The Lord’s perfect dependence as man is displayed in Gethsemane in the most striking manner. In Luke the whole scene of Gethsemane and the cross is the perfect, dependent man. He prays: He submits to His Father’s will. An angel strengthens Him: this was their service to the Son of Man. Afterwards, in deep conflict, He prays more earnestly: dependent man, He is perfect in His dependence. The deepness of the conflict deepens His communion with His Father. The disciples were overwhelmed by the shadow only of that which caused Jesus to pray. They take refuge in the forgetfulness of sleep. The Lord, with the patience of grace, repeats His warning, and the multitude arrives. Peter, confident when warned, sleeping at the approach of temptation when the Lord was praying, strikes with his sword when Jesus allows Himself to be led as a sheep to the slaughter, and then alas! denies when Jesus confesses the truth. But, submissive as the Lord was to His Father’s will, He plainly shows that His power had not departed from Him. He heals the wound that Peter inflicted on the high priest’s servant, and then permits Himself to be led away, with the remark that it was their hour and the power of darkness. Sad and terrible association!
Conflict
There are elements of the profoundest interest which appear in comparing this gospel with others in this place, and elements which bring out the character of this gospel in the most striking way. In Gethsemane we have the Lord’s conflict brought out more fully in Luke than anywhere, but on the cross we have His superiority to the sufferings He was in. There is no expression of them: He is above them. It is not, as in John, the divine side of the picture. There in Gethsemane we have no agony, but when He names Himself, they go backward and fall to the ground. On the cross, in John, there is no “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” but He delivers up His own spirit to God. This is not so in Luke. In Gethsemane we have the Man of sorrows, a man feeling in all its depths what was before Him, and looking to His Father. “Being in an agony, He prayed more earnestly.” On the cross we have One who as man has bowed to His Father’s will and is in the calmness of One who, in whatever sorrow and suffering, is above it all. He tells the weeping women to weep for themselves, not for Him, the green tree, for judgment was coming. He prays for those who were crucifying Him; He speaks peace and heavenly joy to the poor thief who was converted. He was going into paradise before the kingdom came. The same is seen specially in the fact of His death. It is not, as in John, giving up His spirit; but, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” He trusts His spirit in death, as a man who knows and believes in God His Father, to Him whom He thus knew. In Matthew we have the forsaking of God and His sense of it. This character of the Gospel, revealing Christ distinctively as perfectly Man, and the perfect Man, is full of the deepest interest. He passed through His sorrows with God, and then in perfect peacefulness was above them all. His trust in His Father was perfect, even in death — a path not trodden by man hitherto, and never to be trodden by the saints. If Jordan overflowed all its banks at the time of harvest, the ark in the depths of it made it a passage dry-shod into the inheritance of God’s people.
J. N. Darby Synopsis, Luke 22