Bird's-eye view
In the quiet darkness of an olive grove, we come to the hinge point of redemptive history. This passage is not merely a prelude to the cross; it is the spiritual epicenter of the atonement. Here, the Lord Jesus Christ, in the fullness of His humanity, confronts the unmitigated horror of what He is about to do. Gethsemane, the "oil press," becomes the place where the Son of God is spiritually pressed and crushed by the weight of the coming wrath of God. This is not a moment of doubt or wavering, but a raw display of the sinless human response to the prospect of bearing the sin of the world and facing separation from the Father. The battle for our salvation was effectively won here, in an agony of prayer and submission, before the first Roman nail was ever lifted. While His disciples, representing the best of what humanity has to offer, fail spectacularly through weakness and sleep, Jesus watches, prays, and resolves to drink the cup His Father has given Him. He emerges from this trial not as a resigned victim, but as a sovereign King, ready to meet His betrayer and accomplish our salvation.
The scene is structured in a solemn rhythm of three prayers by Jesus, punctuated by three failures of His closest disciples. He brings the inner circle, Peter, James, and John, to be near Him, but they cannot enter into His suffering. His agony is unique and unshareable. His prayer reveals the perfect harmony and yet the distinct roles within the Trinity. He appeals to His Father with intimate trust ("Abba"), acknowledges His Father's omnipotence ("All things are possible"), expresses the genuine desire of His human will ("remove this cup"), and ultimately submits His human will to the divine will ("not what I will, but what You will"). This is the ultimate act of filial obedience, the act that undoes the disobedience of the first Adam in a garden long ago.
Outline
- 1. The King's Agony in the Garden (Mark 14:32-42)
- a. The Setting of the Trial (Mark 14:32)
- b. The Anguish of the Son (Mark 14:33-34)
- c. The First Prayer of Submission and the First Failure of the Disciples (Mark 14:35-38)
- d. The Second Prayer and the Second Failure (Mark 14:39-40)
- e. The Third Prayer, the Final Resolution, and the Final Rebuke (Mark 14:41-42)
Context In Mark
This passage follows immediately on the heels of the Last Supper (Mark 14:17-25) and Jesus' prophecy of Peter's denial (Mark 14:26-31). The contrast is stark and intentional. In the Upper Room, Jesus is the triumphant host, instituting the sign of the New Covenant in His blood and speaking of the future kingdom. He is in complete command. Now, just moments later, in Gethsemane, we see Him prostrate on the ground, overwhelmed with grief. The fellowship of the meal gives way to the profound isolation of His agony. The disciples who have just pledged their undying loyalty are about to be proven utterly weak and unreliable. This scene serves as the final, personal preparation of the Lamb of God for the sacrifice. It is the last moment of relative freedom before His arrest, and He spends it in communion with His Father, steeling His human will to accomplish the divine purpose. The events of Gethsemane provide the necessary spiritual context for understanding the physical events of the cross that follow.
Key Issues
- The Two Natures of Christ (His True Humanity and Deity)
- The Meaning of the "Cup"
- The Nature of Temptation and Prayer
- The Relationship Between the Divine Will and Christ's Human Will
- The Failure of the Disciples and the Weakness of the Flesh
- The Sovereignty of Christ in His Passion
The Oil Press of the Soul
The name of the place is Gethsemane, which means "oil press." This is no accident. Olives were brought to this garden to be crushed under immense pressure so that they would yield their valuable oil. In this garden, the Lord of glory, in His humanity, is placed under an unimaginable spiritual pressure. He is being crushed by the foreknowledge of the wrath of God that He is about to bear on our behalf. What is yielded from this crushing is not despair or rebellion, but the pure oil of perfect obedience. This obedience is the sweet-smelling aroma that is acceptable to the Father and which secures our salvation.
We must be careful to understand what is happening here. Jesus is not having second thoughts. He is not trying to find a loophole in the plan of salvation. He is the eternal Son of God, and He came to earth for this very purpose. But He is also a true man, with a true human soul, mind, and will. And His sinless human nature recoils from the horror of what sin deserves. This is not a conflict between His divine and human natures, but rather the ultimate expression of His human nature's dependence upon the Father in the face of an unparalleled trial. His agony is a measure of the hellishness of the cup He is about to drink for us.
Verse by Verse Commentary
32 Then they came to a place named Gethsemane; and He said to His disciples, “Sit here until I have prayed.”
They arrive at this familiar place, a garden on the Mount of Olives. Jesus separates the disciples into two groups. He leaves eight of them at the entrance, telling them simply to wait while He prays. He is drawing a cordon of privacy. The trial He is about to endure is unique to Him, and while He desires fellowship, the central battle must be fought alone.
33-34 And He took with Him Peter and James and John, and began to be very distressed and troubled. And He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death; remain here and keep watch.”
He takes His inner circle, the same three who witnessed His glory on the Mount of Transfiguration, deeper into the garden. If anyone could understand, it would be them. But they cannot. He now allows them to see His agony, just as He once allowed them to see His glory. The Greek words for distressed and troubled are intense, indicating a state of shock, horror, and deep anguish. This is not just sadness; it is a profound soul-agony. He confesses the depth of it to them: it is a grief that feels lethal, a sorrow that presses in on Him to the very point of death. He gives them a simple command: "remain here and keep watch." The word for "watch" is a military term for staying alert at a post. He is asking them to be sentries with Him in this hour of spiritual warfare.
35-36 And He went a little beyond them, and fell to the ground and began to pray that if it were possible, the hour might pass from Him. And He was saying, “Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.”
Even the inner circle can only come so far. He goes a little further, separating Himself completely. His posture reveals His state; He "fell to the ground," not a gentle kneeling but a complete collapse under the weight of His sorrow. His prayer has two parts. First, the honest cry of His humanity. He prays for "the hour," the appointed time of suffering, to pass. He addresses God with the most intimate of terms, Abba, Father, showing that even in this agony, His relationship of perfect sonship is unbroken. He affirms the Father's absolute power: "All things are possible for You." Then comes the petition: "remove this cup from Me." This "cup" is a common Old Testament symbol for the outpouring of God's wrath against sin (Psalm 75:8; Isaiah 51:17). Jesus, being sinless, recoils from the prospect of being made sin for us and bearing the curse. But then comes the second part of the prayer, the pivot of human history: "yet not what I will, but what You will." Here the human will of the Son submits perfectly to the divine will of the Father. This is the victory.
37-38 And He came and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “Simon, are you sleeping? Could you not keep watch for one hour? Keep watching and praying that you may not come into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
Christ's agony is contrasted sharply with the disciples' apathy. He returns, seeking what little comfort their presence might offer, and finds them asleep. He singles out Peter, calling him by his old name, "Simon." This is the man who, just an hour or two before, had boasted that he would die with Jesus. He could not even stay awake with Him. The rebuke is sharp but also tinged with a sad understanding. "Could you not keep watch for one hour?" He then turns the command back on them for their own sake. They need to watch and pray so that they will not fall into temptation. He knows the trial that is about to overwhelm them. He diagnoses their condition perfectly: "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." Their intentions were good. Their spirit wanted to be loyal. But their "flesh," their fallen human nature, was weak and unreliable. This is a word of grace, but also a solemn warning.
39-40 And again He went away and prayed, saying the same words. And again He came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy; and they did not know what to answer Him.
The sorrowful scene repeats. Jesus returns to His solitary battle, praying with the same intensity and the same words. His resolve does not come easily, but through persistent, agonizing prayer. When He returns to the disciples, their failure is also repeated. They are asleep again. Mark adds the detail that "their eyes were very heavy," a picture of an exhaustion so deep it is insurmountable by human will. This time, they are so ashamed they are speechless. They have no excuse to offer Him.
41-42 And He came the third time, and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? It is enough; the hour has come; behold, the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. Get up, let us go; behold, the one who betrays Me is at hand!”
He returns a third and final time. His tone has changed. The struggle is over. The question, "Are you still sleeping and resting?" is filled with a kind of divine irony. The time for rest is over. It is enough. This phrase signifies that the period of prayerful struggle has concluded. The decision is settled. The "hour" He prayed would pass has now arrived, and He is ready to meet it. He announces what is happening: the Son of Man is being delivered into the hands of sinful men. Then, with sovereign command, He says, "Get up, let us go." He is not being dragged to His fate. He is rising to meet it. He is not saying, "Let us flee," but rather, "Let us go forward to meet the betrayer." He is in complete control, moving the chess pieces of our redemption according to the Father's will.
Application
First, this passage forces us to reckon with the sheer horror of our sin. The thing that made the sinless Son of God fall on His face in agony was the "cup" of God's wrath that our sin deserved. If we are ever tempted to treat our sin lightly, as a small matter, we should come back to Gethsemane and see what it cost our Lord to even contemplate bearing it. This should produce in us a profound hatred for our own sin and a boundless gratitude for our Savior.
Second, we see the pattern for our own struggles with temptation and the will of God. Jesus' model is not to pretend the struggle is not real. He expressed the desire of His human heart honestly to the Father. But He subjected that desire to the Father's higher purpose. Our prayer in times of trial should be the same: honest, open, but ultimately submissive. "Not my will, but Yours be done" is the most powerful prayer a Christian can pray. It is the prayer that unlocks peace and victory, because it aligns our will with the unstoppable will of God.
Finally, we must take to heart the diagnosis, "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." This is true of us all. Our best intentions, our boldest promises, will fail us. Like Peter, we are prone to sleep when we should be watching. Our only safeguard is the one Jesus prescribed: watch and pray. We are to be spiritually alert to the reality of temptation and constantly dependent on God in prayer, because our own strength is no strength at all. Our confidence is not in our ability to stay awake, but in the fact that He stayed awake for us, and won the victory on our behalf while we were sleeping.