March 19, 2024
Several decades ago, a pastor (and friend) mentioned in passing at one of our regular breakfasts together that he wasn’t satisfied with the usual reading of Jesus’s prayer in Gethsemane, the usual reading being that Jesus asked the Father to avoid the Cross at Gethsemane. We turned to the passage, I told him that I wasn’t sure what else Jesus could be asking in His prayer, and we moved on to chat about other topics.
We never returned to the subject; my pastor, sadly, passed away not
too long after our conversation. But his question stayed at the back of
my mind over the years. Despite my initial skepticism, gradually over
the years I noted a set of texts that seemed to press for a different
reading of Jesus’s prayer at Gethsemane.
I first discuss why I don’t think the Bible teaches that Jesus
prayed, or would have prayed, to avoid the Cross. I then consider what
Jesus did ask of the Father in Gethsemane if He did not in
fact ask the Father to avoid the Cross.
Rather than praying to avoid the Cross at Gethsemane, I suggest Jesus
instead asked the Father to end a Satanic attack from Satan to kill him before he could go to the cross. This was a request that pleased the Father
to grant; that is, on this reading the Father said “yes” to Jesus’s
prayer at Gethsemane. Further, the faith that Jesus demonstrates in His
prayers at Gethsemane provides His people with a consummate example of
faith for us to emulate, particularly when we face our own suffering and
most particularly when we face our own deaths. The gospel of John contains no account of this incident but has the prayer of Jesus in John 17 that gives no indication of Jesus wanting to escape crucifixion.
Jesus stated expressly that He would not ask the Father to avoid the cross
A few days before the Cross, John quotes Jesus expressly denying that He would ask the Father to avoid the Cross. “Now My Soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, ‘Father save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour” (John 12:27). As at Gethsemane in the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus reports in John that His soul is “troubled” to the point of death. (cf. Matt 26:38). Despite that, Jesus says He would not ask the Father to “save me from this hour.”
Even closer in time to the Cross, John again has Jesus expressing His willingness to drink the cup that is the Cross: After Peter strikes and wounds the high priest’s slave, Jesus says to Peter, “the cup which the Father has given Me, shall I not drink it?” (John 18.11)
To be sure, even the casual reader recognizes that John’s Gospel differs in tone and focus from the Synoptic Gospels. Nonetheless, Jesus’s statements in John that He would not ask the Father to avoid the Cross are direct and clear. At the very least they invite the reader to ask whether Jesus’s prayers recorded in the Synoptic Gospels can be read consistently with what John reports.
Jesus responds, “Get thee behind me, Satan,” to Peter’s wish that Jesus avoid the cross
In the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, when Jesus tells His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem to suffer, die, and be resurrected, Peter takes Jesus aside and chastises Him. Peter’s comment recorded in Matthew is even more pointed in the Greek: Peter wishes “mercy” on Jesus (Matt 16.22). In response to this wish of mercy, Jesus gives Peter a bracing rebuke: “Get behind Me, Satan” (Matt 16:23).
Jesus’s response to Peter raises a problem for the traditional reading of Gethsemane; in effect, the traditional reading would place Peter’s words and desire for mercy in Jesus’s mouth at Gethsemane.
The thing is, Jesus does not merely dismiss Peter’s wish as
understandable (if misguided) sentimentalism or good intentions. Jesus
rejects Peter’s wish as Satanic. Jesus’s bracing rebuke of Peter leaves
no room for the type of special pleading that styles Jesus’s prayer in
Gethsemane as reflecting an understandably human crisis of faith given
the imminency of the Cross. While Jesus was fully human and was “tempted in all things as we are,” yet Jesus
lived “without sin” (Heb 4:15). Jesus would not— could not—effectively
have prayed the same thing Peter desired for Him and which Jesus flatly
dismissed as Satanic. Would not this instantly disqualify Jesus as Messiah ?
There often is a follow up defense of the traditional view that
posits that Jesus did not in fact ask the Father to avoid the Cross in
Gethsemane because Jesus gave the Father an out by adding “yet not as I
will, but as You will” at the end of His prayer (Matt 26.39, cf., vv.
42, 44). However, this attempt to patch up the traditional view doesn’t
work linguistically. If I say to my father, “Please don’t make me do
‘X,’ but if you insist that I do ‘X’ I will submit to you and do ‘X,’”
it remains obvious that I am asking him that I be allowed to avoid doing
‘X.’ That I might also tell my father I would submit to his decision if
he declines my request does not change the fact that my
request is one asking him to allow me to avoid doing ‘X.’ If my father
insists that I do ‘X’ it means my father answers “no” to my
request. The traditional view requires, at least at the point of Jesus’s
request in Gethsemane, that Jesus’s desires for Himself are at odds
with those of the Father. Therefore there must be another request made by Jesus that has been overlooked.
The traditional reading of Jesus’s prayer in Gethsemane has Jesus asking the Father to allow Him to avoid the Cross, with the Father answering “No” to Jesus’s request.
Hebrews 5:7 and Matthew 26:53 suggest the Father answered Jesus’s prayer in the affirmative
In Hebrews 5:7, the author writes regarding Jesus that “In the day of
His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud
crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was
heard because of His piety.” The reference to prayers offered “to the
One able to save [Jesus] from death” appears most particularly to be a
reference to Jesus at Gethsemane. And, indeed, at Gethsemane the traditional view, Jesus asks
the Father “to save Him from death.” Yet the author of Hebrews has the
Father saying “yes” to Jesus’s request rather than “no.” This verse is attributed to Jesus but in reality is a continuation of the thought in verse 6 about Melchizedek.
As noted above, if saving Jesus from death refers to the Cross, then
the traditional reading of Gethsemane has the Father answering “no” to
Jesus’s prayer there. On the other hand, if saving Melchizedek from death by the hand of Abraham is the correct idea then the account of Jesus praying with fervent crying and tears never happened which is confirmed by the other gospels accounts. Either way you look at this one answer from GOD is no and another is yes, this is a problem.
So, too in Matthew 26 itself, Jesus suggests that the Father would spare Him from the Cross if Jesus were actually to have asked it. At His arrest, in response to Peter (again) seeking to protect Jesus from the Cross, Jesus says, “[D]o you think that I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” (v. 53)
The implication here is that if Jesus had in fact asked the Father to avoid the Cross in Gethsemane, the Father would have granted Jesus’s request immediately, sparing Him from the Cross. Jesus and the Father always agreed on Jesus going to the Cross, Jesus never sought to avoid it, and the Father never forced Jesus to the Cross against Jesus’s will.
This also is the upshot of Jesus’s observation in the Gospel of John that His crucifixion results from His own—Jesus’s own—initiative: “For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again” (John 10:17–18). At no point does the Father force Jesus to go to the Cross in the face of Jesus’s desire to avoid it. Jesus never shrinks from the cross; He is always willing lay down His life for those He loves, and He does so on His own initiative.
If Jesus prayed to avoid the Cross, then Paul prays a more self-sacrificing prayer than Jesus
Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, “I could wish [“pray” in Greek] that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh” (Rom 9:3). If Jesus asked the Father to avoid the Cross in His prayer at Gethsemane, then it would seem that Paul’s willingness to sacrifice for his lost brethren is greater than Jesus’s willingness to do the same. I suggest that the more likely scenario is that Paul understands his prayer merely to reflect the same love that Christ showed for His people, a love that resulted in Jesus’s willingness to sacrifice for their salvation.
Revisiting Jesus’s Prayer at Gethsemane
Even conceding the extrinsic evidence adduced above, what of the text
of Jesus’s actual prayer in Gethsemane? Doesn’t Jesus ask the Father to
pass on the Cross? I suggest that Jesus’s prayer at Gethsemane, rather
than being a request to avoid the cross entirely, is instead a request
that the Satanic attack against his life end. Jesus was just fine before entering the garden and at the Passover meal reinforced his will to die. Jesus used the symbols of bread and wine and told Judas to go and do quickly what he had to do. Satan waited until Jesus entered the garden, a more opportune time. Luke 4:13 When Satan realized that he could not tempt Jesus to worship him he then plotted to kill him prior to the cross. This was the cup that Jesus wanted removed so that he could fulfill scripture concerning his death. Jesus left the matter up to GOD who sent an angel to strengthen him. Luke 22:43 This interpretation of the events in Gethsemane align more with the character of Jesus than the conventional "avoiding the cross" idea.
The second and third prayers that Jesus prayed in Gethsemane seem to
indicate this claim explicitly: “He went away again a second time and
prayed, saying, ‘My Father, if [or “since”] this cannot pass away unless
I drink it, Your will be done.” Note the language Jesus uses, the cup can
pass away, and it did and Jesus went on to his death on the cross.
The language of Jesus’s first prayer is consistent with this reading as well. Jesus asks that the cup “pass from me” (parerchomai apo egō,
Matt 26:39). While the phrase can mean “to avoid,” it does not seem as
though it has to be taken only in the sense of “to avoid” the cross. It
can mean to pass sequentially or temporally after an elapse of time. The time the Satanic attack began until the time GOD sent the angel.
This, then, is the force of Jesus’s statement in His prayers, “Thy will be done.” Jesus is willing to
drink the cup, die in the garden, if this was the Father’s judgment or will.
A Passing Comment on Matthew 27:46’s “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me”
Jesus’s cry on the Cross, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me” is not directly related to Jesus’s prayer in Gethsemane. Yet the spirit in which Jesus’s statement on the Cross is often preached is of one weave with the traditional reading of Gethsemane that Jesus there asked the Father to forgo the Cross.
The initial problem with this common rendition of Jesus’s cry on the Cross is that Jesus does not ask “why” the Father forsakes Him on the Cross in the sense that he did not know because Jesus had always known. Numerous earlier texts throughout the Gospels tell us that Jesus knew exactly what would happen on the Cross, and Jesus embraced that purpose as His vocation (Matt 16:21; 22:23; John 3:14; et al.).
In contrast, a well-known alternative reading of Jesus’s statement is that with those words Jesus directs His disciples to Psalm 22. This Psalm, however, is not a psalm of despair and abandonment. It is a psalm of trust and vindication. While David mouths the question, “My God, my God why have You forsaken me,” David immediately answers his own question with the response that God has not in fact abandoned him. As David continues the psalm it crescendos to a conclusion in which God not only vindicates David, the psalm vindicates God’s righteousness and faithfulness as well. Jesus encourages His disciples by directing them to this Psalm on the cross. It is worth quoting at length given that the bulk of the Psalm answers the lament in the first verse:
In You our fathers trusted;
They trusted and You delivered them.
To You they cried out and were delivered;
In You they trusted and were not disappointed.
. . .
Yet You are He who brought me forth from the womb;
You made me trust when upon my mother’s breasts.
Upon You I was cast from birth;
You have been my God from my mother’s womb.
…
But You, O Lord, be not far off;
O You my help, hasten to my assistance.
Deliver my soul from the sword,
My only life from the power of the dog.
Save me from the lion’s mouth;
From the horns of the wild oxen You answer me.
…
For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted;
Nor has He hidden His face from him;
But when he cried to Him for help, He heard.
…
All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord,
And all the families of the nations will worship before You.
For the kingdom is the Lord’s
And He rules over the nations.
All the prosperous of the earth will eat and worship,
All those who go down to the dust will bow before Him,
Even he who cannot keep his soul alive.
Posterity will serve Him;
It will be told of the Lord to the coming generation.
They will come and will declare His righteousness
To a people who will be born, that He has performed it.
(Psalm 22:4–5, 9–10, 20–21, 24, 27–31, emphasis added).
Gethsemane Exemplifies the Faith of Jesus Christ as He Faces the Cross
Pastors routinely preach that Jesus asking the Father to avoid the Cross in Gethsemane exemplifies Jesus’s humanity. The purpose for doing so is laudable, that is, to underscore the Christian’s identification with Jesus Christ as a person who is fully human. .
Yet while laudable in intention, the view has Jesus shrinking from the Cross in Gethsemane. While I have no doubt that many of us would indeed shrink from just such a fate that Jesus faced, that would not be a response of faith and trust, either for Jesus or for us.
The alternative reading of Gethsemane presented above instead underscores the faith of Jesus Christ in the face of imminent suffering and death. In going to the Cross Jesus nonetheless trusted that the Father would bring His suffering to an end rather than abandon Him. (Acts 2:27, 31, 32).
Consistent with this, the apostles repeatedly point to Jesus as an example for Christians to emulate when facing our own suffering and death. Peter, for example, writes “to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing” (1 Peter 4:13) and “since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same purpose” (1 Peter 4:2).
Peter concludes his encouragement for Christians in the face of their own suffering with the comment that “those also who suffer according to the will of God shall entrust their souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right” (1 Peter 4:19).
In the alternative reading of Gethsemane presented above, Jesus exemplifies one who “entrusts” His soul “to a faithful Creator.” Jesus’s prayer for defense from Satans attack is a prayer of faith and trust. When faced with our own suffering and death, Gethsemane provides Christians with the very model of faith and trust. Gethsemane does not teach that Jesus shrinks from His suffering and death. Rather, Jesus’s prayer at Gethsemane invites us to follow His example of faith and trust. Indeed, Jesus had far more on the line than we do in our own deaths given that He would taste death and judgment for all of us on the Cross. Jesus leads His people at every point.
Our own deaths remind us that our fate is ultimately out of our control; we are entirely in the hands of God. This is not a reason to worry or despair, however, because God can save us while we cannot save ourselves. Confidence that our God is a “faithful Creator” invites us to entrust our souls to God and to face our suffering and death with faith and trust, just as Jesus faced His own suffering and death, even—or especially—at Gethsemane. Jesus at Gethsemane becomes the consummate example of this faith and trust rather than an example of the all-too-human inclination to shrink from suffering and death. This reading of Gethsemane invites us to fix “our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross” (Heb 12:2).
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