jesus entreats God to cause to pass from before (παρά) His lips, is the symbol of that terrible punishment the dreadful and mournful picture of which is traced before Him at this moment by a skilful painter with extraordinary vividness. The painter is the same who in the wilderness, using a like illusion, passed before His view the magical scene of the glories belonging to the Messianic kingdom.

Mark's formula is distinguished by the invocation, “ Abba! Father! all things are possible unto Thee,” in which the translation ὁ πατήρ, Father, has been added by the evangelist for his Greek readers. It is a last appeal at once to the fatherly love and omnipotence of God. Jesus does not for a moment give up the work of human salvation; He asks only if the cross is really the indispensable means of gaining this end. Cannot God in His unlimited power find another way of reconciliation? Jesus thus required, even He, to obey without understanding, to walk by faith. Hence the expressions, Hebrews 5:8, He learned obedience, and Luke 12:2, ἀρχηγὸ/ς τῆς πίστεως, He who leads the way (the initiator) of faith. Yet this prayer does not imply the least feeling of revolt; for Jesus is ready to accept the Father's answer, whatever it may be. What if nature rises within Him against this punishment? this repugnance is legitimate. It was not with the view of suffering thus that man received from God a body and a soul. This resistance of natural instinct to the will of the Spirit, that is to say, to the consciousness of a mission, is exactly what makes it possible for nature to become a real victim, an offering in earnest. So long as the voice of nature is at one with that of God, it may be asked, Where is the victim for the burnt-offering? Sacrifice begins where conflict begins. But, at the same time, the holiness of Jesus emerges pure and even perfected from this struggle. Under the most violent pressure, the will of nature did not for a single moment escape from the law of the Spirit, and ended after a time of struggle in being entirely absorbed in it. Luke, like Mark, gives only the first prayer, and confines himself to indicating the others summarily, while Matthew introduces us more profoundly to the progressive steps in the submission of Jesus (Luke 22:42). How much more really human do out Gospels make Jesus than our ordinary dogmatics! It is not thus that the work of invention would have been carried out by a tradition which aimed at deifying Jesus.

The appearance of the angel, Luke 22:43, is mentioned only by Luke. No doubt this verse is wanting in some Alex. But it is found in 13 Mjj. and in the two oldest translations (Itala and Peschito), and this particular is cited so early as the second century by Justin and Irenaeus. It is not very probable that it would have been added. It is more so that, under the influence of the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity, it was omitted on the pretext that it was not found either in Matthew or Mark. Bleek, while fully acknowledging the authenticity of the verse, thinks that this particular was wanting in the primitive Gospel, and that it was introduced by Luke on the faith of a later tradition. Schleiermacher supposes the existence of a poetical writing in which the moral suffering of the Saviour was celebrated, and from which the two Luke 22:43-44 were taken. But tradition, poetry, and myths tend rather to glorify their hero than to impair his honour. The difficulty which orthodoxy finds in accounting for such particulars makes it hard to suppose that it was their inventor.

This appearance was not only intended to bring spiritual consolation to Jesus, but physical assistance still more, as in the wilderness. The saying uttered by Him an instant before was no figure of rhetoric: “My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death. ” As when in the wilderness under the pressure of famine, He felt Himself dying. The presence of this heavenly being sends a vivifying breath over Him. A divine refreshing pervades Him, body and soul; and it is thus only that He receives strength to continue to the last the struggle to the physical violence of which He was on the very point of giving way. Luke 22:44 shows to what physical prostration Jesus was reduced. This verse is omitted on the one hand, and supported on the other, by the same authorities as the preceding. Is this omission the result of the preceding, or perhaps the consequence of confounding the two καί at the beginning of Luke 22:44-45 ? In either case, there appears to have been here again omission rather than interpolation.

The intensity of the struggle becomes so great, that it issues in a sort of beginning of physical dissolution. The words, as it were drops, express more than a simple comparison between the density of the sweat and that of blood. The words denote that the sweat itself resembled blood. Phenomena of frequent occurrence demonstrate how immediately the blood, the seat of life, is under the empire of moral impressions. Does not a feeling of shame cause the blood to rise to the face? Cases are known in which the blood, violently agitated by grief, ends by penetrating through the vessels which enclose it, and driven outwards, escapes with the sweat through the transpiratory glands. The reading καταβαίνοντος, in א and some documents of the Itala, though admitted by Tischendorf, has no internal probability. The participle ought to qualify the principal substantive rather than the complement.

The disciples themselves might easily remark this appearance when Jesus awoke them, for the full moon was lighting up the garden. They might also hear the first words of Jesus' prayer, for they did not fall asleep immediately, but only, as at the transfiguration (Luke 9:32), when His prayer was prolonged.

Jesus had previously experienced some symptoms precursive of a struggle like to this (Luke 12:49-50; John 12:27). But this time the anguish is such that it is impossible not to recognise the intervention of a supernatural agent. Satan had just invaded the circle of the Twelve by taking possession of the heart of Judas. He was about to sift all the other disciples. Jesus Himself at this time was subjected to his action: “ This is the power of darkness,” says He, Luke 22:53. In the words which close his account of the temptation (Luke 4:13), Luke had expressly declared: “He departed from Him till a favourable season,” the return of the tempter at a fixed conjuncture.

Vers. 45 and 46. Luke unites the three awakings in one. Then he seeks to explain this mysterious slumber which masters the disciples, and he does so in the way most favourable to them. The cause was not indifference, but rather the prostration of grief. It is well known that deep grief, especially after a period of long and keen tension, disposes to slumber through sheer exhaustion. Nothing could be more opposed than this explanation to the hostile feelings toward the disciples which are ascribed to Luke, and all the more that this particular is entirely peculiar to him. Luke 22:46. Jesus rises from this struggle delivered from His fear, as says the Epistle to the Hebrews; that is to say, in possession of the profound calm which perfect submission gives to the soul. The punishment has not changed its nature, it is true; but the impression which the expectation of the cross produces on Jesus is no longer the same. He has given Himself up wholly; He has done what He Himself proclaimed before passing the Cedron: “ For their sakes I sanctify myself ” (John 17:19). The acceptance of the sacrifice enables Him to feel beforehand the rest belonging to the completion of the sacrifice. Henceforth He walks with a firm step to meet that cross the sight of which an instant before made Him stagger.