The Blood of Gethsemane
Published on Facebook, May
3, 2010
By Bud Powell
Heb. 5:7-9 "Who in the days of his flesh, when he
had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him
that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared; Though
he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; And
being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them
that obey him...."
Trust in the Lord with all
thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all they ways
acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths.
Jesus in His Incarnation took into His Person a true human body and soul,
becoming a true man while remaining the unchanging, eternal, and infinite Word
of God.
He must achieve in that which Adam failed. His human will must be perfectly and
maturely yielded to God. It was such a difficult thing that He sweat great
drops of blood, praying "let this cup pass from me" as he thought of
the horrors of the Cross and His alienation from His Father. But He endured the
test and His cry of submission was, "Nevertheless, not my will but thine
be done."
The ancient church fathers rightly recognized that Jesus had a true human will
as an attribute of the true human nature that He assumed from the Virgin Mary.
His will was not absorbed into the divine nature and lost. It remained a human
will and was not lost in the will of God.
In the long struggle with humanism, or self-deification, it was necessary for
the church to resist man's self-deification at every stage. A major blow
against humanism was the Council of Chalcedon where the church affirmed the
biblical teaching that the human nature of Christ was not absorbed into the
divine nature but remained separate and distinct, so that Jesus was a true man
both in body and in soul for the incarnation was the union of the two natures
into the Person of Jesus Christ. It was not a deification of humanity.
A mopping up action took place at the Sixth Ecumenical Council the Third
Council of Constantinople in which it was affirmed that Monothelitism was also
heretical, that the human will of Jesus was not absorbed into the divine will.
There are not Three Wills in God, for the Three Persons of the Trinity
participate on one Nature and one Will. Hence, the great drops of blood in
Gethsemane involve the submission of the will of Jesus to the Will of God.
Because of this, if Jesus was to be a perfect man, mature and completed, He
must submit His human will to God, just as His human body and soul must suffer
the wrath of God really and truly. It was not an abstraction or mental concept
that took place at the Cross, but a whole human being suffering in body and
soul. [Isaiah 53:10, 11 in context].
The lesson for us is this, and every true Calvinist must recognize this. The
real test of your Christianity is not what your will does to become a Christian
for your will is enslaved by sin and you cannot choose Christ. But being
regenerated in the image of Christ, you must give yourself up to God as He did.
You are given life in order to choose Christ, not to drift. You must make the choices
required of you. You must seek the face of God. You must strive after holiness.
You must choose the good fight of faith. You must put off the old and put on
the new.
Man's original sin was to seek to participate in the deity, not as an image but
independent from God, not choosing to obey God but seeking his own way. Over
the centuries this rebellion has run in two channels. On the one hand man
pretends that his will in independent from God and absolutely free [Arminianism
in all its forms]. On the other hand, he pretends that he cannot make a
decision and that God makes it for him [fatalism in all its forms]. Calvinism
rightly understood denies both the independency of the will and the idea that
man is a puppet. Just as man has real substance dependent upon God, so man has
a real will that is dependent upon God.
The blood of Gethsemane reveals the truth concerning the distinction between
the will of man and the will of God, and cries to us to submit and choose life,
just as Jesus did. The blood of the cross shows the result of Jesus' submission
to the will of God, taking all our wrong decisions upon Himself and suffering
the responsibility for them. Our wills are not lost in God, there is true
atonement for their sinfulness in the blood of His cross.
The fact that it is God that works in us both to will and to do of His good
pleasure does not absolve us of the responsibility of both willing and doing.
Instead it leaves both you and me without excuse and subject to the discipline
of God. Your will can never be lost in God, for even Christ had to make the
choice. And so must you and I. Our tests will not be like His, but they will be
real ones.
In the great decisions of life, we must choose the will of God and no waffling
will allow us to escape. We are not Islamists [fatalists] who shrug and say,
"It is the will of God." Neither are we little gods who imagine that
sin does not reign over us. The true way is found in James 1 succinctly and
clearly:
James 1:5-8: "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth
to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. 6 But let
him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the
sea driven with the wind and tossed. 7 For let not that man think that he shall
receive any thing of the Lord. 8 A double minded man is unstable in all his
ways.
Why do we need wisdom if we have no choice? Why must we call upon God if our
wills are independent? My sinful choices are my own. I both acknowledge them as
my own and that Jesus took their sinfulness upon Himself in real atonement.
Amen and Amen. Return
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Hmmmm?
