Bible Commentaries

‘IN THE DAYS OF HIS FLESH’

‘Who in the days of his flesh … and being made perfect, He became the Author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him.’

Hebrews 5:7-9

The first Adam and the second Adam alike went through their great deciding conflict in a garden. The threefold temptation which Adam—the first Adam—endured was sufficient to shake his faith and to divert his will and make him disobedient to his Creator. Thrice over in the garden of Gethsemane the Blessed Lord Jesus Christ fought the same adversary and overcame, and His faith in the Father was firm, and His will was steadfast in its resolution to bear and to do whatever the Father willed.

I. The Humanity of Jesus.—There are times when nothing helps us so much as to see how truly and entirely our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ was human with our own humanity. Where can we see it to better advantage than in the garden? How human, how wholly and truly human, was that shrinking from death which the Blessed Saviour vouchsafed to show! We can see how human He was by contrasting the behaviour of the Lord Jesus Christ with that of some of the noblest of His disciples and martyrs in aftertimes. It was by the power of the Lord Jesus Christ’s conflict in Gethsemane and on Calvary that they were able to show to the world that death and its power were conquered, that death to them was not a thing to be feared but to be glad of; to be met with joy. But when the Lord Jesus Christ went through his conflict in the garden the sting of death had still to be taken away, and it was his duty to take it away, and it was impossible for Him to go to His death with the joy of a martyr of later times. He is indeed truly human. We can see it in the very prayer He utters. He prays again and again, entreating God by everything that He can think of, entreating His Father by the special tie that binds the Son to Him, ‘Abba, Father!’ imploring Him by the almighty power of God, ‘All things are possible unto Thee,’ and finding no words in which to go further, the evangelists tell us how He went again and again, repeating the old words. Finding, with all His wonderful powers of eloquence, no words in which to express His thought but those which He had used before, He went and prayed again, using the same words!

II. Submission to the Divine Will.—Then in the conflict between the higher and the lower will we see how truly human the Lord Jesus Christ was. In the garden of Gethsemane the thing that comes to our minds is the conflict between two human wills, the higher and the lower will, the will of inclination and the will of resolution. To the Lord Jesus Christ, as to us, the easier course was the pleasanter, the more natural to take. To the Lord Jesus Christ, as to us, it was pleasant to taste the sweet and to do that which presented no difficulty, and to leave the hard task untried. But He like us, and we like Him, have the power to overrule the will of inclination by the will of determination, and the Lord Jesus Christ did it in the garden. ‘Not My will, but Thine, be done.’ The higher will in the humanity of the Lord Jesus attached itself firmly to the will of the eternal Father, and chose that that will should be done rather than that which He called His own.

III. And that prayer in Gethsemane is not the type of a prayer which is unheeded by Him to Whom it is addressed. It is not the type of prayer which is unanswered. ‘It was heard,’ says the Apostle to the Hebrews; ‘it was heard in that He feared’; because of His reverence He was heard. The Lord’s prayer was heard. Not, ‘Let this cup pass from Me,’ but that which was the hinge of His prayer, upon which it turned, ‘Not My will, but Thine, be done.’ There is the strength for humanity; there is the hope for us in struggles and difficulties. There is the hope for us when the way of right is hard and the way of wrong is easy, to cast ourself, as the Lord did, upon the heart which is the heart of a Father, and of a Father to Whom all things are possible, leaving to Him the decision how that prayer shall be fulfilled.

Illustration

‘This is not the moment, Gethsemane is not the place, for us to study with a critical eye, and to dissect and analyse. We know the words in which a great poet has spoken scornfully of the man who can peep and botanise upon his mother’s grave; much less should we desire to peep and to analyse in Gethsemane and on Calvary. But men have done it and they have seen the proof of our Lord’s twofold will—the Divine will and the human—in the garden of Gethsemane. For my part I know not whether I could discern what they would have us to discern. That the Lord Jesus Christ had the power and will as God, and that He had also the power and will as man, is a thing as certain as any fact that we know.’

LEARNING OBEDIENCE

‘Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered.’

Hebrews 5:8

He learnt obedience; it is not said that He learnt to obey, but that he learnt obedience, not as you or I, who are rude and ignorant in the things of God, and need daily or hourly direction, guidance, help, and gradual supplies of grace to lead us towards the true knowledge. But Jesus had the fulness of grace always with Him, always in Him: and could never be at a loss for what He was to do, nor how to do it.

I. How then did lie learn obedience?—Only as the Word hath it—by the things which He suffered—by the experience of it in the exercise of it.

II. But why should He have suffered at all?—Why have learnt obedience in so sharp a conflict? Because man had unlearnt obedience through pleasure—unlawful pleasure. Eden became a place of war when sin came in through pleasure, and the earth must become a paradise through pain—the pain of the perfect man—the sorrow, the suffering, the heart-anguish, the soul-agony of the Christ of God.

III. Will the love of Christ constrain us?—Shall we use the Saviour as He would wish us? Remember, every sinner saved is another jewel in His Crown of Glory. Remember that every sinner saved is a sinner penitent, and every sinner penitent is a sinner reformed, changed in heart, turned from evil towards good, moved by a mighty love. The heart—the heart of a true penitent—is athirst for God; it hath a Godly sorrow; it mourns at the foot of the Cross; from the foot of the Cross it looks upward; it sees the Christ in suffering; it looks onward and sees the Christ in glory; it looks onward yet and sees the Christ in judgment, the Saviour, the Intercessor, the Judge. Then it saith within itself, what shall I do?—and from the Cross there comes the voice of the suffering Christ—‘Behold My hands and My feet pierced for thee. See here My side rent for thee: look to the brow, thorn-crowned and bleeding for thee. Let it not be in vain! Give Me thine heart, and I will keep it for thee: Give Me thyself, and I will save thee. Thou must have tribulation in the world—only for a little while—but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world, and through suffering I have entered into My glory. Follow Me, and bear thou the Cross, that thou too mayest receive the Crown!’

Rev. G. F. de Teissier.

Illustration

‘You know men may have learnt thoroughly the principles of any art or science, but, without experiments, they do not know the practical working of them. The teacher may explain how a sum is to be worked out, but, unless he works it out himself, he has not the practical knowledge thereof. You may know what meat or fruit is—but not the savour of them unless you taste. You can describe from maps or books of geography the distant lands you have never seen, but you cannot know them as those who have travelled or dwelt in them. Even so the Lord Jesus learnt His obedience by experience—by undergoing great and terrible things for your sake and mine, which, as God, He could not suffer, and as perfect man he need not have suffered.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE WAY TO GLORY

I. Obedience the way to glory.—Observe that all our Lord’s life on earth was emphatically a life of obedience. It ended, no doubt, in the triumph of the Resurrection, in the wonders of the Ascension, in the exaltation of His glorified humanity at the right hand of God. But the whole life, all through, was one of obedience.

II. Suffering is the path of obedience.—Why? We cannot see all the reasons why, but we can see some. At all events, we can see this, that in our case, where our own inclinations do certainly lead us wrong, anything like goodness does most certainly require discipline and training and self-denial. Anything like obedience to what is good does most certainly involve denying ourselves much that we naturally long for. And self-denial is suffering. No self-denial can be pleasant. No crossing of our own wills can be agreeable.

III. The sufferings of Christ came to Him.—He did not seek them. They came to Him in the way of God’s regular providence. Suffering came to Him in His earliest infancy, when His human nature was still incapable of choosing. And what does this do but teach us—first, that it can never be too soon to begin the life of obedience, and then, secondly, that the obediences and the sufferings which train us in the Christian life are, as a rule, provided for us by our heavenly Father. The Cross is not for us to invent, it is fashioned for us, it is laid before us by our heavenly Father. Our business is to accept it, to take it up, to bear it with patience and obedience. The question is, Will we submit? not whether we, of our own wills, find out modes of giving up our own will in our own way.

IV. The sufferings of Christ shed a Divine brightness over all involuntary pain.—We often wonder at the amount of suffering there is in the world, the unavoidable suffering, the—as we say—objectless, causeless, purposeless suffering. Let us learn a more Christian way of thinking on this subject. There can be no such thing. Since Christ has come, no man ought to speak as if there could be such a thing. ‘All things are yours,’ said St. Paul, and pain and suffering among them. There is not a pain of body or mind which may not be to you a discipline of obedience, a circumcision of the flesh and spirit teaching you obedience; and the more it seems to come upon you causelessly, and without any seeking of yours, the more, be sure, it is God Who leads you to it and it to you.

Illustration

‘Every stage in life grows out of every other stage in life. You do not know how it is, but you know it is so. What you do one day comes easier to you the next day, even though you did not know that you were doing it when you did it first. What we are to-day has grown out of what we have been each day and every day that we have ever lived; yes, out of what we were and what we did years before we can remember; and out of what we were and what we were made to do almost before we had any will of our own. We know that it is so. A child grows up easier to manage, more good-tempered, and more obedient if it has been caused to obey even before it knew what obedience meant, even before it could speak. You cannot tell when the beginning is. For the child is a human being from the very first, and if it live to be a hundred years old it is still the same all through the years, even as it will be the same person onward and onward through the never-ending eternity. It is a strange solemn thought that millions of years hence you and I will still be bearing the marks of what we were and how our characters were shaping in the dim forgotten days of infancy—days which we have forgotten now but which before our cleared vision in the world to come will stand out plain to view as when from a mountain-top a man looks back upon the lowland road he travelled by, but could not see until he reached the crest.’