It Started in the Garden

“And being in an agony He prayed more earnestly: and His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” (Luke 22:44)

We cannot even imagine the agony Jesus was in when He was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. Luke, a medical doctor is the only one who recorded the agony of Jesus being so great that He sweat blood.  All the commentaries, even back to the time of Aristotle, tell of a rare medical condition of sweat being mixed with blood in times of great stress. Imagine your worse stress and multiply it by billions of all the stress and agony of the world’s people, pass, present and future. It’s unimaginable. His agony was so great, so that He could give us His peace.  He took our stress, our agonizing over our life struggles so we could have peace. 

What do we agonize over?  In Jesus our agony is backed by a peace knowing our Savior took the brunt of the pain.  Jesus tells us over and over to be in peace.  He agonized so that we could have peace. “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” (John 14:27) By faith, believing on Jesus we received salvation, our sins never to be brought up again. “For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.” (Hebrews 8:12) And by faith, believing, we can receive His peace. We don’t have to worry.  We don’t have to stress.  We don’t have to agonize over anything. We don’t have to take back on ourselves what Jesus already agonized over. Receive peace by faith. “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:” (Romans 5:1)

Jesus agonized over our worries and stresses so that we could have peace.  How many of us agonize over the temptations we face?  Our reborn of God spirit agonizes because the flesh fights us to feed it.  It tempts us to lash out at people, to fight, to have its own way, to ignore common sense, to lie to cheat and to lose our testimony.  The temptations are myriad, spiritual and physical. We want just one moment to let go.  But then we remember Jesus.  Jesus wins, thank God.  His love for us and our love for Him wins over the flesh. And our soul (mind, will and emotions) rejoices in the victory of Jesus over temptation, in the Garden of Gethsemane, in the clots of blood He sweat. Think about the things that tempt you. Multiply it by all the people’s past, present and future.  Add to that the cross, the physical suffering, the sin of world and the separation from the Father with Whom He was One.

We can only be grateful.  Our praise and thanksgiving don’t seem enough. If you can’t cry out to our Savior your love, repent. His mercy is undeserved. Yet He gave us mercy. His love is undeserved. Yet He loved us while we were yet sinners. “But God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) Our freedom from the bondage of sin was bought with the precious Blood of the Lamb of God so that we could live a life of peace, love and joy. “For the kingdom of God is ...righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” (Romans 14:17) He shed His blood for us. And it started in the Garden of Gethsemane.