Mark 14:32-35 “Then they came to a place which was named Gethsemane; and He said to His disciples, "Sit here while I pray." (33) And He took Peter, James, and John with Him, and He began to be troubled and deeply distressed. (34) Then He said to them, "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch." (35) He went a little farther, and fell on the ground, and prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from Him.”
I do not think that there are many believers that will deny that being anxious, is not part of the Christian walk, and yet so many in the body of Christ suffer from this affliction. Nevertheless we want to reinforce from scripture, the truth that worry is not an affliction that our Lord expects His church to suffer from. Again as in all areas, we can look at the example that our Lord Jesus set for us when He walked in the flesh, and it is clearly evident that Jesus was never anxious about anything. And in fact He taught quite strongly against worrying (Matthew 6:25-34). Nevertheless there was a time when stress did afflict our Lord Jesus, which was in the garden of Gethsemane. The above-quoted passage of scripture gives us the account of the ordeal that our Lord Jesus went through in the garden of Gethsemane. The scripture says that Jesus became troubled and deeply distressed, and that His soul was exceedingly sorrowful even to death. In Luke’s account of the same incident the Holy Spirit records that Jesus sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground (Luke 22:44). It is a scientific fact that in very rare cases, when faced with great amounts of stress and anxiety, that some people have been known to actually sweat blood through their pores. The medical term for that condition is called Hematidrosis. We have no idea just what kind of stress our Lord Jesus went through that night, as He prayed before He went to the cross. But for our Lord, who had never before been anxious about anything to have reacted in that way, the stress placed upon Him must have been enormous.
Isaiah 53:5 “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.”
And so as we again look at the substitutionary sacrifice that Jesus has incurred for His church, we see that Jesus went through enormous emotional stress for us as our substitute, so that we do not have to incur this type of suffering today. For the above passage of scripture teaches us that the chastisement for our peace was upon Him. So what does that mean? In the book of Philippians, when the Holy Spirit teaches us not to worry or be anxious, He tells us that the peace of God will guard our hearts and minds (Philippians 4: 6-7). In other words worry is the opposite of peace. And so when the scripture says that the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, it is referring to our Lord taking upon Himself our anxieties in the garden of Gethsemane so that we could become partakers of His peace. You will recall that we saw earlier that our Lord Jesus has redeemed us from the curse of the law. Part of the curse of the law is having an anxious mind (Deuteronomy 28:66). And so we see clearly that the church is not meant to suffer in the area of worry and anxiety.
Michael E.B. Maher
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