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Matthew 26:42-43
After Jesus goes away to a private place to pray, and then returns to find His disciples asleep while they should be keeping watch, He goes a second time and prays privately. His prayer (Matthew 26:42) is as follows, “O My Father, if this cup cannot pass away from Me unless I drink it, Your will be done.” But just what exactly does this prayer mean; “O My Father, if this cup cannot pass away from Me unless I drink it, Your will be done.” This “cup” that Jesus is referring to is the mission for which He was sent to earth. John 3:16-17 (NKJV) declares, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” The Bible teaches us in Romans 5:20-21, “Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Jesus, in His humanity, was feeling the normal fears that anyone else would experience if they knew what was ahead for them in the path that was for Jesus. He, in His deity, knew what was down the road ahead of Him, and in taking the sins of humanity upon His own body was still yet required to feel the pain and fear that came with them. But through it all, Jesus gave His petition to God and ended it with His obedience to God with the words, “Your will be done.”
This is the humanity of Jesus taking on the mission in which He was sent to earth – to take our sins upon Him in death so that we may live through Him.
Romans 6:10-11 declares, “For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Jesus was required by His mission to save the world from sin to feel and experience the pain of the sins in which He came to take upon Himself. But He is greater than the sins of the world and He is greater than the sinful one who tricked man into the first sin of humanity which brought sinful man into reality. Jesus was able to take our sins and go into the depth from which they came and defeat the first sinner in his own place of hell. His purity wiped them out forevermore. Ephesians 4:9-10 declares, “(Now this, “He ascended” – what does it mean but that He also first descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is also the One who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.)” It is His pure life that is not susceptible to sin, but in taking sin upon Himself – going to the depths from which sin came – in His purity – that overcame sin. This very place as Jesus ascends above all is the very sin of Lucifer as we read in Isaiah 14:12-13,
“How you are fallen from heaven,
O Lucifer, son of the morning!
How you are cut down to the ground,
You who weakened the nations!
For you have said in your heart:
‘I will ascend into heaven,
I will exalt my throne above the stars
of God;
I will also sit on the mount of the
congregation
On the farthest sides of the north;
I will ascend above the heights of the
clouds,
I will be like the Most High.’
Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol,
To the lowest depths of the Pit.”
Jesus went to the depths of the pit to save us from sin. The result is that all sin is wiped out through Jesus. All Jesus asks of us is to believe in Him – that He did this for us, and in following His way of life in what He teaches us in the Bible, He will set you free from sin too.
Dear LORD,
Jesus took upon Himself the sins of man – the pain and anguish – the sorrows and hurts, He took within Himself to the depths to face Satan in the place which was made for him in his sin against God. Jesus allowed all sin to be placed upon Him so that He could go to Satan and defeat him with no excuses remaining for the devil but to be defeated by the purity of love that God gave to all humanity. Please help us to believe in the One who makes life free from sin possible for all who will put their faith in Him – in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior – the Savior of the world. In Jesus name I pray, amen.