.webp?width=80&height=80&name=1517headshots-141-Edit%20(1).webp)
This is the fourth installment in our series, From Eden to Easter: Life and Death in the Garden. Each day throughout Holy Week, we will take a special look at the gardens and wildernesses of Scripture, and in particular, these scenes' connections to Christ's redemption won for us on the cross.
Immediately after Christ had instituted the Lord's Supper and prophesied Peter's betrayal, "before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times" (Mark 14:30), he took his disciples "to a place which is called Gethsemane" and he told them, "Sit here, while I pray" (Mark 14:32). In Gethsemane, both the cause of Christ's suffering and its purpose, or fruit, are revealed in rapid succession through Christ's "great distress and trouble" (Mark 14:33) until Christ reaches his final determination: "It is enough!" (Mark 14:41).
In order to save, Christ's suffering takes your sin—which is harder than you think, especially when Christ has none of his own.
This short story of Gethsemane is the Evangelist's way of proclaiming the heart of the gospel: “The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6) and “for the sin of My people, I have struck Him” (Isa. 53:8). The main point is the difference between Christ's suffering and your own: he is a sacrament that gives faith, yours is pathetic and leads only to death. In order to save, Christ's suffering takes your sin—which is harder than you think, especially when Christ has none of his own. When he took his three disciples, Peter, James, and John, with him to pray, the first thing we hear is that Christ began to be "greatly distressed and troubled" (Mark 14:34) and confessed: "My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch." He insisted that they behold him in this pitiful state. Previously, the disciples may have seen Jesus tired, angry, or even weeping, but now they see the malady Lutherans call "a troubled conscience." In Gethsemane, however, Jesus felt the accusation of the law; nothing else could spur this particular spiritual dilemma: "And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if possible, the hour might pass from him" (Mark 14:35-36). His "hour" was what he had come for! Why balk now?
If Christ somehow imagined that his disciples would sympathize with his suffering, he discovered in the middle of his trial that he could not "awaken" them to his reality. They slept through Christ's holy suffering. However, if we can say that Christ is the "protagonist" in this story, it is not the disciples who are his antagonists. He discovered that he was not even fighting his normal enemies—sin, death, and the devil—it was his own Father (The Giver of the law) who attacked him. When Christ prays to him, his Father does not say a word. Then we, as with Christ, learn there are two opposite aspects to Christ's saving suffering. The first is what Luther called "the harsh mirror," which teaches the difference between our sin and Christ's. Our sins are our own; Christ's sin is not his, but ours. When Christ attempted to awaken his disciples (three times!), it was not because he needed brotherly love or sympathy; they were to look in his "harsh mirror" until they confess: his "sorrow unto death" was due to my own sins.
The second part of Christ's suffering is to learn how in the world my sins got onto Jesus' back. I did not want this plight. I wanted to own up to my sins, keep them myself, and try to rid myself of them by imitating Christ into holiness. But that theological dream was not God's plan. The Father put my sins on his Son—as Isaiah says, "for the sin of My people, I have struck Him" (Isa. 53:8). We call this the "awful and joyous transferral." Because the Father transfers our sins to him, Christ wants the disciples to watch his ordeal (which is the reason that Lutherans, like Roman Catholics, use a crucifix rather than an empty cross to depict their Lord).
But, after looking into the "harsh mirror" for a moment, I doubt that God would use the law in such a harsh manner: maybe he is shaping me to pity him instead ("Could you not watch one hour?" Mark 14:38). Preachers often resort to this presentation, highlighting only those parts of the cross which we can make beautiful and desirable through words like, "Behold his virtue! He is an innocent man!" This habit of transforming the law from "harsh mirror" to sympathetic passion Luther called "preaching Christ's cross to make old ladies cry." In response to such a teaching, we wrongly cry out, "Unfair, Ignoble! Christ was perfect in every way." We begin a demonstration of faith by sympathizing with the poor man. Then, when this effort fails, we pray: "Perhaps, my pitiful Lord, you are presenting yourself as a substitutionary sacrifice not by taking my sins but by obeying the law where and when I cannot."
Yet none of this gets to the point of "the severe mirror" because it attempts to lay sins on Jesus one at a time, relinquishing those I find expedient and serious enough to be addressed. This "cross-selling" strategy is an attempt to shift blame: I have sympathized with Christ, and the "others" have put him to death. When the law is diminished in this way, Christ's innocence is not as a lamb to be totally blotted with sin but merely as an example of how to endure suffering and prevail. Christ is not hanging on the cross as an example of innocence to teach me how to obey the law under suffering. Instead, in the garden of Gethsemane, the disciples were forced to watch until the hour came, and they confessed: it is I, Peter; I James; I John, whose sins Christ now bears: "You crucified him" (Acts 2:36). Somehow, my sins are now his. They caused his distress and forced him to beg for the cup to be removed: "And he said, 'Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee; remove this cup from me…'" (Mark 14: 36a).
But then, we come to the second part of Gethsemane: "…not my will, but Thine be done…" (Mark 14:36b). Father! You have the power; let the hour pass from me! But the Father did not give Christ Passover; he willed it--not. Instead, he will do one thing: take my sins (and the sins of the whole world) and strike his Son with them. God did not passively watch the horrible suffering of his Son unfold. God actively struck his Son (Isa. 53:8). Yet, that sword was not the "cause" of Christ's suffering; instead, it was the "purpose" or "fruit" of it. God violently transferred our sins to his Son, Jesus. He scapegoated Jesus in the greatest heist ever. The Father "sinned" his Son, causing him to fall on his face and beg for mercy. Luther calls this a “sufficient division” between wills, with the Father's will crushing Christ’s. It is not that Christ merited atonement by finding a way to follow his Father's law while under the pain and stress of suffering. He made him not only a sinner but the greatest of sinners, and not only the greatest of sinners but the only sinner. Indeed, not only the greatest sinner but "sin itself" (2 Cor. 5:21).
No more sacrifice, scapegoating, or obedience to the law can attempt to dissipate my sins anymore. What happened to them? Christ swallowed them.
So it was that Christ came out a third time to his disciples and said, "Are you still sleeping…? It is enough; the hour has come; the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners" (Mark 14:41). What do I see in this hour? My sins are on Christ! But I did not put them there; the Father heaped them on Christ. If we had no more of the story than this cry: "It is enough! The hour has come, the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners," we would still fall on our knees and worship the Lord in awe. Yet, finally, the third part of Christ’s suffering unfolds. I realize that the cross is not only the cause (my sins!) and not only the purpose (are his, by God!). Beyond such categories, Christ alone destroys the sins of the world once and for all. These sins, including mine, cannot come back to haunt us, nor will the Father ever reverse the transfer. Why not? Not because he cannot—but he will not. My sins were placed on Christ; they are no more. The circle of sins, scapegoating, and suffering has forever been broken. Christ took my sins, "nailing them to the cross" (Col. 2:14), but they do not remain on him. His suffering is not ongoing. The cross is the total and final event for the sake of your sins. No more sacrifice, scapegoating, or obedience to the law can attempt to dissipate my sins anymore. What happened to them? Christ swallowed them. "Who could imagine his future?" (Isa. 53:8) where "Death is swallowed up in victory" (1 Cor. 15:54). My sin is gone, never to return. So is yours.
We do not join Christ in any substitution theory that is an endless legal or moral sacrifice. Instead, the gospel is Christ's final word beyond sin, beyond the devil and the law—because he took the sin and destroyed it. Wherever, whenever, to whomever Christ speaks that word, your sin is no more.
