Jesus Moves Deeper into His Suffering

Jesus waited near the garden’s entrance with His disciples, possibly trying to comfort them short of telling them He would be delivered; that could not be. Jesus had sealed His own fate in Gethsemane when He submitted to the Father’s will.

Soon Judas arrived on the scene with a motley crew of Jews and a number of Roman soldiers sent with him by the chief priests and Pharisees. According to a prearranged plan, Judas kissed Jesus to indicate to his mixed crew whom they were to seize. Judas had the effrontery not only to betray the Lord of glory, but to betray Him with a kiss, the token of love and friendship! He betrayed his Lord with a kiss! And so another heinous sin was loaded onto this mortal Being who was guilty only of loving us to death.

“Judas,” Jesus said, and He was genuinely grieved despite His foreknowledge of Judas’ betrayal, “would you betray the Son of man with a kiss?” That was all. No instant thunderclap and a vaporized Judas; no overwhelming wrath; just a simple rebuke from a pained heart saying, Would you, could you, break faith with me so?

Jesus then turned to the rabble pressing in upon Him. “Whom seek ye?”

“Jesus of Nazareth.”

“I am He,” Jesus said simply. But the simplicity of the words did not veil the power of Eternal Being in them. Jesus, we have already learned, is the I AM of the Old Testament who, alone of all creatures and things, is completely self-existent and eternal.

Upon hearing Jesus say, I AM, with the deliberate aim of showing His power only briefly, the entire mob fell backward as one man to the ground. They had been blasted by the force and majesty of the Almighty, who even then in His mercy left them alive and sane. The great power of divinity had been unleashed, but only partially, else they had been consumed in their iniquities. And here is a related thought: It is possible that the wondrous grace of God turned some of these same enemies and detractors of Jesus  around and caused them to repent of their sins after Jesus’ resurrection in the early days of the Church. (Acts 6.7) Grace is such an amazing quality! ¹

Jesus asked them again, “Whom seek ye?” and this time, after they had answered Him, Jesus leashed His power, as He would throughout the rest of this surreal night.

“I have told you that I am He…therefore…let these go their way.”

Jesus was battered and feeling utterly alone. Yet He was not so broken nor so brokenhearted that He could not still have compassion on one who needed it although completely undeserving of it. In their consternation, the disciples had cried out, “Lord, shall we smite them?” and Peter, in his customary brashness, had drawn his sword and slashed down at the head of a servant of the high priest. Peter meant to cleave the man’s skull, but the victim had dodged the blow and the descending sword, like a meat cleaver, had sliced off his ear. Here again Jesus displayed His love even for His enemies.

Jesus said to Peter, “This is enough. Put up your sword,” and then touched the man’s head where the ear had been and restored it whole as before! Jesus was love alive and in action.

The love of God, coursing throughout the history of man and coming supremely to life in one short span of thirty?three years, is literally “out of this world.” Such a unique love should stir the dead embers within men, inherited from Adam, into a burning flame of respondent love. Never a man spake like this nor ever a man loved like this. ²

“Don’t you know I could ask my Father for thousands of angels and He would send them to deliver me?” He said to the disciples, trying to alleviate their fears somewhat. He was making them to know, if they had ears to hear, that He would not be delivered, but that nothing had gone wrong: This was the Father’s will, therefore it was Jesus’ will also.

This type of submission was not possible for the disciples. They could have physically grappled with their adversaries, but to surrender meekly was contrary to their basic natures.

“Then all the disciples forsook Him and fled,” including a young man whose only clothing was a linen cloth he had hastily thrown about himself. When the mob seized him he fled the scene naked, leaving the linen cloth in the hands of his would-be captors. Jesus had been deserted in spirit before; He was now fully and devastatingly alone. The Father Himself was in effect on the threshold of Jesus’ being, ready to depart. Jesus the Son of God and man was now being abandoned to the enemy.

There are moments in our hours of meditation when God grants us a more telling glimpse into the loneliness and stark dejection that came down on Jesus. It is unquestionable that these most grievous moments of empathy that we have with Jesus are not overblown. They are, in truth, not so grievous nor so anguished as the reality we seek to fathom. It is an unfortunate error to look on the blood?marked path from Gethsemane to Golgotha as anything but grotesque. At the least it was altogether backward, reason and logic in reverse. The immac­ulate Son of God should not have had to come into the world He had made and be ridiculed, buffeted, spit upon and put to death in one of the cruelest and most shameful ways known to man. It is unthinkable and perverse in the extreme. ³

All emotional and physical support were stripped from Jesus ? except for the angel’s strengthening His body that He might suffer more.

1. The grace of God is a unique commodity that only mankind can experience. The animals in the forest or your pet Chihuahua can never benefit from it. Angels would like to inquire into this mysterious grace because they have never been the recipients of it. Fallen angels did not receive grace; they were forever condemned to hell.

   Any good we have in our lives is due originally to the goodness of God. Even before Adam fell into sin, all that he had around him sprang from the goodness of God. It did not come from grace; grace was not then an essential in the life of man nor was there any apparent evidence of its existence. Grace is needed only where there is sin, thus: “But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound…” (Rom. 5.20b)

   When Adam fell from his position of favor with God, which was accorded to him by God’s universal goodness, he immediately needed grace because God’s goodness was shut off with Adam’s transgression. All the favor and goodness of God that we now know spring from the grace of God, which itself is born of the love of God.  (back)

2. How many times in past writings I have tried the impos­sible and essayed to share with my readers the magnitude of the love of Jesus and the unprecedented suffering He endured to purchase our salvation! I have not utterly failed in the effort, yet neither have I succeeded brilliantly. First, none of us can fully take into our minds how much Jesus loved nor how damnably He suffered. It is beyond our mental and physical capacity.

   Furthermore, the limited knowledge of Jesus that even the most spiritually astute among us have falls an infinity short of the reality of divine love and the awesomeness of the suffering Jesus experienced in His hour of Passion. Even now, in my quiet moments, I am struggling to grasp a love that is beyond my understanding and to come to grips with a gruesome, horrible suffering that no other human has yet known.  And how could we? As the humans we are we can never discern the heights of the love nor plumb the depths of the suffering of God. Only God Himself could ascend so high or plunge so precipitously – and He did it all for us. It is absolutely awesome.  (back)

3. The abnormality and perversity of the situation is in our human thinking, and rightfully so. But the love of God demanded the utmost of Him. Amazingly, love deemed it only fitting and proper that Jesus should have suffered such indignities for mankind. Love chides us: “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?” Luke 24:26  (back)