He
spoke eloquently that evening, as He always did, although His audience was
small; it was important that this loyal group of disciples understood as best
they could what was to come in the next few days, so they would be prepared to
gather in the harvest of Believers.
“Do
you now believe? Behold, the hour is coming; indeed, it has come, when
you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave Me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with Me. I
have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world,
you will have tribulation. But take heart: I
have overcome the world.”
And
now, the moment He had been dreading, more than the impending cruelties of the
Roman centurions, more than the crucifixion itself. Like an oxen who had never
before felt the restriction of a yoke, He was about to take on a harness to a
weightier cart than any man had ever been asked to pull. Yet His voice never
wavered.
Jesus
lifted His eyes to heaven and changed the direction of His speech. “Father, the
hour has come; Glorify Your Son that
the Son may glorify You, since You have given Him authority over all flesh, to
give eternal life to all whom You have given Him.”
While
He continued to pray, a miraculous thing happened. It’s not recorded in the
Gospels precisely, but we know it happened, and we can see when it happens: as
Christ continues, God the Father in His omniscience views the entirety of human
history, gathers in the entire body of sins of every one of His elect over
the entire course of history, from Eden to Armageddon, and deposits them in
the body and soul of His One Son.
Every
sin.
Murder, adultery, theft, lying, coveting.
Greed, envy, lust, sloth, gluttony, wrath, and
pride. And so many more.
Consider the enormity of the burden God the
Father placed upon His beloved Son. Imagine for a minute that you’re trapped in
the worst snowstorm in history. You would be completely overwhelmed by it, of
course, as would we all, but at least you’ve been in snow before, and
you would have some general idea as to how to handle it from your previous life
experience. Now, what if you had never seen snow before? Wouldn’t that
snow storm be even more incomprehensible?
That’s Christ’s predicament. As He continues to
pray in front of His disciples, He is being overwhelmed by the largest
sin-storm in history…He who had never experienced even a flurry before. No
wonder He started to get testy as they were leaving the upper room, telling
Peter how he would deny his knowledge of Christ three times “before the rooster
crows” (Mark 14:30, Matthew 26:34).
By the time they reached the garden of Gethsemane,
He was in the full throes of suffering under the incomprehensible burden of sin
He now bore. “Sit here while I pray,” He said to the disciples. “And He took
with Him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and
troubled. And He said to them, ‘My soul is very sorrowful, even to death.
Remain here and watch (or ‘keep awake’,
depending on the manuscript)’. And going a little farther, He fell on the
ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from
Him. And He said, ‘Abba, Father, all things are possible for You. Remove
this cup from Me’.” (Mark 14:32-36)
When you get down and depressed, how do you
react? Before this, we’ve seen Jesus have times when He had difficult
situations, and He never seemed to lose His cool. But now, burdened with
many layers of sin and grief, His reactions are more like those of us who have
fought depression in our mortal lives – His off-hand comment to Peter, His need
for companionship, taking the three with Him when He prayed (Jesus, who always
sought solitary communion before), His self-recognition of what lesser humans
would call suicidal depression, and most telling of all, His plea to His Father
to remove the burden of sin, apparently because He feels He’s not capable of
taking on the challenge in front of Him.
All of these feelings are completely understandable
and explicable, but in Christ they’re so incongruous because He’s never had to
deal with them before. In His prayer, He goes on to ask the Father twice more
to “remove this cup from Me” in His insecurity, and complains twice about His
friends not being there for Him when He needs them the most. Do you understand now
why we must repent of our sins? Why
we must let go of our grief? The
greatest man who ever lived suffered from the oppression of sin and grief, even
when it wasn’t truly His.
†
Watch Him on the cross. Noon has passed, and Jesus
continued to weaken and suffer, the perfect Man feels the pain of abandonment,
the loneliness of grief. Of course, given the incredible physical abuse and
torture He’d been put through over the previous fifteen hours, every word of
His suffering has been earned.
As mid-afternoon approaches, the words “Jesus of
Nazareth, King Of The Jews” can no longer be made out clearly by the taunters
at Christ’s feet. The supernatural darkness also precludes a clear picture of
the face of the Son of God, who – though dying – has finally gotten a mental
respite from the verbal warfare Satan sent His way, and He has begun to gather
His mental strength and resources for the coming conflict. He still feels the
abandonment – “My God, My God! Why have You forsaken Me?” – but He’s starting
to remember who He is and (more crucially) why He’s here.
“Jesus, remember me when You come into Your
kingdom,” one of the robbers asks the man he recognizes as Lord in these last
few minutes of his life. But for Jesus, the robber’s words revive more memories
than he had known: He also remembers what His purpose on earth is. “Truly I say
to you, today you will be with Me in paradise.”
But first, He has a slight detour to make.
†
Darkness. Jesus is in complete and total darkness.
Hell is different from most folks’ imaginations.
Satan has no interest in the fire and brimstone, any more than you do. Tools of
the trade, but that’s not what Hell is.
If Heaven is complete connection with God, then the
opposite is true: Hell is the complete absence of God. And the absence
of all creations of God. Which is, essentially, everything.
Jesus was truly separated from His Father for the
first time since Time began.
Charles Spurgeon said this about Christ’s suffering
on and after the cross:
“At that moment
physical weakness was united with mental torture from the shame and ignominy
through which He had to pass; and to make His grief culminate with emphasis, He
suffered spiritual agony surpassing all expression resulting from the departure
of His Father’s presence. This was
the Black Midnight of His horror. Then it was that He descended into the
abyss of suffering.
“No man can
enter into the full meaning of these words.”
By that undeniable measure, we cannot truly
conceive of the horrors Christ went through when He arrived in that “black
midnight”. But the clues to His victory are there:
·
We know that
despite the burden He bore, He had already
begun to control Himself and His situation even before death, by His final
conversation on the cross.
·
We know that He
emerged on Sunday not only victorious over Satan, but over sin and death
itself. His composed and gracious presence before Mary Magdalene Sunday
morning confirms that He emerged unscathed
emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.
·
We know that
Christ was visibly relieved by His
victory when He returned to earth. This battle did not have a
foregone conclusion. In Jesus’ mind, at least, it was by no means certain that
He would be successful in completing His task.
·
He returned to
earth on Sunday morning not in His glorified body (the one John saw in
Revelation) but in His earthly body, imbued with His Godly Spirit for the first
time. The body was healthy. His conflict with Satan was not a physical one.
·
Finally, we
have the battle in the wilderness, described by Matthew and Luke in chapter 4
of each of their Gospels. In that conflict, Jesus used only one weapon against
the devil – the Word of God, which is the ultimate
weapon against Satan or any fallen angel. Never forget that every
one of the demons not only knows
Scripture but is bound to obey its
restrictions.
All of this information leads me to this
conclusion…
The battle
Jesus fought with Satan on Sinless Saturday would not have made good box
office. But it would have been epic.
As far as physical action goes, there would have
been virtually none. This would have been more akin to a chess match,
essentially a battle of wits and subterfuge between Satan and the Lord. But it was the climax of the greatest battle ever waged.
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