It is in this area that we must make some comments about the Lord Jesus Christ. He, as a sinless Man, came into a world of sin and thus experienced all the awful effects of sin from without. He went through every kind of suffering that a sinless man could go through. We read in Hebrews 4:15, “We have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” All of this rose to an unparalleled height when He went to the cross, for there He experienced not only all that man’s wicked heart could devise, but also the wrath of a holy God against sin. As a sinless man He felt it all, and felt it perfectly. In contemplating all of this in the garden of Gethsemane, His holy soul was overwhelmed by what lay ahead. Matthew’s Gospel records the scene as follows:
“Then Jesus comes with them to a place called Gethsemane, and says to the disciples, Sit here until I go away and pray yonder. And taking with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, He began to be sorrowful and deeply depressed” (Matthew 26:36-37 JND).
Here we find sinless perfection in the presence of evil, and such evil as no other was ever called upon to experience, yet meeting it in that perfection which accepted it all from the Father. As we have seen, evil tends to depress the soul, and our Lord felt the evil personally, yet perfectly, because of His holiness. As a result, since Satan had nothing in Him, the consequence of this depression was only communion with God. Another has most aptly remarked concerning Christ’s work on the cross, “Scorn, enmity, perfect depression (He was crucified in weakness; see Psalm 22:14) and Jehovah’s face hidden from Him, these marked His state really there but [He was] faithful, saying, ‘Thou art holy’” (italics mine).
We will have more to say on this when we speak about the treatment of mental illness, but it is humbling and at the same time encouraging to see our blessed Master experiencing all the effect of sin from without and feeling what can be called depression on that account. We walk on holy ground here, however, and would make it completely clear that, while our blessed Lord had human nature, He did not have fallen nature. As a perfect man, He could feel as any other man might feel, and because of His sinlessness He felt the awfulness of sin in a way that none other could. When all of this was brought to bear upon Him in Gethsemane’s garden, it did indeed depress Him and resulted in prayer to His Father.