THUS much as to His human side; now for the higher, if we may differentiate as to that which was inherent to Him, whatever the form and conditions He might assume or fill. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” “All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” “And the Word was made flesh” (John 1). “Who is the firstborn of all creation” (Col. 1). “Before Abraham was I am” (John 8). “Upholding all things by the word of his power (Heb. 1:3). “He is before all things and by him all things consist” (Col. 1:15-17). “Unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever” &c. (Heb. 1:10).
Impossible to read these and how many more l without finding ourselves consciously, willingly or unwillingly, in the presence of supreme majesty, of Godhead truly. Subordinate Godhead is an absurdity, it cannot be, neither does God give His glory to another. Here is no inferior God; no mere outcome of creatorial power, place him ever so high or where you will. The Jehovah of the Old Testament is here, the God of Israel, of the Red Sea, and of Jordan; Whom winds and waves obey. In likeness of flesh of sin He was. And as the weary one He sat at Sychar and asked a drink of water; yet was He ever the omnipotent and the omniscient (Who none the less received all from His Father Whom He came to serve), mighty to save from sin, death, and judgment.
Fear of death with Him! fear of failure in His life-work with Him! The whole theory in its inception and elaboration is from beneath, and only finds its endorsement in the natural mind. Its foundation is sand. It is an insult to the Christ they profess to honor, as it is a reflection on, yea, denial of, His person and ways. What can one think of those who can so misconstrue His words, so consistent and becoming the Son the Father at such a time and under circumstances and surroundings unparalleled except at the cross itself?
There is a further element, which can no more be overlooked than those we have been discussing: there, are His own prophetic words, so impressively given to His apostles as recorded by Matt. 16:21, 22, 23, by Mark 8:31; 10:33, 34, by Luke 31, 33, which I beg the reader to read. And again as to His life, “I lay it down of myself” &c., (John 10:17). “So must the Son of Man be lifted up” (John 3). Can scripture be broken? Had He forgotten or did He not know of Psa. 22, Isa. 53., where perhaps more than any where else, we have the whole tragic scene of His death depicted? Then again is His own pre-utterance in Psa. 16:8-10. How can it be supposed that He the One of faith beyond all others, its author and finisher (Heb. 11; 12), could so fail in His faith, and not in faith alone, but in His conception of the probabilities or possibilities of the case? Not so! In all things His is the pre-eminence. That there was in His view and vividly before His all prescient mind that which made Him “exceeding sorrowful unto death” (Matt. 26:38; Mark 14:34), we know; and that “being in an agony.... his sweat was as it were great drops of blood” (Luke 22:44) we know; and that there appeared “an angel from heaven unto him strengthening him” (ver. 43), we know too. And as we read the record, we bow and challenge ourselves not to draw near with levity, not to venture presumptuously our own thoughts, or speculate on a theme so holy, so profound as the “baptism” He was then about to “be baptized with” (Matt. 20:22); for not for this surely were words so impressive handed down to us.
There are other statements equally questionable in the article we are reviewing, which, for fear of trespassing unduly on your limited space, I pass; not without hope that you, Mr. Editor, with your so much abler pen, may find it not incompatible with your other onerous occupations to take up and examine much more exhaustively and effectively than I in the least degree can aspire to.
Having endeavored in my remarks to show, what the “cup” in Gethsemane was not, I now proceed to show what that cup was. One desires to feel the holiness of the ground we are about to tread further: its sacred, solemn character, profound beyond thought of man or angel, where as nowhere else in our own sphere, should he “the sacred awe that dares not move.”
But preparatory to this I give a further extract from the paper before me. It is the Editor's opening statement and implied endorsement of Dr. S.'s view.
“When Jesus stood by the grave of Lazarus and lifted up His eyes to heaven, Father, He said, ‘I know that Thou hearest me always.' But if in the garden He prayed He might escape the death upon the cross, then He was not always heard; this was one prayer—and a most agonizing one—that the Father refused to answer. For it will not do to say that His prayer was answered in the angel who came from heaven to strengthen Him. That was not His prayer, and it is to escape the dilemma by falling into another. For if Jesus prayed for one thing and the Father granted another, then our Lord knew not any more than we, what He should pray for as He ought.”
The Lord not heard! the Father refused to answer unless in the sense they claim, and pointed to as (they say) in Heb. 5:7. Turning to the Psalms, we see, on the contrary, that whilst Heb. 5:7 says He “was heard for his godly fear” (Revised Version), Psa. 22:19-22 not only confirms this, but leaves us in no doubt as to what was the purport of the prayer referred to in Hebrews, that it was deliverance out of, not immunity from, death, there or any where. And was He not most signally answered? and declared Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead (Rom. 1:4)? See also Acts 3:15 Cor. 15:15; 1 Peter 1:21. God “raised him from the dead and set him at His own right hand in the heavenlies, far above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named not only in this world but also in that which is to come” (Eph. 1:20, 21). Answer this, surely! The cry in the garden, then, had no such reference as they say it had. The “cup” there, was not another cup, nor did the cry there in my judgment. synchronize at all with Heb. 5.
It had in it another ingredient, one far more fearful than “fear of death and failure through death then and there;” an ingredient, a factor, from which there could be no discharge if “atonement” were to be made: hence therefore the qualifying “if it be possible” and the “nevertheless.” What that was we are not left far to seek for. We read 2 Cor. 5:21; 1 Peter 2:24, and we get our answer truly as to one part of it— “made sin.” We read Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34, and we again get our answer in its second part— “forsaken of God”! Let us pause, let us afresh consider of Whom it is these scriptures so speak. The Only-begotten, ever in the Father's bosom, the Son of His love and His delight. Alike in His own love to and delight in the Father as was the Father to Him. The Son too, Whose scepter is a scepter of righteousness, Who loved righteousness and hated iniquity. The Holy One, the Holy One of God, even that not relatively only, but absolutely, essentially, intrinsically, the expression of it without measure, without alloy in His person and in every step and stage of His wondrous path here, in Whom could be no tolerance or excuse or mitigation of sin, but absolute abhorrence of, and anger against sin in its every beginning, development, and ending. Whose eyes to detect it were as a flame of fire, in Whose hand to resent it was a sharp two-edged sword, Whose voice to condemn it is as the voice of thunder, and the sound of many waters; and His countenance as the sun shineth in his strength, flashing forth indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, against every soul of man that doeth evil—every evil work or thought. Here in grace to save though! wondrous combination truly! The apostle writes, “Consider him who endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself.”
But here in our present view, we are to behold Him— “made sin” brought into vital contact and affinity, if we may so say, with that which He as the “Holy One” so hated—so contrary and repulsive to Him, beyond the holiest of men or angels, as well it might be surely; not as touching Him only, but as that which touched specially His God and Father in His prerogatives, His honor, His sovereignty, His word; the great blight on the creature and the creation, the foul and poisonous breath of Satan, and his kindred host of demons and of men, his only too willing accessories and tools. And mark, not “made sin” only, not “bearing our sins in His own body on the tree” only; but as the necessary, inevitable—and to Him appalling result, Himself the “forsaken” one of “His God.” “O my God, I cry in the day-time, but thou answerest not; and in the night-season, and am not silent.” “Our fathers trusted in thee and thou didst deliver them But I am a worm”
(Psa. 22). He had said, “I knew that thou hearest me always “; but now, it is, “Thou hearest me not.” “Why art Thou so far from helping me”? Speak not of death as His “fear” here, true He died, had to die, for that was a necessity in atonement. But “made sin,” “forsaken of His God,” that—the two combined—the latter, the necessary, the irrevocable, the stern sequence of the former. “Let this cup pass from Me if possible”! And is not this divine perfection in its purest form, the “perfection of holiness and of love, a love which might well shrink from a forsaking such as this? Not to have shrunk here, not to have recoiled here, would have been a failure indeed, the strangest failure and more fatal to His own character as “Son and Holy” than any other. And yet we are told by these writers that “this He was always ready to accept and did accept without flinching.” Do they really mean it?
It is important, too, to observe how carefully scripture excludes the thought that His death was the result of anything from without, the result of crucifixion—its accompaniment it was truly, but only. For we read that when they came to Him with intent to hasten or precipitate His death by breaking His legs, they found Him dead already, but not so the two malefactors (John 19:31-33); and so Pilate marveled if He were already dead (Mark 15:44). No! His life He laid down of Himself as He had said (John 10:17, 18), and so with loud voice He cried, “It is finished: and he....gave up the ghost,” saying, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” (Matt. 27:50; Mark 15:37; Luke 23:46; John 19:30). Thus, thanks be to His great name and holy, “He the Just one died for us, the unjust, that He might bring us to God—died that we might live” (2 Cor. 5)— “gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us from this present evil world” (Gal. 1); for “thus it is written and thus it behooved him,” as the Son and the Savior and the Shepherd. And so with John we exultingly cry, “Unto him that loveth us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and made us kings and priests unto God and His Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.” Amen.
To say then that when the Lord Jesus cried in the garden, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me,” He had before Him “death then and there": and that it was “fear” of this which induced or evoked the cry, is not to explain but to pervert His words. It is to lay upon Him a contingency only belonging to one fallen. It is to impute to Him forgetfulness of His own. and the Father's words, and all the scriptures which speak of His death (and this as only on the cross), and so far from “delivering the prayer there, from weakness and ignorance” (Himself pardon the words) as this writer claims, makes it all that and worse, for it places the Christ of God on the same plane as those, who through fear of death were all their life-time subject to bondage. This is not to honor. It debases Him, not exalts. G. R.