Lesson 89: Christ the Sacrifice, part 2
It is in the denial of His will, this complete surrender of His will to the will of the Father, that Christ’s obedience reached its highest perfection. It is from the sacrifice of the will in Gethsemane that the sacrifice of the life on Calvary receives its value. It is here, as Scripture says, that He learned obedience, and became the author of everlasting salvation to all that obey Him. It was because He there, in that prayer, became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, that God has highly exalted Him, and given Him the power to ask what He will. It was in that “Father! not what I will,” that He obtained the power for that other “FATHER, I WILL.” It was by Christ’s submission in Gethsemane to not have His will done, that He secured for His people the right to say to them, “Ask whatever you will.”
Let me look at them again, the deep mysteries that Gethsemane offers to my view. There is the first: the Father offers His Well-beloved the cup, the cup of wrath. The second: the Son, always so obedient, shrinks back, and implores that He may not have to drink it. The third: the Father does not grant the Son His request, but still gives the cup. And then the last: the Son yields His will; is content that His will not be done, and goes out to Calvary to drink the cup. Oh Gethsemane, in you I see how my Lord could give me such unlimited assurance of an answer to my prayers. As my guarantee He won it for me; by His consent to have His petition unanswered.
This is in harmony with the whole scheme of redemption. Our Lord always wins for us the opposite of what He suffered. He was bound that we might go free. He was made sin that we might become the righteousness of God. He died that we might live. He bore God’s curse, that God’s blessing might be ours. He endured the not answering of His prayer, that our prayers might find an answer. Yes, He spoke, “Not as I will,” that He might say to us, “If you abide in Me, ask what you will; it shall be done unto you.”
Yes, “If you abide in me;” here in Gethsemane the word acquires new force and depth. Christ is our Head, who as collateral stands in our place, and bears what we must forever have borne. We had deserved that God should turn a deaf ear to us, and never listen to our cry. Christ comes, and suffers this too for us: He suffers what we had earned; and for our sins, He suffers beneath the burden of that unanswered prayer. But now His suffering this, profits for me: what He has borne is taken away for me; His merit has won for me the answer to every prayer, if I abide in Him.
Prayer: Oh Lamb of God, I would follow You to Gethsemane, there to become one with You, and to abide in You as You yield Your will unto the very death, unto the Father. With You, through You, in You, I yield my will in absolute and entire surrender to the will of the Father. Conscious of my own weakness, and the secret power with which self-will would assert itself and again take its place on the throne, I claim in faith the power of Your victory. You triumph over it and deliver me from it. In Your death, I would daily live; in Your life, I would daily die. Abiding in You, let my will, through the power of Your eternal Spirit, only be the tuned instrument which yields to every touch of the will of my God. With my whole soul do I say with You and in You, “Father, not as I will, but as You will.”