The Cup That Jesus Took
And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” (Mar 14:36 ESV)
This verse is incredible. Jesus knew exactly what He was going to go through. He did not want to do it yet He was willing. He did not want His will but the will of the Father.
Exactly what was He asking to be taken from Him? Was it the suffering of the torture of the cross? Of course He did not want to go through the physical torture of the cross but He knew He was about to experience something much worse than the physical torture, something beyond anything any of us can possibly envision. The physical torture that He was about to endure certainly was more excruciating than what we can imagine but it does not compare to what was in that cup that He asked the Father to take from Him
What was in that cup? Jesus Christ, our Messiah, who had never ever felt or experienced sin, was about to take our sins upon His shoulders. “God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we would become the righteousness of God.” (2Co 5:21 NET) This suffering was so great and ghastly that in the end He cried out to the Father: “And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mar 15:34 ESV)
Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, at this moment was utterly alone. He was so alone that His Father turned His face from Jesus. Jesus was up there on the cross enduring a physical torture and humiliation and then when He willingly accepted our sins upon Him, the Father turned His face from Him.
When Jesus was in the garden praying that the cup be taken from Him, He so desperately wanted not to take the cup that contained our sins. The cup contained all sin past, present and future. Though we had not been born at that time, He knew our sin and paid our penalty for ALL of our sins. He looked into that cup and saw every single sin that you and I ever committed and will ever commit. He paid that price willingly knowing full well what was in that cup. Every single sin that any of us will ever commit from this day forward was in that cup and has been paid for. Every single sin that a person commits being born next year is in that cup and has been paid for. It was placed on His shoulders, so much so, that He cried out asking God why He has been forsaken.
Some people are of the belief that our salvation must be finished by us in that we have to work for it. To make that claim is to claim that Jesus did not finish entirely the process of salvation, that in order to complete the process, we have to work for it. Jesus stated: “This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day. (John 6:39 NASB)
To claim that our works plays a part of our salvation is to take away from the Glory of God on the Cross. To believe that our works plays a part in securing our salvation is to deny the sufficiency of His work on the cross.
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