Commentary - Matthew 26:36-46

Bird's-eye view

In the quiet darkness of Gethsemane, an olive press, we witness the central agony of redemptive history. This is not merely the natural fear of a man facing a brutal execution; this is the Son of God recoiling from the unimaginable horror of becoming sin for His people and bearing the full, undiluted wrath of His Father. The passage reveals the profound humanity of Christ in His grief and distress, and His perfect submission to the Father's will. It is a scene of cosmic conflict, where the second Adam makes the decisive choice to obey in a garden, reversing the catastrophic disobedience of the first Adam in another garden. The passage also starkly contrasts the watching Savior with His sleeping disciples, highlighting their weakness and inability to grasp the weight of the moment, which in turn magnifies the solitary nature of Christ's atoning work. He must tread the winepress alone.

The structure of the scene is built around three sessions of prayer by Jesus, punctuated by His finding the disciples asleep. In His prayer, the central issue is "this cup," the symbol of God's holy fury against sin. His plea for its removal, if possible, demonstrates the reality of the temptation and the cost of His obedience. Yet, His unwavering resolution, "not as I will, but as You will," is the hinge upon which our salvation turns. This is the epicenter of Christ's passive obedience, His willingness to receive the penalty we deserved. The failure of the disciples serves as a picture of our own fleshly weakness, and Christ's gentle rebuke coupled with His exhortation to "watch and pray" is a timeless word to His church.

Outline

Context In Matthew

This scene in Gethsemane is the immediate prelude to Jesus' arrest, trial, and crucifixion. It follows the Last Supper, where Jesus instituted the new covenant in His blood (Matt 26:26-29) and predicted both Peter's denial and the disciples' desertion (Matt 26:31-35). The high priestly prayer of John 17 would fit chronologically just before this. Gethsemane, therefore, is the final moment of relative freedom for Jesus before He enters into His passion. It is the spiritual crisis point where He consciously and prayerfully accepts the mission His Father has given Him. The agony here provides the necessary context for the strength and resolve He displays from the moment of His arrest onward. Without Gethsemane, His quiet dignity before Caiaphas and Pilate might be misunderstood. Here we see the battle, and for the rest of the narrative, we see the victory that was won in this prayerful struggle.

Key Issues

The Cup of Trembling

Throughout the Old Testament, the "cup" is a potent metaphor for divine judgment and wrath. The prophets speak of the Lord making the nations drink from the cup of His fury, a cup that would make them stagger and reel (Isa 51:17; Jer 25:15). It is a cup of trembling, a cup of poison, the just recompense for sin. When Jesus prays, "let this cup pass from Me," He is not speaking of the physical pain of crucifixion, though that was certainly dreadful. He had spoken of His coming death with resolve before. No, this cup was something infinitely worse. It was the cup containing the accumulated wrath of a holy God against the sins of all His people, from the beginning of time to the end. It was the experience of being forsaken by His Father, of being made sin for us (2 Cor 5:21). He, the sinless Son, was about to drink the full measure of the poison that we had mixed. His agony is the measure of that horror. He was not recoiling from the nails and the thorns; He was recoiling from the prospect of cosmic abandonment and the full force of divine justice being poured out upon His soul.

Verse by Verse Commentary

36 Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to His disciples, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.”

Gethsemane means "olive press." It was a garden on the Mount of Olives, a place of pressing. Here, the Savior Himself would be pressed, squeezed by the weight of the world's sin until His sweat was like great drops of blood. He separates the disciples into two groups. He leaves eight of them near the entrance, a sort of outer court of prayer. His instruction is simple: sit and wait while He goes to pray. The great transaction that is about to occur requires a degree of separation. While the whole church is involved in the benefits, the work itself is uniquely His.

37 And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and distressed.

He takes His inner circle, Peter, James, and John, further into the garden. These were the same three who had witnessed His glory on the Mount of Transfiguration. Then they saw His divinity unveiled; now they are to witness His humanity in its deepest agony. For the first time, Matthew tells us that Jesus "began to be grieved and distressed." The Greek words describe a profound sorrow, a deep anguish, and a troubled, heavy spirit. The full weight of what was before Him was now beginning to descend upon His soul. This is not an act; it is the authentic emotional and spiritual torment of the God-man facing the curse.

38 Then He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.”

Jesus puts His anguish into words. This is not a small sadness; it is a sorrow that surrounds Him, pressing in on all sides, so intense that it feels like death itself. This is the cry of a true man who needs the fellowship of His friends in His darkest hour. His request is simple: "remain here and keep watch with Me." He is not asking them to fight or to do anything, but simply to be present, to be awake, to share the vigil with Him. It is a plea for the most basic kind of human companionship in the face of overwhelming trial.

39 And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.”

Going a little further, even from His closest friends, He falls prostrate on the ground. This is the posture of ultimate submission and desperation. His prayer is a model of honest anguish and perfect trust. He addresses God as "My Father," an expression of intimate relationship. The request is raw: "if it is possible, let this cup pass." This reveals a crucial truth. If there had been any other way to save humanity that did not involve the Son drinking the cup of wrath, the Father would have taken it. The fact that the cup did not pass proves that the substitutionary atonement was the only way. But the request is immediately qualified by the most important words in the prayer: "yet not as I will, but as You will." In His humanity, His will recoiled from the horror of the cup. But His ultimate desire, the settled determination of His heart, was to do the Father's will. This is the victory. This is the second Adam in the garden, choosing obedience where the first Adam chose rebellion.

40 And He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “So, you men could not keep watch with Me for one hour?

After this cosmic struggle, Jesus returns for a moment of comfort from His friends, and finds them asleep. His question is directed specifically at Peter, the one who had so recently boasted of his undying loyalty. There is a touch of sorrowful irony in His words. "Could you not watch for just one hour?" The contrast is stark. He is wrestling for the salvation of the world, and they cannot even stay awake. Their failure underscores the fact that salvation is entirely of the Lord. We cannot even contribute our wakefulness to the work; He accomplishes it all Himself.

41 Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

His rebuke is gentle, and it immediately turns into a pastoral exhortation. He warns them of the temptation that is coming for them, the temptation to deny Him and flee. The only way to face such a trial is by watching and praying. He then diagnoses their condition, and ours. "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." This is not an excuse for their failure, but an explanation of it. Their inner man, their spirit, genuinely wanted to be loyal to Jesus. But their bodies, their "flesh" in the sense of their unredeemed human nature, were weak, tired, and susceptible to failure. This is the reality of the Christian life: a constant battle between our renewed spirit and our weak flesh, a battle that must be fought with the weapons of watchfulness and prayer.

42 He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, “My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Your will be done.”

The second prayer shows a progression. The struggle is still real, but there is a deeper level of resignation and resolve. He no longer asks "if it is possible." He now frames the prayer in terms of necessity. He accepts that the cup cannot pass away. The prayer has now become a simple, direct statement of submission: "Your will be done." He is actively embracing the Father's plan as His own. This is the prayer of the perfect Son, aligning His will completely with the Father's purpose, for our salvation.

43 And again He came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy.

He returns, and the scene repeats itself. They are still asleep. Matthew adds the detail that "their eyes were heavy." It was late, they were emotionally exhausted, and they were simply overcome by physical weariness. This is not presented to excuse them, but simply to state the fact of their profound weakness in this critical moment. They are spectators to an event they cannot comprehend, much less participate in.

44 And He left them again, and went away and prayed a third time, saying the same thing once more.

Perseverance in prayer. He goes back a third time, repeating the same prayer. There is no magical formula in prayer. Sometimes the battle requires us to come before the Father with the same burden again and again, wrestling until our will is brought into full submission to His. Jesus, in His humanity, models this for us. He prayed until the victory was secure in His own soul.

45 Then He came to the disciples and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Behold, the hour is at hand and the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners.

The time for prayerful struggle is over. The time for action has come. His question, "Are you still sleeping and resting?" is rhetorical and full of gravity. The window for watching with Him has closed. He announces the arrival of the foreordained moment: "the hour is at hand." He refers to Himself as the Son of Man, the Messianic title from Daniel 7, emphasizing His authority even as He is being handed over. And He is being betrayed into the hands of "sinners," a stark description of those who would arrest and condemn the only sinless man to ever live.

46 Get up, let us go; behold, the one who betrays Me is at hand!”

With the struggle resolved and the Father's will embraced, Jesus is now in complete command. He rouses His sleeping disciples with a command: "Get up, let us go." He is not going to run or hide. He is going to meet His betrayer and His fate head-on. The final clause, "behold, the one who betrays Me is at hand," shows His sovereign knowledge of all that was happening. Judas was not catching Him by surprise. Jesus was going forth to meet Judas, and in doing so, was going forth to meet the cross, and in meeting the cross, was going forth to accomplish our salvation.

Application

The scene in Gethsemane is a deep well of application for the Christian. First, it reveals the true cost of our sin. If the sinless Son of God was brought to such an agony at the prospect of bearing our guilt, we should never treat our sin lightly. Our casual transgressions are what filled that cup of wrath. To see His grief is to see the ugliness of our rebellion.

Second, it is a profound lesson in prayer. We are to bring our honest fears and desires to our Father, but always with the ultimate submission, "Your will be done." True prayer is not about bending God's will to ours, but about aligning our will with His. And we see the necessity of persevering in prayer, especially when facing severe trials.

Third, we must take to heart the warning about the weakness of the flesh. Good intentions are not enough. The spirit may be willing, but without diligent watchfulness and prayer, the flesh will fail every time. We are in a war, and we cannot afford to be caught sleeping at our post. We must be sober and alert, because our adversary is on the prowl.

Finally, and most importantly, Gethsemane shows us our Savior. We see His perfect humanity, His perfect obedience, and His profound love for His people. He did not have to drink that cup. He chose to. He faced the terror of Hell for us, so that we might never have to. When we are in our own Gethsemanes, when we feel overwhelmed by sorrow and distress, we can look to Him. He has been there. He understands. And because He won the victory there, we who are in Him can face our trials with the confidence that His Father is our Father, and that in all things, His good and perfect will is being done.