197.  It is unbecoming to consider that scene with any vulgar curiosity to know what it was that made Jesus so draw back from the drinking of his “cup.”  It is not unfitting, however, to recognize that in his cry, “Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; remove this cup from me” (Mark xiv. 36), an intense longing of his own soul’s life had expression.  There was something in the fate which he saw before him from which his whole being shrank.  But stronger than this was his fixed desire to do his Father’s will.  Here was supremely illustrated the truth that “he came down from heaven, not to do his own will, but the will of him that sent him” (John vi. 38).  The fullest allowance for the shrinking of the most delicately constituted nature from pain and death completely fails to account for this dread of Jesus.  He was no coward, drawing back from sufferings which for simple physical pain were over and again more than matched by many of the martyrs to truth who preceded and followed him.  He himself declared to the sons of Zebedee that they should share a cup in kind like unto his, suffering for the kingdom of God, for the salvation of the world.  Yet there is a difference evident between what others have had to bear and the cup from which Jesus shrank.  The death which now stood before him in the path of obedience had in it a bitterness quite unexplained by the pain and disappointment it entailed.  That excess of bitterness can probably never be understood by us.  A hint of its nature may be found in the “shame of the cross” which the author of Hebrews (xii. 2; xiii. 13) emphasizes, and in the “curse” of the cross which made it a stumbling block to Paul and his Jewish brethren (Gal. iii. 13; I. Cor. i. 23).  Jesus came from the garden ready to endure the cross in obedience to his Father’s will; but it was a costly obedience, a complete emptying of himself (Phil. ii. 7, 8).

198.  The loneliness of Jesus in his struggle is emphasized in the gospels of Mark and Matthew.  In search of sympathy he had confessed to the disciples his trouble of heart, and had taken his three intimates with him when he withdrew from the others for prayer, asking them to watch with him.  They were too heavy of heart and weary of body to stand by in his bitter hour, and instead of being in readiness to warn him of the approach of the hostile band, he had to awake them to their danger.  The fourth gospel reports that after the struggle Jesus bore marks of majesty which astonished and overawed his foes when he calmly told them that he was the one they were seeking.  Their fear was overcome, however, when Judas gave the appointed sign by kissing his Master (Mark xiv. 45).  The thought for the disciples’ safety which John records (xviii. 8) is another proof that the fight had been won, and Jesus had fully resumed the self-emptying ministry appointed to him by his Father.