Hebrews 5:7-9

‘IN THE DAYS OF HIS FLESH’

‘Who in the days of his flesh … and being made perfect, He became the Author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him.’

Hebrews 5:7

The first Adam and the second Adam alike went through their great deciding conflict in a garden. The threefold temptation which Adam—the first Adam—endured was sufficient to shake his faith and to divert his will and make him disobedient to his Creator. Thrice over in the garden of Gethsemane the Blessed Lord Jesus Christ fought the same adversary and overcame, and His faith in the Father was firm, and His will was steadfast in its resolution to bear and to do whatever the Father willed.

I. The Humanity of Jesus.—There are times when nothing helps us so much as to see how truly and entirely our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ was human with our own humanity. Where can we see it to better advantage than in the garden? How human, how wholly and truly human, was that shrinking from death which the Blessed Saviour vouchsafed to show! We can see how human He was by contrasting the behaviour of the Lord Jesus Christ with that of some of the noblest of His disciples and martyrs in aftertimes. It was by the power of the Lord Jesus Christ’s conflict in Gethsemane and on Calvary that they were able to show to the world that death and its power were conquered, that death to them was not a thing to be feared but to be glad of; to be met with joy. But when the Lord Jesus Christ went through his conflict in the garden the sting of death had still to be taken away, and it was his duty to take it away, and it was impossible for Him to go to His death with the joy of a martyr of later times. He is indeed truly human. We can see it in the very prayer He utters. He prays again and again, entreating God by everything that He can think of, entreating His Father by the special tie that binds the Son to Him, ‘Abba, Father!’ imploring Him by the almighty power of God, ‘All things are possible unto Thee,’ and finding no words in which to go further, the evangelists tell us how He went again and again, repeating the old words. Finding, with all His wonderful powers of eloquence, no words in which to express His thought but those which He had used before, He went and prayed again, using the same words!

II. Submission to the Divine Will.—Then in the conflict between the higher and the lower will we see how truly human the Lord Jesus Christ was. In the garden of Gethsemane the thing that comes to our minds is the conflict between two human wills, the higher and the lower will, the will of inclination and the will of resolution. To the Lord Jesus Christ, as to us, the easier course was the pleasanter, the more natural to take. To the Lord Jesus Christ, as to us, it was pleasant to taste the sweet and to do that which presented no difficulty, and to leave the hard task untried. But He like us, and we like Him, have the power to overrule the will of inclination by the will of determination, and the Lord Jesus Christ did it in the garden. ‘Not My will, but Thine, be done.’ The higher will in the humanity of the Lord Jesus attached itself firmly to the will of the eternal Father, and chose that that will should be done rather than that which He called His own.

III. And that prayer in Gethsemane is not the type of a prayer which is unheeded by Him to Whom it is addressed. It is not the type of prayer which is unanswered. ‘It was heard,’ says the Apostle to the Hebrews; ‘it was heard in that He feared’; because of His reverence He was heard. The Lord’s prayer was heard. Not, ‘Let this cup pass from Me,’ but that which was the hinge of His prayer, upon which it turned, ‘Not My will, but Thine, be done.’ There is the strength for humanity; there is the hope for us in struggles and difficulties. There is the hope for us when the way of right is hard and the way of wrong is easy, to cast ourself, as the Lord did, upon the heart which is the heart of a Father, and of a Father to Whom all things are possible, leaving to Him the decision how that prayer shall be fulfilled.

Illustration

‘This is not the moment, Gethsemane is not the place, for us to study with a critical eye, and to dissect and analyse. We know the words in which a great poet has spoken scornfully of the man who can peep and botanise upon his mother’s grave; much less should we desire to peep and to analyse in Gethsemane and on Calvary. But men have done it and they have seen the proof of our Lord’s twofold will—the Divine will and the human—in the garden of Gethsemane. For my part I know not whether I could discern what they would have us to discern. That the Lord Jesus Christ had the power and will as God, and that He had also the power and will as man, is a thing as certain as any fact that we know.’