Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

• Matthew 26:38-39

After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed:
“Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.

• John 12:1-5

Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

• Mark 10:42-45

“We must not, then, speak of God punishing Jesus or of Jesus persuading God, for to do so is to set them over against each other as if they acted independently of each other or were even in conflict with each other. We must never make Christ the object of God’s punishment or God the object of Christ’s persuasion, for both God and Christ were subjects not objects, taking the initiative together to save sinners. … The Father did not lay on the Son an ordeal he was reluctant to bear, nor did the Son extract from the Father a salvation he was reluctant to bestow. (The Cross of Christ, Chapter 6)”

• Tony Lane, A Concise History of Christian Thought

John Robert Walmsley Stott (1921-2011) was a British Anglican priest and theologian.  He was one of the principal authors of the Lausanne Covenant in 1974, and in 2005 was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people.  He authored over 50 books.  When the liberal Christians set up battlelines to replace the biblical thought with something much more secular, many evangelicals ignored them or disappeared from public debate.  John Stott, seeing the erosion of biblical truth being taught, even from the pulpit, set about to write books in plain, easy-to-understand statements that established common ground, ground upon which we could build our faith, and ground from which we would not back down.  I have read Basic Christianity, and I thoroughly enjoyed the book.

For the quotation above to be in one of his books, it probably meant the two erroneous concepts had filtered into Christian writings.

Someone could take the Scripture from Matthew 26 above and say that Jesus wanted to back out, but God forced Him to continue.  That would be horribly inaccurate.  Jesus was one hundred percent human and one hundred percent God.  It wasn’t that His human “half” was wanting to back out, but the feelings that His humanness gave him provided that sorrow unto death.  Jesus had experienced loss.  He had experienced the entire range of human emotions, but He had not experienced death of His body.  He had not endured the tortures of the scourge and crucifixion.  The finality of His earthly mission was coming to a close.  When you have ten thousand emotions roaring in your ears all at once, the best thing to do is look to your Heavenly Father.  The Trinity had planned this before time ever began.  There was no one forcing anyone.  There was no one backing out.  There was no bargaining.  This was a 4,000-year plan coming to a close and Jesus would be the victor.

And Jesus requesting of the Father, throughout the entirety of John 17, is a plea for God the Father to not have Jesus’ death in vain.  God, will You glorify me in this moment?  God, I leave my disciples behind.  Remember them and care for them.  And God, for all who come and proclaim from their heart that I am Lord and Savior, and who follow my commandments, do not let a single one slip through Your hands.  May they all be saved.

This was not a series of bargaining chips.  Jesus was repeating what He and the Father had decided before the Lord breathed the breath of life into Adam and Eve.

Jesus did not tell His disciples that He was being forced to give His life as ransom for many.  Indeed, not.  He says that no one could take His life.  Jesus Christ laid down His life so that many would be saved.

But then, many of the liberal Christians that led to John Stott writing the quote above in his book might not believe that Jesus ever existed.  And having known many of them, I always wondered why they called themselves Christians when they did not believe in Christ.

If you like these Tuesday morning essays about philosophy and other “heavy topics,” but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Tuesday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.