Mark 14:41

‘And he comes the third time and says to them, “Sleep on now and take your rest. It is received. The hour is come. Behold the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners” '

The assumption is usually made that they were asleep again, but it does not say so, and if that were intended to be understood surely it would have been said. Jesus' words might equally have been addressed to three men desperately fighting sleep, three men who at last had demonstrated that although they had unwittingly failed Him they had not failed Him completely. But whatever the case they were intended to indicate that their struggle was over and they could now relax. For His words were not so much a permission to sleep as an indication that now the need to fight it was over. They could now cease their fight against sleep because the time for wakefulness and prayer had passed. All decisions had been reached. The first stage in His battle was over.

‘It is received ('apechei)'. The word is literally used on bills as ‘it is receipted, it has been received in full'. It is also used of having ‘received' a revelation. Jesus was indicating that after three long heart-tearing hours He had received His answer and, having done so, would now move on to the next stage in God's purpose.

(The translation ‘it is enough' is not the usual meaning of the word, and takes away its deep significance. Contrast Luke 22:38 where a different Greek phrase is used).

‘The hour is come.' His awareness that the hour was come, the hour of His betrayal and death, was the answer to His own prayer. It demonstrated that the cup had to be drunk in full.

‘Behold the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.' The hour of His betrayal, of His deliverance into the hands of men, had come. Now there was no turning back. There is a poignancy to the word ‘sinners'. This was no mere technical use. The holy and pure was delivered into the hands of the unholy and impure. The clean into the hands of the unclean. The man of love into the hands of the men of hate. The Servant goes to His doom at the hands of oppression and judgment (Isaiah 53:8). The son of man faces the contradiction of sinners against Himself (Daniel 7:21; Daniel 7:25).

‘Sinners.' The term was often used by Jews to refer to the Gentiles. We may therefore also see in this the indication that the Jewish leadership were now seen as the equivalent of Gentiles and no longer of the people of God. They had demonstrated whose side they were on. Compare how in Acts 4:25; Acts 4:27 ‘the peoples', which originally represented non-Israelites, are seen as referring to the peoples of Israel. But we must not lose the sense of the contrast with holiness.