Bible Study series: Matthew 26:36-46. This is his surrender to the Father’s will, before the cross.
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In the next link to the original chapter, I comment more and offer the Greek text. At the bottom you will find a “Summary and Conclusion” section geared toward discipleship. Check it out!
In this post, links are provided for further study.
Let’s begin.
Scripture: Matthew 26:36-46
36 Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane and said to his disciples, “Sit here while I go apart there to pray.” 37 And he took along Peter and the two sons of Zebedee. He began to grieve and be distressed. 38 Then he said to them, “My soul is very grieved to the point of death. Stay here and watch with me.” 39 And going a little farther, he fell on his face, praying and saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup bypass me. However, not as I will but as you will.” 40 And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And he said to Peter, “So, you are not able to watch one hour with me?” 41 Watch and pray, so that you do not enter temptation. The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” 42 Again, a second time he went away and prayed, saying, “My Father, if this cannot bypass me unless I drink it, let your will be done.” 43 And coming, he again found them sleeping, for their eyes had become heavy. 44 He left them again and went away and prayed a third time, saying the same word again. 45 Then he came to the disciples and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? See! The hour has drawn near, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 46 Get up and let us go. See! The one handing me over is getting close.” (Matt. 26:36-46)
Comments:
36:
We are on holy ground. This passage is both sad and inspirational at once. I hope I do justice to it in my comments.
Gethsemane is at the base of the Mount of Olives. The term means “oil press.” He told the twelve to sit down, but they will soon lie down and fall asleep. France points out that John 18:2 says it was a regular rendezvous place for Jesus and the twelve and was a “garden.” So it was probably a cultivated estate and enclosed with a wall. The three were invited in, while the remaining nine waited (i.e. slept) outside.
37-38:
Peter, James and John formed the inner core (Matt. 17:1), and Peter was the leader of the eleven (Matt. 16:18). How would they know what he prayed, if they were asleep? The prayer was probably protracted, but Matthew the Abbreviator trims out this detail, so the three disciples may have heard some of it before they fell asleep. Also, after Jesus’s resurrection he may have spoken to them about the scene.
Yes, the Son of Man, God incarnate, became grieved and distressed. He was about to carry the sin of the world on him, vicariously or representatively.
Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied (Is. 53:11, ESV).
Carson, quoting other commentators, says that this sorrow “suggests a sorrow so deep it is almost kills, … not that Jesus is so sorrowful he would rather be dead.”
39:
Wow! It is as if I noticed this for the first time. He actually fell on his face to pray. He was prostrate and stretched out.
“bypass” me: or “pass me by.” He wanted to avoid death, if possible. But since the wages or necessary result of sin is death, someone had to pay this penalty; either you and I do for ourselves, or someone else does for us. Jesus did it for us. He paid the penalty for our individual sins and our sin nature—sin itself being built into us. His distress and anguish sought a way out, but the way out for him was the way through. However, (a strong contrast word in Greek), he surrendered his will to the Father’s will. “Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief” (Is. 53:10, ESV)
“cup”: it is the same Greek term used at the Last Supper. Here it is a metaphor for the cup of suffering. John 18:11 confirms it: “Jesus commanded Peter, ‘Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?’” (NIV). He was talking about his suffering before and during the crucifixion. In Matt. 20:22-23 and Mark 10:38-39, Jesus asked the two disciples who wanted to be first whether they could drink from the cup (same Greek word) which he was about to drink from, referring to this moment of suffering. James and John said, “We can.” It looks like they were about to be proven wrong, though one of them (Peter) cut off an ear in v. 50. Furthermore, the Old Testament’s imagery of the cup speaks of divine wrath (Ps. 11:6; 75:7-8; Is. 51:17-19, 22; Jer. 25:15-16, 27-29; 49:12; 51:57; Lam. 4:21; Ezek. 23:31-34; Hab. 2:16; Zech. 12:2; Rev. 14:9-10; cf. Job 21:20; Ps. 60:3; Is. 63:6; Ob. 16;). God was about to pour out his wrath on his Son. And His was about to absorb it. But God’s wrath is not about losing his temper; it is judicious and evaluative. Here are two contrasting images:
God’s wrath is judicial.
It is not like this:
(Source)
But like this:
(Source)
That is a picture of God in judgment.
And see my posts in the area of systematic and biblical theology:
The Wrath of God in the New Testament
Do I Really Know God? He Shows Wrath
The Wrath of God in the Old Testament
Everyone Shall Be Judged by Their Works and Words
Bible Basics about the Final Judgment
Christ’s Death of the Cross = Cosmic Child Abuse?
40:
“not able”: it could be translated as “not strong.” Peter and the others were not strong enough to stay awake and watch and pray. But that’s what we are supposed to do morally and spiritually. Do we? They still were unable to discern that their Lord was in mortal danger. No, they could not have stopped the plan of God, but they could have stayed awake and sustain him with their sympathy and unity and prayers for themselves.
41:
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. There is a classical men … de construction, expressing strong contrast (pronounced mehn … deh). “On the one hand, the spirit is eager, on the other the flesh is weak.” But that translation, though accurate, is too cumbersome.
Carson insightfully says: “Spiritual weakness is often accompanied by carnal weakness.” This is often the case of enthusiastic new converts. They need more training and the power of the Spirit, so they don’t give in to carnal weakness and go back to their old ways. And the same is true of all Jesus followers, wherever they are in their journey with him, long-time or young.
Is this the Holy Spirit or the human spirit? It is clearly the human spirit because the disciples had not yet experienced Pentecost, yet. The flesh in this verse may indicate their physical bodies, not their sin nature. I get the feeling that Peter may have been able to prevent his mistakes that he committed in other versions, like striking off the high priest’s servant’s ear (John 18:10; Luke 22:49-51). That may be the temptation he was referring to. Or who knows? Maybe Jesus’s prediction about Peter denying him three times would not have happened. These predictions of judgment throughout the Old Testament could have been prevented, if the people had only repented. The prediction was conditional, even if implied: if. “Out of my attribute of righteousness and justice, I pronounced judgment on you!” “We repent!” “Great! Now I withdraw my pronouncement of doom on you and my attribute of mercy shines forth, and I forgive and restore you!” God is not being inconsistent; rather, he shines his attributes forth, out of his nature, as he interacts with inconsistent humanity. Judgment on sin and sinners; forgiveness and mercy on repentant sinners. It’s up to them.
But we will never know whether Peter would have maintained, out of his obedience to Jesus’s command to watch and pray, his vigilance so carefully that he would not have denied the Lord three times before the rooster crowed. Yet Jesus knew their characters so well—better than they knew themselves—that it was easy to predict that Peter was going to deny him and the other eleven would be scattered after the shepherd was struck down.
“willing”: it is the interesting adjective which means “ready, willing, or eager.” It means a spirit that leans forward or in advance. We have “look forward” as a rough parallel.
So the flesh is weak, meaning sleepy, but the spirit is eager. See v. 35 for Peter’s boast that he is willing to die with the Lord. Therefore, Peter is a victim of irony again, when Jesus walked up and saw them sleeping. He probably remembered Peter’s boast, but then realized his flesh could not keep up with his spirit. However, in Peter’s defense, he is about to take out his sword and cut off the high priest’s slave’s ear with it, so he may have been willing to die for the Lord (v. 51). (John 18:10 says Peter is the one who did this.) But when Jesus told him to put back his sword, he realized he could not get arrested passively. Jesus was called to allow it to happen, even though he ask his Father to send over twelve legions of angels to stop the false arrest.
42:
Again, for a second time, he is in anguish and goes apart a little way and prays for this death to bypass him. Again, he calls God “my Father,” indicating intimacy. What kind of intimacy do you and I have with the Father? Lately, I have been calling him “loving Father.” What about you?
Have your surrendered your will to God? Jesus said:
Then at that moment, Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone wants to come after me, let him deny himself and pick up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it. And whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 For what shall it benefit a person if he gains the whole world but damages his life? And what will a person give in exchange for his life? (Matt. 16:24-26).
In Luke’s Gospel, he said, “If anyone wants to come after me, let him deny himself and pick up his cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save his life shall lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake will save it” (Luke 9:23-24).
It’s a daily process of your picking up his cross; then when you lose your life, you find it. You live for God. Each day. Nonstop.
43:
He stopped praying for a moment and went back to the three disciples. The Greek says their eyes were literally “weighed down.” This is an idiom for excessively sleepy. They couldn’t keep their eyes open. Maybe a full day of preparations and a later dinner worked against them. Maybe he shook them a little, or probably he stood over them and spoke to them as they were sleeping.
In any case, Jesus could stay awake.
44:
For the third and final time, before the mob came, he prayed the same word (literally), but you could say that he prayed the same genre of prayer—to ask the Father to allow the cup of wrath to bypass his Son and find another way. But the Father either spoke to his spirit or the Son realized that this bypass wasn’t going to happen. He simply knew. It was the only way. He had to pray through to the end. Who know for sure how he would have reacted in his humanity if he had not prayed and surrendered. Would he have said, “I’m out of here!”? Probably not, but he was human, after all.
45-46:
Now, for the third time, he returns to the three disciples and says to Peter some ambiguous words. The gentler translation is as I have it. A stronger translation would read: “Sleep on and rest!” (France) or “Sleep from now on!” Or “Enjoy the rest of your sleep!” (Olmstead’s suggestions in his notes).
“sinners”: Generally, in a Jewish context, it is someone who does not keep the law. In this case, however, those who are about arrest him, and those who are about to put him on trial, kept the law in a backwards way. They were the super-duper law keepers, but wrongheaded also.
Judas is leading the mob. He is the one getting closer.
“getting close”: Jesus could probably hear them coming. “See!” is just an updated version of “behold!” which can often be translated “Pay attention, readers! A new plot development!” “Watch out!” “Look!”
GrowApp for Matt. 26:36-46
1. Study 1 Pet. 5:6-7. How did Jesus exhibit this attitude?
2. And what about you during your time of distress? Do you surrender all?
3. How did you respond when you did not get your prayer answered?
RELATED
9. Authoritative Testimony in Matthew’s Gospel
1. Church Fathers and Matthew’s Gospel
2. Archaeology and the Synoptic Gospels
14. Similarities among John’s Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels
1. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels: Introduction to Series
SOURCES AND MORE
To see the bibliography, please click on this link and scroll down to the bottom. You will also find a “Summary and Conclusion” for discipleship.
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