November 10

The Man of Sorrows

My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. — Matt 26:38

We ought often to sit down with our Lord in Gethsemane, and look upon Him while He suffers. We never can understand more than a very little of the anguish of that hour in the garden, yet we should often study it. Some hints of its meaning may be reverently mentioned. Before our Lord there lay the betrayal, the arrest, the trial with all its mockery and humiliation, then death amid the ignominy of the cross. These physical sufferings alone made an anguish that was terrible to endure. Another element of our Lord’s suffering was the falseness of the human hearts about Him. There were the traitorous kiss of Judas, the sad denial of Peter, the flight and desertion of the other disciples, the rejection and crucifixion by the people He had come to save. All this He foresaw from Gethsemane.

But that which made the very essence of the anguish of Gethsemane was the fact that Jesus was bearing our sins. What that meant to Him we never can know. We know only what is most dimly shadowed for us in the deep words of Holy Scripture, which speak of His vicarious sacrifice. They are such words as these: “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!” — “The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” — “He bare our sins in his own body on the tree” — “He hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.” We are sure, at least, that the death of Jesus was not like the death of any other man, even though the other could endure all the physical suffering that attended our Lord’s agony. In some way, though innocent and holy Himself, and without sin, He died for sin. The mystery we never can fathom, but the fact we must remember as we watch with our Lord in Gethsemane.