Mark 14:36 Commentary and Bible Study

Using the most personal and intimate terms, he appeals to the love of his Father, ‘Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.’ Can his Father’s love for him find a way for him to avoid this terrible baptism of fire? All things are possible to God. It is an expression of absolute confidence in the Father at the time of greatest possible need, but Christ understands why he has come to this moment. He submits to his Father’s will, and does not try to change it to escape the cross. It is evident that there was only one way to secure redemption: through a sin-bearer, a scapegoat, a Saviour, who would emancipate us by taking our penalty. ‘Therefore doth my Father love me,’ he says in John’s Gospel, ‘because I lay down my life, that I might take it again’ (John 10:17). That love was infinite, but it would not now grant him a way out of Calvary. He himself chose to go through with it in his divine and human nature: ‘No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father’ (John 10:18).It would seem that it was mainly the human part of him – though we cannot really distinguish entirely between his divine person and his human personality – they were in a sense as one – that cried out to the Father: ‘If it be possible, if there is some other way, Father’ But he knew there was no other way; he had to go to Calvary out of love for his people, whom he would redeem. He had to suffer and die for them in an excruciating way to bear their eternal weight of punishment compressed into six hours. It had to be an atoning death, a substitutionary atoning death. Father, thy will be done – which really means ‘our will’, the will of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God. That will was determined in what we call the eternal council: that the Son would come and be incarnate, and would enter into human flesh and human personality, and suffer and die. Luke adds these words: ‘And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him. ⁴⁴ And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground’ (Luke 22:43-44). Why would the God man need to be strengthened by an angel? What strengthening could an angel give to one who possessed a divine nature? Of course the angel was only there to strengthen the human nature of Christ, and this was not the first time this had happened, for angels had ministered to him after the temptation in the wilderness by the devil (Matthew 4:11). This is the role that God has appointed to angels – ‘Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?’ (Hebrews 1:14) – and they were privileged to attend to even the incarnate Son of God. With what awe this angel must have approached the Holy One of God (Mark 1:24) as he carried out this sacred duty. The angel knew that the Lord Jesus Christ was carrying out his work of redemption, for he was sent to strengthen the Lord in body and in mind. The angel knew that no angel could carry out this work of atonement; it was a work that was beyond any created power to accomplish. What could an angel do to strengthen him? How can one who is weaker give strength to one who is already stronger than him? Perhaps we should see this as the support which the Lord looked for from his disciples when he said to Peter, ‘Simon, sleepest thou? couldest not thou watch one hour?’ (Mark 14:37). It was not a strengthening which a stronger gives to a weaker, but it was the strengthening of standing alongside him, and being with him in this momentous struggle. As Hendriksen says, ‘In this dark hour the ministry of an angel must have reconfirmed him in the belief that at this moment the Father had not completely forsaken him … Was it not , after all, the Father who sent the angel?’ The angel must understand something of what was about to take place, and how Christ was about to suffer for the sins of his people. He was there to assure the Saviour of the constancy of the Father’s love, even though all evidence of it was being withdrawn: that belief was the real source of strength to the Lord Jesus, not anything in the angel himself. This strengthening was not required because of any sin, for Christ knew no sin. It was because of the unparalleled trial that he was going through, a trial that was beyond human strength to endure, and so the Father sent an angel to strengthen human frailty, which on its own, was not sufficient for such an encounter. Christ was strengthened because he knew he was still in the plan of God, that his Father loved him, that heaven stood with him in what he was about to do, and he did not flinch from the task assigned to him to lay down his life for his sheep..