(painting by Liz Lemon Swindle, one of my favorite artists)
I have searched many scripture sources on Christ’s suffering in Gethsemane and have come up with many words that describe the magnitude of this event for Him:
Sorrowful
Very heavy: distressed/troubled
Exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death
Prayed earnestly
Soul is exceedingly sorrowful unto death
Agony: pain
Sweat as it were great drops of blood
Suffer temptations, pains of body, hunger, thirst, fatigue
Blood cometh from every pore
Anguish for wickedness& abominations
Pains
Temptations of every kind
Pains
Sicknesses of His people
Death
Take upon Him their infirmities
Suffer
Tremble because of pain
Suffer both body and spirit
Fearful suffering
Agony
Afflictions
Gethsemane was the Savior’s place of refuge; a place of solace and privacy. It was secluded and peaceful. He often went there to pray, meditate, and teach His apostles. The things I have learned about it lead me to believe it was akin to a temple. It was a place of hallowed ground, fit for the atonement to begin.
Christ taught His apostles to pray so that they may withstand temptations. This was important for them when the spirit was willing but the flesh weak. Christ himself set the perfect example of this in Gethsemane. He was willing to go forward with the atonement yet did plead with the Father to remove the bitter cup. Nevertheless, He overcame the weakness of the flesh and performed the work He was sent to do. Sadly, his apostles gave into the weakness of the flesh and succumbed to sleep in the Master’s greatest hour of need.
During each interval of Christ’s suffering in Gethsemane, He asked the Father to let the bitter cup pass. Then He followed with perhaps the most important and profound statement, “nevertheless, not mine will, but thine be done.” He had perfect obedience and was willing to submit His will to God’s no matter how terrifying or painful the coming ordeal was to be. We can learn a great lesson from this example of obedience. Instead of asking WHY?, perhaps we should ask WHY NOT? and follow the Savior’s example to accept the will of the Father no matter what may lie in wait for us. I found this extremely comforting when my son was born. We thought that he had been born without any soft spots on his head. This frightened us because it meant either skull surgery or brain damage. Both were absolutely terrifying for a mother to contemplate. Thankfully we have the power of the priesthood in our lives and were able to give blessings around that gave great peace and promised blessings to come. After I received mine, I had an overwhelming feeling of peace. I knew that whatever happened next was in the Lord’s hands and that I would have more peace and help if I submitted my will to His. Luckily my son was fine and no surgery was required and we were spared pain and heartache. I promise that faith in the Father’s plan for us and in His timing brings great peace and happiness to our lives.
As the Savior’s agony increased in Gethsemane, so did the earnestness of His prayer. I find too that in my life I tend to plead more desperately with my Father when times are tough and trials arise. One such time was when I was in either middle school or high school and my grandpa was having something like a quadruple bypass on his heart. I knew my grandpa was older and my dad tried to prepare us in case grandpa didn’t make it. This news was too much for my tender heart to handle and I ran to my room where I spent hours on my knees pleading and sobbing to my Heavenly Father to spare him because I still needed him. I always felt that I had a special bond with my grandparents because they helped to raise us after my parent’s divorce, and loosing him was going to crush my heart. As I crawled into bed with a prayer in my heart, a soft voice spoke peace to my mind and soul telling me that “all is well, all is well.” I’m so glad to say that my grandpa is still with us today and that the Lord did hear the earnest prayer of a young girl.
Christ’s love for the Father enabled Him to drink the bitter cup and finish the work of the Father. Only Christ could perform the saving sacrifice for the all of mankind. It was His calling to save the souls of men that were in jeopardy from the Fall of Adam. It speaks volumes of the Savior’s love for God and His close relationship that He must have had with His literal father.
I have learned many life changing lessons during this week’s study of the Atonement. One is to pray, pray, and pray harder. It is so important to help us to see the will of the Father in our lives and also to protect us from the adversary’s temptations. Also, I’ve learned to give freely of my time to Him and to make sure I include Him in my daily routine a little more. Another lesson I’ve learned is to be grateful for the Savior’s suffering for me. Ever moment of Christ’s suffering was extremely intimate and personal for each one of us. I believe that He spent a few moments with each of us as He suffered for our pains, sins, sicknesses, etc. Not to use this gift is to make a mockery of it.
***For further INCREDIBLE insights on the Atonement and Gethsemane read these quotes found in the Institute Manual for the New Testament:
“It seems, that in addition to the fearful suffering incident to crucifixion, the agony of Gethsemane had recurred, intensified beyond human power to endure. In that bitterest hour the dying Christ was alone, alone in most terrible reality. That the supreme sacrifice of the Son might be consummated in all its fulness, the Father seems to have withdrawn the support of His immediate Presence, leaving to the Savior of men the glory of complete victory over the forces of sin and death.” (Talmage, Jesus the Christ, p. 661.)
When the Savior exclaimed in triumph, “It is finished” (John 19:30), he knew his atoning sacrifice had been accepted by the Father. (See John 19:28.)
“Sweet and welcome as would have been the relief of death in any of the earlier stages of His suffering from Gethsemane to the cross, He lived until all things were accomplished as had been appointed.” (Talmage, Jesus the Christ, p. 662.)
“How perfect the example is! Though he were the Son of God, yet even he, having been strengthened by an angelic ministrant, prays with increased faith; even he grows in grace and ascends to higher heights of spiritual unity with the Father. How well Paul wrote of this hour: ‘In the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared; Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him.’ (Heb. 5:7–9.)” (McConkie, DNTC, 1:776.)
But what was it that caused the Savior’s intense agony?
“Jesus had to take away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. … And as He in His own person bore the sins of all, and atoned for them by the sacrifice of Himself, so there came upon Him the weight and agony of ages and generations, the indescribable agony consequent upon this great sacrificial atonement wherein He bore the sins of the world, and suffered in His own person the consequences of an eternal law of God broken by men. Hence His profound grief, His indescribable anguish, His overpowering torture, all experienced in the submission to the eternal fiat of Jehovah and the requirements of an inexorable law.
“The suffering of the Son of God was not simply the suffering of personal death; for in assuming the position that He did in making an atonement for the sins of the world He bore the weight, the responsibility, and the burden of the sins of all men, which, to us, is incomprehensible. …
“Groaning beneath this concentrated load, this intense, incomprehensible pressure, this terrible exaction of Divine Justice, from which feeble humanity shrank, and through the agony thus experienced sweating great drops of blood, He was led to exclaim, ‘Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.’ He had wrestled with the superincumbent load in the wilderness, He had struggled against the powers of darkness that had been let loose upon him there; placed below all things, His mind surcharged with agony and pain, lonely and apparently helpless and forsaken, in his agony the blood oozed from His pores.” (Taylor, The Mediation and Atonement, pp. 149–50.)
“Christ’s agony in the garden is unfathomable by the finite mind, both as to intensity and cause. The thought that He suffered through fear of death is untenable. Death to Him was preliminary to resurrection and triumphal return to the Father from whom He had come, and to a state of glory even beyond what He had before possessed; and, moreover, it is within His power to lay down His life voluntarily. He struggled and groaned under a burden such as no other being who has lived on earth might even conceive as possible. It was not physical pain, nor mental anguish alone, that caused Him to suffer such torture as to produce an extrusion of blood from every pore; but a spiritual agony of soul such as only God was capable of experiencing. No other man, however great his powers of physical or mental endurance, could have suffered so; for his human organism would have succumbed, and syncope would have produced unconsciousness and welcome oblivion. In that hour of anguish Christ met and overcame all the horrors that Satan, ‘the prince of this world’ could inflict. The frightful struggle incident to the temptations immediately following the Lord’s baptism was surpassed and overshadowed by this supreme contest with the powers of evil.
“In some manner, actual and terribly real though to man incomprehensible, the Savior took upon Himself the burden of the sins of mankind from Adam to the end of the world.” (Talmage, Jesus the Christ, p. 613.)
(I think it's safe to say that Elder Talmage is AMAZING!)
