Mark 14:36

HARMONY OF WILL

‘Nevertheless not what I will, but what Thou wilt’

Mark 14:36

As a man, Christ clung closely to the Father. He did not lose the consciousness of His Sonship in these trying moments of dark agonising burden and sorrow. It was Father still, amid the heart-crushing grief. Jesus and the Father had not two wills between them in relation to a single element of this dark experience. The Divine and the human were at one. The union was complete—the acquiescence perfect.

I. The self-emptying.—But the harmony of the wills—the perfect union of the Divine and human—is not all. Christ freely said, ‘Not what I will, but what Thou wilt,’ to His Father. This expresses a perfect act of self-emptying. The sorrow was met with a willing mind—a resigned heart. It was His life-long attitude. This was only the climax of the moral triumph. This was only obedience unto death. He bare the sins of the transgressors. He ‘offered Himself without spot unto God’; and thus, through atoning sacrifice, He condemns sin, secures pardon, and opens the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers.

II. Gethsemane has its lessons and influences for all our hearts.

(a) How it condemns sin! Who can think of this unutterable woe and suppose that human sin is a matter of indifference to God? Who can think of Gethsemane, and not feel rising within an unutterable revulsion from it?

(b) How it reveals the chiefest human virtue and the power by which it may be attained! Identity of will with the will of God is the foundation, and the sum, and the crown of human excellence in this and in all worlds. ‘Thy will be done’ involves in our case—what it did in Christ’s—ready obedience and perfect, unmurmuring submission.

(c) How Gethsemane brings the Father close to our hearts in their sorrow and extremity!