The proper and immediate trial of Gethsemane was the power of Satan-" This is your hour, and the power of darkness." The great point was, to get between his soul and the Father (as before with desirable things of this life); but he could not. Christ hence pleading with His Father-receiving nothing from Satan or man in the cup-receives it from His Father in perfect and blessed obedience-" Thou hast brought me into the dust of death." Hence his soul is entirely out of the darkness in respect of the enemy; and he can say, in perfect calm of others: "This is your hour and the power of darkness," and present himself willingly, that his disciples might go free.
How blessed the perfectness which, at his own cost, always kept them free! For in their position Satan would have caught them in his hour, had not the Lord stood forward in the gap. And so ever. And when needed, as for Peter, He can allow just so much as was good to sift; but stay, for him, the proud billows which were to go clean over his own soul.