The Hidden Life Of Jesus
By Johnny Tatum
#7) JESUS IS GRANTED FULL KNOWLEDGE
OF WHO HE IS
After the Triumphal Entry there is no question that Jesus is going to the Cross, and that He is going to die. It is at this point that God the Father gives Jesus more knowledge than He (Jesus) has ever had.
We have been studying how Jesus gradually learned about who He was – about how Jesus gradually learned the direction of His ministry – about how Jesus gradually learned what His fate would be – about how Jesus gradually learned about the Cross. However, things have changed.
Now, Jesus is facing the Cross, however, there is something we can never forget:
Note: Even as a Human Being, the Cross was always Jesus’ choice. He could have declined going to the Cross. Why? Because, even as a Human Being, Jesus was equal with God. Though He did not exercise His divine prerogative (in His humanity, He did not have the knowledge of God), He was equal with God. And God the Father never let Jesus forget that.
At the end of Jesus’ life, the Cross is looming and God the Father wants Jesus to make the choice about the Cross; and for Jesus to make that choice, God the Father has to give Jesus knowledge. Therefore, I believe, during the last week of His life, God the Father floods Jesus with full consciousness of who He is.
Presented In The Gospels:
In John 14, we read an account of the Passover Seder (meal), which Jesus shared with His disciples in the Upper Room. Listen to what He says:
In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. (John 14:22)
Prior to this, Jesus did not know from where He came; however, here at the end, He knows everything.
Jesus says:
I am the way, the truth, and the life. (John 14:6)
That is a triple hendiadys (expressing one complex idea). Again, Jesus is fully conscious of who He is.
In John 16, Jesus says:
I came forth from the Father, and have come into the world; I am leaving the world again, and I am going to the Father. (John 16:28)
In this one sentence, Jesus summarized it all! God
has granted Jesus the knowledge of where He (Jesus) is in Eternity, which is
outside of time: He is with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. The second Person of the Godhead (the Son of
God) was the One designated from the beginning:
Now Jesus knows all of that, and He says:
Now Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I
had with You before the world was. (John 17:5)
Here in the Upper
Room, Jesus is fully majestic and He knows everything, because God the Father
has given Him full knowledge. Why?—
Note: I
am not saying that Jesus is looking forward to the Cross; I am saying that at
this point in His life, Jesus is facing something that really is worse than the
Cross. I am not making light of the
Cross, however, there were many people who went to the cross who were not
sweating blood at Gethsemane and who approached death with calm.
Illustration:
That is like today
when many people who are facing execution approach their deaths with calm. In the 1960s, a fellow in the USA was facing
death by firing squad for capital punishment.
As he was being readied for the firing squad, he was asked Do you have one last request? To
which the fellow answered Why yes,
a bulletproof vest! Some people face death with calm.
Jesus is facing
something at the end of His life that to Him is worse than the Cross. What He is dreading is not the Cross—although again, He certainly is not looking forward to the
Cross—there is something worse.
As His days get
shorter, Jesus spends more and more time with His disciples; as we have just
seen, at the end of His life, Jesus brought His disciples with Him to the Upper
Room. Why?
Now, Jesus knows
the end is near; He knows that He is going to the Cross (it is not going to be
an Isaac-type situation). Though Jesus
is not looking forward to the Cross, He is in ordeal mentally because He knows
something is about to happen that is:
Therefore, Jesus
wants to have that moment at a place where He feels comfortable—the Garden of
Gethsemane.
Presented In The Gospels:
In Luke 22, we have
a brief account of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane:
Jesus is leaving
the Upper Room.
and proceeded as was His custom to the Mount of Olives;
Why does Jesus
choose to go to the Mount of Olives?
Because He is about to face something that He knows what it is, but He
does not know what it will be like. So
Jesus goes to a place where He is comfortable, a place where He has prayed many
times before: the Garden of Gethsemane.
Since it is an
ordeal He is facing, Jesus wants to be with people who are closest to Him:
and the disciples also followed Him. (Luke 22:39)
Toward the end of
His life, Jesus withdrew from the crowds more and more, and focused more and
more on His disciples. Here He takes
His twelve disciples with Him to Gethsemane to help Him face what is coming.
Jesus wants the
disciples near Him, however, what is about to happen is a very private
transaction between Jesus and His Father. Although He wants the disciples
close, now He must pull away from them:
And He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and began to pray, saying, “Father,
Something
Very Interesting: This is the last time Jesus calls Him Father. Why? Because our sins are about to come on Jesus,
and when they do, He is going to be cursed; and when Jesus is cursed, He cannot
call Him Father anymore.
if You are willing, remove this cup form Me; yet not My will, but Yours
be done.” (Luke 22:41, 42)
What is Jesus
praying? He is praying that He will not
die at this moment.
Traditional
Interpretation: Jesus is
saying If possible, let Me not go
to the Cross—the cup meaning “the Cross.” No! In
His humanity, Jesus was not praying that the Cross would be removed; He knew
with certainty that the Cross was coming—
After the Upper
Room discourse, Jesus knows that He is going to the Cross, and that He has
willingly identified with us.
To
Be Saved From Death:
In Hebrews 5, the
writer says:
In the days of His flesh,
Speaking of Jesus.
He offered up both prayers and supplications with
loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death,
Obviously, this is
at Gethsemane.
Look at what He
says:
and He was heard because of His piety. (Hebrews 5:7)
The writer of
Hebrews says that the prayer, which Jesus prayed at Gethsemane, was heard
because He was the Son; Jesus’ prayer—to be saved from death—was answered Yes!
Illustration:
Foxe’s Book of
Martyrs is an excellent
book that presents historical accounts of the early church age martyrs and the
tortures and cruelties they endured.
The book does not get too graphic, but it does give enough information
for you to know that people were nailed to poles, placed in fires, and up until
their last breath, they continued singing hymns, praying for their tormentors,
and praising God.
Consider the
apostle John who escaped a violent death and lived to be about 100 years
old. His persecutors kept trying to
kill him, but they could not; they put John in boiling oil [that was great for
his skin], but he did not die!
“Being at Ephesus, he was ordered by the emperor Domitian to be sent
bound to Rome, where he was condemned to be cast into a caldron of boiling
oil. But here a miracle was wrought in
his favor; the oil did him no injury; and Domitian, not being able to put him
to death, banished him to Patmos to labor in the mines, A.D. 73.” (Theodore
Alois Buckley, M.A., Foxe’s Book of
Martyrs, London, George Routledge
& Sons, Limited)
There were martyrs
who were tortured, frankly, more than Jesus, and they were not in agony like
Him. Again, it was not the physical
Cross Jesus was dreading [although He was not looking forward to it]; it was:
The
Separation From His Father
It is obvious that
Jesus was asking Let this cup pass, because He felt like He was going to die
right there at the Garden of Gethsemane:
And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became
drops of blood falling down upon the ground… (Luke 22:44)
In the original
Greek text, clearly it says He was sweating drops of blood.
Note: It does not say that Jesus’ sweat
became like blood—the word like means Jesus was bleeding through His pores so much that
it was pouring out of His skin like sweat, but it was blood!
Medical
Condition:
Blood pouring out
of the skin is known to have happened.
Under great stress, the heart muscle actually gives out, and every organ
functions below what it is supposed to function. Sometimes the organs freeze up, or sometimes they overreact, but
they will do one or the other in relation to stress. It makes the blood pressure so high that the heart, literally,
cannot take it, and it starts to collapse.
And when that happens, it forces the blood out, because under stress the
pores on the skin also enlarge, and all of those fine capillaries at the
surface of the skin start to break.
Where does that blood go? Out of
the pores.
THE REASON FOR JESUS’ AGONY
What is happening
to Jesus at this moment?
All of our sins were being put on Him.
And when our sins
were put on Jesus, He felt something He had never felt before; He experienced
something He had never experienced before; He experienced something He did not
know what it would be like—death.
What is death? Romans 6 tells us:
The wages of sin is death.
(Romans 6:23)
Here, death means spiritual death—separation from the Father.
So what is Jesus
dreading right now?
Separation from His Father—something Jesus cannot anticipate what it is going to be like.
We sin so much that
we are hardened to our sin; however…
Jesus
was an innocent Person, a sinless Person:
o Who did not
know what sin felt like.
o Who did not
know what separation from His Father felt like.
What is a separated
man from God? Sin.
But Jesus did not have any sin; He never sinned.
Through all His
doubt, through all His disappointments, through all of His depressions, Jesus
never knew what it was like to be separated from His Father. But now Jesus is thinking What will it be like when I am separated
from My Father? Jesus dreaded separation from His
Father. As the sins of the world start
coming down on Him physically, He almost cannot take it.
Living
On Forever:
Again, we are so
hardened to sin that we have lost the connection with Sin being death. That is what it is: Sin is
death; and the only kind of death [there is] is separation from God, not ceasing
consciousness.
As far as we know,
everybody’s consciousness lives on forever.
Even the unbeliever is going to live forever in a sense, although it is
such a horrible place that you cannot really call it living. It is called death—though it
is conscious—and that is separation from God. The unbeliever is not
conscious here on this earth; however, his consciousness lives on in Hades, and
that we know from the rich man (an unbeliever) and the poor man, Lazarus (a
believer)—
“Now the poor man died and was carried away by the angels to Abraham’s
bosom; and the rich man also died and was buried. In Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham
far away and Lazarus in his bosom. And
he cried out and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus so
that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue, for I am
in agony in this flame.’ But Abraham
said, ‘Child remember that during your life you received your good things, and
likewise Lazarus bad things; but now he is being comforted here, and you are in
agony. And besides all this, between us
and you there is a great chasm fixed, so that those who wish to come over form
here to you will not be able, and that none may cross over from there to us.” (Luke 16:22-26)
The rich man (an
unbeliever) died and went to Hades; his consciousness lives on.
We tend to think
that when our sins were placed on Jesus’ account, it was just a legal
maneuver. In another words, legally,
our sins were put on His account (ledger); therefore, legally, He had to pay the
judicial penalty, which is death. That
is not the way it is at all.
Our sins were literally put on Jesus. He felt them; He
almost died from them; and He knew what they were. In Psalm 40:
For evils beyond number have surrounded Me; My iniquities have
overtaken Me, so that I am not able to see. (Psalm 40:12)
Jesus made an
amazing choice of words—My
iniquities means iniquities
that are Mine, but I did not do them. When our sins were on Jesus,
He felt them and He was very aware they were coming on Him, because they were
physically put on Him.
Good
News For Born Again Believers: That means that our
sins were not just dealt with judicially (legally); our sins were
literally (physically) put on Jesus. In fact, the reason we know that is our sins almost killed
Him. And He is praying there at
Gethsemane Do not let Me die here;
Let this cup pass; I am feeling like I am dying here with all of these sins
dumped on Me; Let this cup pass.
OUR SINS WERE KILLED
When Jesus died on
the Cross—when His body was killed on the Cross—our sins that were in His body
were killed [not just erased]. In 2 Corinthians, Paul says:
He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us. (2 Corinthians 5:21)
Paul could have just said He made Him who never sinned to be sin for us, but he said He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us. Jesus’ identification with us is not just something theoretical; it is our salvation. If Jesus was not really identified with us, then our sin is still on us. If He did not identify with us, then where is our sin? It is still on us. Our sins were really put on Him; and that explains Gethsemane.
Question: Do you see what Jesus was going through?
Even not knowing,
and even dreading it, Jesus did it anyway.
Just
A Thought: That may also be
why Jesus was not judgmental toward sinners during His ministry. If Jesus were here today, we would be
scandalized at what He did and where He went—because Jesus was not judgmental
about sin. And part of the answer is: Sin was a
foreign concept to Jesus; He did not understand sin, but He was willingly to
identify with us. [And, of course, there is no question that He
is also very forgiving and merciful.]
Father, as the rain comes down from heaven and makes the plants grow, even without their participation, would You take this knowledge You have given us: our sins were literally put on Jesus. And when our sins were put on Him, His 100 percent obedience to the Law was placed on us. And just as our sins were really placed on Jesus, Your righteousness is really placed on us.
We thank You, although it does not seem possible, and evidence seems totally to the contrary, that those of us who at some point looked at Jesus and said I believe that You paid the penalty for my sins we are 100 percent righteous.
Father, we thank You for that righteousness, and we ask that You would continue to bless our study of the Hidden Life of Jesus. We pray in His name. Amen.
Next: Hidden Life #8)
JESUS MAKES THE CHOICE
Back To:
The Hidden Life Of Jesus Series Page
Radical Grace
Bible Study Page
Copyright © 1996, 2002 Worldnet Grace Ministries