Agony
"And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops
of blood falling down to the ground." (Luke 22:43).
What does 'agony' mean?
"agonia...
1) a struggle for victory
1a) gymnastic exercise, wrestling
2) of severe mental struggles and emotions, agony, anguish"
(Thayer's Greek Lexicon)
Jacob's wrestling contest was a type of Christ's struggle in the Garden:
"Then Jacob was left alone; and a Man wrestled with him until the
breaking of day...And He said, 'Your name shall no longer be called Jacob,
but Israel; for you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed.'"
(Genesis 32:24-28).
"Yes, he struggled with the Angel and prevailed; he wept, and sought
favor from Him. He found Him in Bethel, and there He spoke to us - that
is, the LORD God of hosts. The LORD is His memorable name." (Hosea
12:4-5).
And was Heard
"As He also says in another place: 'You are a priest forever according
to the order of Melchizedek'; who, in the days of His flesh, when He had
offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to
Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly
fear, though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which
He suffered." (Hebrews 5:6-8).
The Bible says that He "was heard." In what was He heard? Not
in His first petition: "O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup
pass from Me..." (Matthew 26:39), but in His second: "O My Father,
if this cup cannot pass away from Me unless I drink it, Your will be done."
(Matthew 26:42). He was saved from death, which did not triumph over Him,
in the face of the full force of the Father's wrath against sin poured
out upon Him. Sin had brought death into the world, but did not gain the victory.
Play-Acting
The Bible tells us that the Lord was without deceit: "And they made
His grave with the wicked - But with the rich at His death, because He
had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth." (Isaiah 53:9,
1 Peter 2:22). Could He who is "the Truth" be accused of
subterfuge?: "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the
life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.'" (John 14:6).
Jesus told us what He thought about play-acting. To say 'play-acting'
in Greek, you say 'hupokrisis', which "primarily denotes 'a reply, an answer'...then, 'play-acting',
as the actors spoke in dialogue..." (Vine's Complete Expository Dictionary).
He didn't think too highly of it: "And when you pray, you shall
not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the
synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by
men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward." (Matthew 6:5).
When pressed to explain Jesus' prayers, some 'Oneness' Pentecostals assert
that He prayed for our benefit, for show not in earnest: to set an example.
Those who heard Him, they say, were watching someone pretend to carry on
a telephone conversation with the button pressed down. Hearing Him cry:
"O my Father," they make the astonishing claim that God is a
'hypocrite', in other words a stage actor, who puts on various masks and
disguises and pretends to carry on conversation. But would it not
be hypocritical for God to condemn people for hypocrisy if He's actually
in that same line of work Himself?
Praying Flesh
As explained, there is a 'Plan A' and a 'Plan B' with 'Oneness' Pentecostalism:
Plan A: Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three titles, offices or manifestations.
Plan B: The Father is Christ's divine Spirit and the Son is His flesh.
Christ's agonized prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane is quite impossible for Plan A. How could one title or office
cry out to another? At this, the 'Oneness' Pentecostals drop 'Plan A' and explain that it was 'the flesh' which
prayed. Certainly one cannot understand Christ's prayer in the Garden without realizing He had humbled Himself
and taken on our nature. It's not His native estate to approach the Father as a humble petitioner; there was a time
when He "did not consider it robbery" to be "equal" to the Father:
"Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the
form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation,
taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in
appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of
the cross." (Philippians 2:5-8).
It's in virtue of His incarnation that, "though He was a Son",
"yet" He learned "obedience": "...who, in the days of His flesh,
when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able
to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear, though He was a Son, yet He learned
obedience by the things which He suffered." (Hebrews 5:7-8). Yet who prayed with
"vehement cries and tears": the One who humbled Himself in taking on flesh, or that very 'flesh'
which He took on? Surely the One who humbled Himself, becoming a man, or else the incarnation is
a word, not a reality!
When Jesus said, "Not My will, but Yours," He employed two personal
pronouns. To whom do these personal pronouns belong? To whom, in
general, do personal pronouns belong: to persons, or to natures? The "My"
and "Your" of Christ's agonized prayer cannot belong to 'two
natures,' because 'natures' do not address one another as 'Me' and 'You.'
Not My will but Yours
To will is a function of human nature. To will also belongs, pre-eminently, to God:
"But our God is in heaven; He does whatever He pleases." (Psalm 115:3);
"Whatever the LORD pleases He does, In heaven and in earth,
In the seas and in all deep places." (Psalm 135:6).
When Jesus Christ took on our nature to save us from our
plight, He took on, not just a human body, but a human soul. If He had taken on only a human
body but not a human soul, He could have saved our bodies, but not our souls! He became in fact
just like us, our brother, sin only excepted: "Therefore, in all things He had to be made like
His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God,
to make propitiation for the sins of the people." (Hebrews 2:17). Thus Jesus Christ, being both
man and God, inherits two faculties of will, human and Divine. Since what was
not assumed was not healed, we are left comfortless indeed if the human
will was not healed, because our will above all is diseased and in need
of healing: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately
wicked; who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9). Yet these two wills
cannot diverge and wander off onto different tracks, as they are endlessly
doing in 'Oneness'-land, so that 'humanity' decides to stay at home while
'Deity' goes for a walk, because there is only one person who wills, Jesus
Christ our Lord.
To will is ascribed in scripture to Father, Son and Holy Spirit:
"I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I
do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me." (John 5:30);
"But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually
as He wills." (1 Corinthians 12:11)
"Then Jesus put out His hand and touched him, saying, 'I am willing; be cleansed.' Immediately
his leprosy was cleansed." (Matthew 8:3).
That there cannot be three divergent wills in God is made clear by passages like John 6:38, "For I have come
down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me."
"Then Jesus answered and said to them, 'Most assuredly, I say to you, the
Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does
in like manner.'" (John 5:19).
"For I have not spoken on My own authority; but the Father
who sent Me gave Me a command, what I should say and what I should speak." (John 12:49).
"As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the
Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me." (John 6:57).
"For even Christ did not please Himself; but as it is
written, 'The reproaches of those who reproached You fell on Me.'" (Romans 15:3; Psalm 69:9)
('Oneness' Revised Psalms read, 'The reproaches of those who reproached Me fell on Me.').
"However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will
guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will
speak; and He will tell you things to come." (John 16:13).
Faced with Gethsemane, 'Oneness' Pentecostals drop any pretense of believing
that Jesus Christ is God, alleging that it was a mere man (the 'flesh')
that cried out in the Garden, not God incarnate, trotting out in defense
of this thesis every shop-worn atheist argument against the incarnation.
So it's instructive to ask 'Oneness' Pentecostals this question:
Do they believe He who prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, shedding agonized
sweat-drops of blood, was God incarnate?
Sweat-drops of Blood
"I stand amazed in the presence
Of Jesus the Nazarene,
And wonder how He could love me,
A sinner condemned, unclean.
For me it was in the garden
He prayed, 'Not My will, but Thine;'
He had no tears for His own griefs
But sweat-drops of blood for mine.
How marvelous! how wonderful!
And my song shall ever be:
How marvelous! how wonderful!
Is my Savior's love for me!
(Charles H. Gabriel)
It was during His second, high-priestly prayer that Jesus' blood fell to
the group in clotted clumps. For whom was He suffering? Not for Himself,
but for us:
"These earnest prayers and strong cries of Christ to the Father in
his agony, show the greatness of his love to sinners. For, as has been
shown, these strong cries of Jesus Christ were what he offered up to God
as a public person, in the capacity of high priest, and in the behalf of
those whose priest he was. When he offered up his sacrifice for sinners
whom he had loved from eternity, he withal offered up earnest prayers.
His strong cries, his tears, and his blood, were all offered up together
to God, and they were all offered up for the same end, for the glory of
God in the salvation of the elect. They were all offered up for the same
persons, viz. for his people. For them he shed his blood and that bloody
sweat, when it fell down in clotted lumps to the ground; and for them he
so earnestly cried to God at the same time. It was that the will of God
might be done in the success of his sufferings, in the success of that
blood, in the salvation of those for whom that blood was shed, and therefore
this strong crying shows his strong love; it shows how greatly he desired
the salvation of sinners. He cried to God that he might not sink and fail
in that great undertaking, because if he did so, sinners could not be saved,
but all must perish. He prayed that he might get the victory over death,
because if he did not get the victory, his people could never obtain that
victory, and they can conquer no otherwise than by his conquest. If the
Captain of our salvation had not conquered in this sore conflict, none
of us could have conquered, but we must have all sunk with him. He cried
to God that he might be saved from death, and if he had not been saved
from death in his resurrection, none of us could ever have been saved from
death. It was a great sight to see Christ in that great conflict that he
was in his agony, but every thing in it was from love, that strong love
that was in his heart. His tears that flowed from his eyes were from love;
his great sweat was from love; his blood, his prostrating himself on the
ground before the Father, was from love; his earnest crying to God was
from the strength and ardency of his love. It is looked upon as one principal
way wherein true love and good will is shown in Christian friends one towards
another, heartily to pray one for another; and it is one way wherein Christ
directs us to show our love to our enemies, even praying for them. Matthew
5:44. “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you,
and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” But was
there ever any prayer that manifested love to enemies to such a degree,
as those strong cries and tears of the Son of God for the success of his
blood in the salvation of his enemies; the strife and conflict of whose
soul in prayer was such as to produce his agony and his bloody sweat?"
(Christ's Agony, Jonathan Edwards).
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