THE OBEDIENCE OF JESUS

The peculiar glory of Christ viewed as man is that He maintained man’s place to infinite exactness in every detail under God’s eye. He had maintained it throughout, but now the final test, the final crisis, was about to appear.

He was about to be face to face with Satan, who held the power of death in his hand; and he was about to bring that to bear upon the Lord so as to turn Him out of man’s place. That was the whole aim of the enemy, to divert the Lord from man’s true position of obedience to God. He had sought to do it at the outset in the wilderness, and now he returns in Gethsemane with the power of death in his hand to turn the Lord out of the path of obedience; and at that moment the thought of His victory arose in the heart of Christ. He saw the opportunity, as it were, in which He would show in the presence of all, in the presence of the universe, His unswerving obedience to the will of God. He said, “Not my will, but thine be done”.

He could not but recoil from the cross, for it was the forsaking of God. It was the essence of His perfection to recoil from it; and on the other hand it was the essence of His perfection as man to take it up, to drink the cup; and hence His glory shines under God’s eye. There has never been such a shining of moral glory as there was in Gethsemane, and upon the cross when the Lord maintained, in infinite perfection, man’s place under God’s eye.

JT NS Vol.89 p.450