We know nothing about Gethsemane in our personal experience. Both Gethsemane and Calvary stand for something unique: they are the gateway into life for us. We can never fully fathom the agony Jesus went through in Gethsemane, but we can at least try not to misunderstand it. It is the agony of God and man in one, coming face-to-face with sin.
Death on the cross wasn’t what Jesus feared in Gethsemane. He’d already stated that he’d come for that purpose. Read about his agony in light of the temptation Jesus endured three years earlier at the hands of Satan. “When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time” (Luke 4:13). The “opportune time” was Gethsemane. It was then that Satan came back and resumed his onslaught, and what Jesus feared was that he might not get through the attack as the Son of Man. He knew he’d get through it as the Son of God—Satan couldn’t touch him there. But Satan’s attack, if victorious, would mean that Jesus only withstood temptation as the Son of God, an isolated Figure, and thus could be no savior.
The agony in Gethsemane is the agony of the Son of Man fulfilling his destiny as the savior of the world. The veil is drawn aside to reveal what it cost him to make it possible for us to become children of God. Jesus’s agony is the basis of the simplicity of our salvation. The cross of Christ is a sign not only that our Lord has triumphed but that he triumphed to save humankind. Now, thanks to what the Son of Man endured, every human can get through to the presence of God.
