Then, too, Jesus had been up the rest of the night without sleep enduring beating, cruel mockery and unspeakable brutality. The next morning, the Romans scourged Him. (Mark 15:15, John 19:1).

Jesus was already greatly weakened when he carried his cross, stumbling, to the place of crucifixion alongside the main public highway, probably just outside the Damascus Gate.

Several medical doctors and forensic experts have written books about the common Roman form of execution---death by crucifixion. Often the process took several days. The nailing of hands and feet forced the victim to push up against the weight of his own body to take a single breath. In the hot sun, terrible thirst ensued and death came in most cases from suffocation amidst great pain. The victim was also naked and humiliated---death on the cross was reserved for the most wretched of all criminals.

Wood was in short supply in Israel in Roman times. It is likely that small trees (such as these olive trees) were pressed into service to handle the thousands of executions. Crosses were stuck into the ground along major thoroughfares to offer maximum public viewing which included public ridicule and scorn. The terrible nature of this punishment helped enforce Rome's control over the Jews whom they hated anyway. In the Law of Moses hanging a criminal on a tree or cross was reserved for the most serious crimes, "And if a man has committed a sin worthy of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his corpse shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same day (for he who is hanged is accursed of God), so that you do not defile your land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance." (Deuteronomy 21:22-23)

There is much more to the death of Jesus on the cross than the visible suffering, terrible pain and suffering, and the incredible ignominy of such a horrible death for One who was not only innocent but also the very Son of God.

The Cosmic Struggle on the Cross

After speaking of Jesus and his role in the creation of the universe Paul in his letter to the Colossians tells us about invisible events taking place outside of the physical realm, and outside of our ordinary space-time continuum during the dying of Jesus on the cross,

The above passage reveals that not only did Jesus take upon Himself the sins of mankind when He died for us on the cross, but He also met fully the onslaught of demons, fallen angels, and all the power of evil forces in the heavens as well, disarming all of them completely.

Jesus' victory over man's greatest enemy, death, is boldly stated in the letter to the Hebrews:

In speaking to the Apostle John from the heavens, Jesus sent these words to mankind:

Jesus, on the cross, also won back any and all claims Satan had on man, or the earth, or as an authority of any kind in the heavens. If, for example, Satan claimed to hold the title deed of the earth (having gained it because of Adam's fall) that deed now belongs to Jesus as one of the results of His work on the cross. (This is known as the "ransom" work of Christ on the cross---it's a topic sometimes debated by theologians, but one that makes sense). Satan's destruction, too, was accomplished on the cross, outside of time. For the final outworkings in history of Satan's we now eagerly are all waiting. What is a completed work in the eternal time frame will come to pass in human history at God's appointed time on our earthly calendars. His unseen and invisible victory over cosmic evil on the cross is yet another reason why Jesus alone is qualified to receive from the Father all honor and power and glory:

Jesus: Great High Priest and Perfect Sacrifice

Two aspects of the death of Christ show something of the mystery of His death and the suffering He took onto Himself for our sake. The death of Jesus on the cross took but six hours as measured in dynamical time. Jesus was, for the first three hours on the cross, our Great High Priest. From noon till 3 P.M., during which time a strange and terrible darkness came over the earth, the High Priest became the Sacrifice.

If we now consider the nature of time and eternity (see Arthur C. Custance, Journey out of Time, Ref. 2) it must surely become clear that what was (for us) three hours' suffering by Jesus in total estrangement from the Father---was for Jesus an event in eternity which never ends. The work of Jesus on the cross, as far as we are concerned, is completely finished. Jesus is not now hanging on a cross. He has been raised from the dead, and sits in heaven, fully in charge of the universe as a resurrected man. One man, one son of Adam, Jesus the Lord is now living in glory and He is in charge of the universe.

But in another sense, if we could step into eternity and view an eternal being such as the Son of God experiencing life---if we could see things from the vantage point of eternity---then we would perceive that a part of the eternal God must suffer forever, outside of time, because of human sin.

The Eternal Sufferings of God in Christ

The statement of Jesus to one of the thieves crucified alongside him was, "Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise." (Luke 23:43) This statement suggests that when He died, Jesus left our time frame and immediately entered eternity. Likewise, the spirit of his companion on an adjacent cross, the dying, redeemed thief also left time and entered eternity when he also died that same day.

The next event in eternity for the human spirit of Jesus was His return to reenter His body in the tomb just before dawn on Easter Sunday morning. By means of the mighty power of the Holy Spirit, He then experienced the complete transformation of His body and His resurrection "out from among the dead." In the time frame of earth, these events are separated by perhaps 40 hours, but in eternity they are an immediate sequence of events, one following another. The dying thief was not raised from the dead at the same earth time as Jesus was raised from the dead. However, in his own (the thief's) consciousness, he stepped out of time to join the general resurrection of all the righteous dead which coincides in history with the Second Coming of Christ.

When contemplating what really took place on the cross in the divine transaction between God the Father and God the Son, we must not think of the sufferings of Christ, terrible as they were (beyond our comprehension), as if they were constrained to a "mere" (endurable) three hours of absolute time. Human beings are basically spirits, and spirits are connected to the eternal dimension. Jesus was not like us in another sense: He had known no sin and suffered the additional revulsion and destruction of being changed from a perfect man into a loathsome, repulsive creature God could not look upon. He became sin by absorbing evil into his own person. The Messiah's sufferings as foretold by David in Psalm 22 can only refer to Jesus on the cross, (see also Ref. 1):

God Suffers Far More than Any Man!

In reading all these passages it is easy to concentrate on what appears to be "unjust" punishment (from our self-righteous human viewpoint), or at least tragic human suffering. We would like to think it could somehow have been avoided! Most of us shrink from thinking too seriously about these passages knowing that but for the grace of God we would have, and should have, been sent to this terrible fate also.

According to Ray Stedman, a little reflection on the nature of God, for God is love, makes it clear that maintaining hell must be a terrible torment and pain to a God who is self-giving love. He is the Holy One who "takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked," and who "is not willing that any should perish." God must be willing, therefore, to pay the price of His own eternal pain, suffering, and hell so that the few who are righteous, (by faith), might enjoy eternal bliss. Such is another aspect of the mystery of the suffering of Christ on the cross. Most of us are accustomed to thinking that we suffer more than God, and that He surely cannot fully identify with our minor pains and afflictions.

But a loving God who created us for good things surely suffers infinitely more than any human parent when a beloved child refuses the good and chooses the path leading to destruction. Surely it must be grievously painful for a God who is love to be denied the opportunity to give of Himself to the objects of His love. No man can suffer more than Christ has already suffered, nor can mortal man contemplate what is meant by the "longsuffering" of our God (who is outside of time) which will continue, we are assured, at least until the world is changed. "God's kindness is meant to lead us to repentance," Paul writes in Romans, Chapter 2. How great is that kindness!

Our God is a Consuming Fire

The same fires which heal, purify and warm the righteous are the consuming, everlasting burnings of Gehenna, (named after GeHinnom, the valley of Hinnom, a garbage dump outside Jerusalem)---where beings who refused to become the human persons they were designed to be must finally endure the "backside" of love, which is hell. They are discarded because they have not been willing to become (by their own life-long choices) what their Designer intended them to be. C.S. Lewis wrote,

In spite of our outward circumstances and the downward spiral of moral, economic, political, and social conditions over the face of the earth, the Good News of the Bible is that evil has already been dethroned and its power over mankind and nature broken. The new creation is as inevitable as springtime's greening and blossoming. The loving heart of God our Father longs for us to accept his mercy, his forgiveness and mercy. He has gone to infinite lengths to make provision for us in the cosmic sacrifice of the Son of His love.

Notes

Crosses in Romans times were usually made from old trees and old branches since lumber was scarce. as noted at the beginning of this article. Hundreds of people were regularly killed slowly and painfully by the Romans in this way--while being exhibited in public . Our modern nicely finished and varnished wooden crosses are far from the horrifically terrible and ugly reality of real crucifixions. When someone violated t he Law of Moses in a serious way and was put to death, his body was publicly displayed by hanging the body on a tree. This was an ultimate disgrace, especially for the Jews. Notice how this reference to hanging on a tree is applied to the death of Jesus in the New Testament. Jesus, the innocent, sinless Lamb of God was MADE to be sin for us, and punished for our sins, thus He became cursed on our behalf--suffering the ultimate shame, humiliation and disgrace of being hung on a "tree". (See Acts 5:30, 10:39, 13:29, 1 Peter 2:24, Galatians 3:13).

1. One of the most wonderful passages on this subject is Isaiah's foreview of the Messiah:

2. A book by Dr. Arthur Custance on time and eternity is very be helpful, The Complexities of Time. The aspects of time and eternity as they enter into the sufferings of Christ on the cross are discussed in detail in Journey out of Time. See especially Chapter Five, When Time became an Eternity. Custance concludes with the following quote from John Gill (1697-1771), "When He was made sin and a curse...it was tantamount to an eternal death, or the suffering of the wicked in hell. For though the two kinds of suffering differ as to circumstances of time and place, the persons being different, the One finite and the Other infinite, yet as to the essence of these sufferings, they were the same. Eternal death consists in two things: Punishment in the form of deprivation, and punishment in the form of actual affliction. The former lies in an eternal separation from God, or a deprivation of his presence for ever: and the latter lies in an everlasting affliction in the everlasting fire of God's everlasting fire of God's wrath. Now Christ endured what was answerable to both of these. Eternity is not the essence of punishment but it is consequent of the fact that the sufferer cannot all at once bear the whole - being finite as sinful man is finite. And as it cannot be borne all at once it is continued ad infinitum. But Christ being an infinite Person, was able to bear the whole at once and the infinity of his Person abundantly compensates for the eternity of the punishment." An excellent discussion about pain and hell is presented by C.S. Lewis in his book, The Problem of Pain (Macmillan Publishing; New York, 1962).

6. See How God Saves Us. In a sense, the Christian is baptized "into Christ" before Christ went to the cross, instead of after Christ's resurrection. On the cross, our sins were transferred to the Lord who was our sin-bearer. But at the same time we were also crucified with Christ. This was necessary so that our old Adamic nature could be put to death once and for all. (These specifics are discussed in Romans). Of course there is deep mystery as to the connection between our present-time and eternity and the transfer of our sins back into the past 2000 years to Christ's finished work on the cross. How are we identified with Christ on the cross when long before we were born?

The Agony of Love

by Chuck Missler

Excerpt

by Dr. Chuck Missler • October 1, 2018

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. — Isaiah 53:4–5

Jesus Christ came to fulfill the Scriptures.

The Scriptures were written as a shadow, a dim reflection of Jesus Christ himself — to explain in advance God’s whole plan for the salvation of the human race. The more I study God’s Word, the more I’m amazed by God’s precision. The Old Testament gives us the history of the Jewish people, and it gives us psalms and proverbs and warnings and messages of all kinds, but the more I study it, the more I find Jesus Christ written on every page.

We find this foreshadowing fulfilled with great power in the first feast of the Jewish religious year — the Passover. At the Passover, the people of Israel were instructed to sacrifice an unblemished lamb and strike its blood on the doorposts and lintel of their homes as a sign to the Lord. Wherever the Lord saw the blood on the doorposts and lintel, He would pass over and spare those inside from His last great plague against Egypt. The blood of the lamb protected all those within the house, no matter who they were. Any house without the blood of the lamb was doomed, and the firstborn sons of all those in Egypt were killed that night.

Jesus died at Passover as our unblemished Lamb. He is the One who covers us and protects us from death. When we receive Him as our Lord and Savior, He begins to lead us from the bondage of our spiritual Egypt on the journey to our ultimate rest.

Because of the great significance of the Passover, the Lord told the Israelites to commemorate it every year throughout all generations. God even changed the calendar at that time. The Lord told Moses in Exodus 12:2 to establish the first month of the year as the month of the Exodus from Egypt.

We’re going to explore a topic that is absolutely unfathomable; the death of the Most High God. The story is so familiar we sometimes lose perspective. We are going to explore some often overlooked aspects of the crucifixion of Christ, recognizing the person that was arrested, abused, and murdered was not just a mere man. He was the Creator of the universe. He was crucified on a cross of wood, yet He made the hill on which it stood.

The God Outside of Time

We recognize that the great work Jesus accomplished on the cross was not merely three-dimensional in nature. Most of us are familiar with three-dimensional space: length, width and height. We’re also familiar with time as the fourth dimension, which is why physicists now talk about the “fabric” of space-time. If you have read any of my technical books, you are likely familiar with the concept of hyperspaces — the reality that exists in greater dimensions. Mathematicians and theoretical physicists suggest there might be as many as 11 dimensions in the universe. I will not go into depth, but when we simply realize that time is a physical property, then all kinds of insights about the Bible start to become vivid to us.

We understand three dimensional reality, because we live in it. We are able to draw three-dimensional representations on two-dimensional sheets of paper. Even children learn to draw cubes and cylinders — or to sketch realistic noses on faces using shading. Drawing three dimensions is relatively easy. However, it’s still difficult for us to comprehend four spatial dimensions, and five dimensions are just beyond most of us. The closest we can get is a shadow of these things.

Let’s say we were trying to explain three dimensions to two-dimensional beings. We might draw a shaded cube on a 2D surface. Another approach might be to unfold the cube, with its six sides laid out flat. Even then, it would be difficult for the 2D people to comprehend a 3D object, since they have concepts of length and width, but not depth.

We are in a similar situation with reference to the “spiritual” realm. We comprehend length, width and depth, and we can even comprehend time, but we struggle to appreciate greater dimensions. A four-dimensional cube called a “tesseract” attempts to portray four dimensions in a three dimensional space. A tesseract can be “unfolded” into six cubes, just as a 3D cube can be unfolded into six 2D squares. An unfolded tesseract was employed by Salvador Dali in his painting of Corpus Hypercubus, expressing the multi-dimensional aspect of Christ’s death. It’s quite remarkable, honestly, that Salvador Dali recognized the multi-dimensionality of the work that Christ did on the cross.

Corpus Hypercubus by Salvador Dalí

We cannot fully conceive of it, but I do want to try to understand a little better what went on between Gethsemane on Passover and the tomb in the garden. It was a work that extended far beyond that day in time. The blood of Christ was shed to pay for the sins of those standing at the foot of the cross, but it also paid for the sins of those who lived from Adam until the end of this world. It was a sacrifice that transcended time and space.

We are going to explore those six hours that Christ spent on the cross. We realize that they involved not just six straight hours — but all of eternity. We’re going to explore the most cataclysmic event in the entire universe, one that still directly impacts you and me today.

Gethsemane

Let’s turn first to the Garden of Gethsemane in the early morning hours of the day Christ was executed. We find important scriptural principles between Gethsemane and the cross, and I like to begin in Matthew 26:

Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad. But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee — Matthew 26:31–32

It’s interesting how often Jesus warned His disciples about His death in the Gospels. He repeatedly told them that He was going to die but would then rise again. They were expecting Jesus to come as the conquering King, the Messiah who would free Israel from Roman rule and take His position on the throne of David. That’s what they were expecting, and this whole business of sacrifice and death didn’t make sense to them. They didn’t hear Jesus, because they could only see the picture they had already formed in their heads. It was only after His death that they finally put it together and remembered that He said all these things in advance.

Peter answered and said unto him, Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended. Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. Peter said unto him, Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee. Likewise also said all the disciples. — Matthew 26:33–35

It’s clear that Peter doesn’t appreciate the brutal truth, the seriousness, of what Jesus has just told them. We can tell that he doesn’t actually believe that his Shepherd is going to be smitten, because in just a few hours he will deny he even knows Jesus. He’s filled with braggadocio right now. “I’ll never be offended! I’ll never deny you!” Peter was a powerful, big fisherman. He was a man’s man, but he was not truly prepared to die for Christ. Not yet.

It’s interesting how we always fail. We are in the most danger in our areas of strength and not our weaknesses. It’s where we have the most self-confidence that we are most vulnerable to spiritual attack. Peter’s strongest characteristic was courage (not caution), but he depended on his courage, and it failed him. Jesus knew this was going to happen and warned Peter, but Peter wasn’t really listening. None of the disciples were listening. They echoed Peter’s self-confidence, yet that same night they all fled, just as Jesus knew they would.

The disciples didn’t yet know their promises were empty. With those empty promises still echoing in their ears, Jesus led the way to the Garden of Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives. We think of Gethsemane as a garden of ancient olive trees, their green branches spreading overhead. The word Gethsemane means “oil press”, and it’s appropriate that olives were pressed and crushed there to produce their valuable oil, because the Son of God retreated there to pray in anticipation of His being crushed in like manner. Again, Jesus understood the magnitude of the sacrifice that lay before Him, and the disciples who were His best friends didn’t get it. They recognized that something was wrong, and they tried to stick with Him, but they didn’t appreciate the magnitude of the day. If they had, they would have stayed up with Jesus to grieve and pray with Him.

Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder. And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy. Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me. — Matthew 26:36–38

When the King James translators chose the term “exceedingly sorrowful” to describe Jesus’ heart, they did well. Matthew used the word perilupos here, and he could have hardly found a stronger, more intense word in the Greek to describe the depth of Christ’s emotional state. Jesus explains to His disciples that He’s suffering from an incredible grief and sadness. Mark uses the same term in his Gospel, but he also says that Jesus was astonished — ekthambeo .[1] Jesus was astounded, even horrified, by the great emotion that had come upon Him. Luke uses the word agonia, which means “agony.” [2]

It’s through Dr. Luke that we find that Jesus sweated blood. In Luke’s rendering of this passage, we find that Jesus’s emotional agony was so great that sweat as great drops of blood dripped off of Him. Luke was not an impressionable layman, and this is strange language for a doctor to use. These descriptions give us a small sense of the suffering Jesus is working through as He prepares for the solitary experience that had never before been required of any creature — one that would never be repeated.

Jesus pulls aside Peter, James, and John and asks them to wait and stay awake with Him. We can picture this grieving man, the very Son of God, falling down there under the olive branches and seeking His Father with all His soul.

And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. — Matthew 26:39

We see here the divinity of Christ as much as in any miracle He ever performed. In the greatest of agony, He still placed His own desires aside and entrusted the whole of that terrible day into the hands of God the Father. “Not as I will, but as thou wilt.” Jesus, God made flesh, submitted Himself wholly to the Father. Some people regard submission as a form of self-devaluation, but that’s not what it is. Submission is an act of trust. With these words, Jesus demonstrates complete confidence and trust in the Father’s purposes despite His own personal distress.

And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. — Matthew 26:40–41

We have all been disappointed and hurt by friends who have failed to comprehend our pain. We have all been in situations where people minimized our struggle and difficulty. If ever a man needed faithful companions to stand with Him, it was here. However, notice that while Jesus is disappointed by Peter, James, and John, He recognizes that they are just tired. His concern is with the battles they themselves will face in the coming hours. He wants them to pray so they can avoid falling prey to the enemy’s devices.

He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done. And he came and found them asleep again: for their eyes were heavy. And he left them, and went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words. — Matthew 26:42–44

Three times Jesus prays that if there is any other way, if there is anything else that can be done, He desires the Father to find it. Three times He prays this under great duress, and three times He places Himself wholly under the will of the Father. This passage is important to all of us, because it shows us that there were no other options. If there is any other path to Heaven but through the blood of Jesus, then Jesus died in vain. This was it. This was the way it had to be.

All of the Law and the Prophets had been leading up to this Passover, this day of the crucifixion. Christ’s sacrifice had been intended since the foundation of the world, [3] and Jesus repeatedly let the disciples know that He was the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets. [4] Hebrews chapter 10 explains that the whole of the sacrificial system was put together to present a type, a foreshadowing, of Christ as the pure sacrifice who came to take away the sins of the world.

The writer of Hebrews explains this in great detail, but he sums up the situation in one verse, saying in Hebrews 9:22, “And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.” That was the whole point of it. John the Baptist understood this when he introduced Jesus in John 1:29, saying, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” Jesus had to die. He had to take all the world’s sins on Himself. There was no other way for us to be saved from our dire predicament.

We suspect that Jesus prayed for several hours that night, but after a time He stopped rousing the disciples and let them sleep. It’s interesting that the disciples could not stay awake for an hour, but Christ’s enemies were able to watch all night. The disciples slumbered until Jesus woke them — when He could hear the soldiers approaching with Judas.

Then cometh he to his disciples, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going: behold, he is at hand that doth betray me. — Matthew 26:45–46

It Started in a Garden

It’s interesting that Jesus began that fateful day in a garden, since it was in another garden that humanity’s trouble first started. We are all very familiar with the Garden of Eden and the events that transpired there, but it’s interesting to compare those events with the ones that took place in Gethsemane that early morning.

In Eden, all was beautiful and perfect and full of light. In Gethsemane, there was darkness, terror and pain. Adam and Eve submitted to the will of Satan in Eden, and in Gethsemane the Last Adam submitted to the will of His Father. In Eden, Adam sinned, and in Gethsemane his Savior suffered. In Eden, Adam and Eve failed to trust God, and in Gethsemane, Christ trusted God implicitly. Adam failed in Eden, but in Gethsemane the Redeemer conquered. Adam fell before Satan, but soldiers fell before Christ. Adam condemned the whole human race, and Jesus won us back. Adam took the fruit from Eve’s hand, but Christ received the cup from His Father’s hand. Adam hid himself, but Christ boldly showed Himself. God sought out the first Adam, but the last Adam sought God. Adam was driven from the garden, but Christ went willingly.

However, there is yet another garden in this picture. Adam fell in Genesis 3, and Christ suffered in Gethsemane, but we find Christ mistaken for a groundskeeper just a few days later in the garden where He rose victorious from the grave!

Betrayal

Jesus knew that Judas would betray Him. He knew it at the Passover meal, the Last Supper. What is especially notable is that Jesus told Judas to go — to go right then. We find that Judas had already met with the chief priests in Matthew 26:14–16 and asked them what they would give him for Jesus. They agreed to thirty pieces of silver, and from that point Judas was constantly looking for a time to hand over Jesus to them. Jesus knew Judas had done this, but He chose that Passover evening to send Judas on his way. Judas had betrayal in his heart, and John tells us that Satan entered into him at that Passover meal.

And after the sop Satan entered into him. Then said Jesus unto him, That thou doest, do quickly. — John 13:27

Jesus tells him, “Go do it. You’re going to do it, so do it now.”

The irony of this is that the chief priests and scribes and leaders had met about Jesus and discussed how they might kill Him, but they had specifically chosen to not take Jesus on a feast day. There was too great a crowd in Jerusalem during the feast and too much possible commotion.

And consulted that they might take Jesus by subtilty, and kill him. But they said, Not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar among the people. — Matthew 26:4

They purposely wanted to avoid troubling Jesus on a feast day, but Jesus forced their hand by telling Judas to hurry up and go. Judas went off to collect a group of men to arrest Jesus that day. He had to leave the dinner, because the jig was up. It was now or never. The Lord is always the master of ceremonies, and it was important for the fulfillment of Scripture for Jesus to die on Passover as the ultimate Passover Lamb, whose blood protects us from death. Jesus is the sacrifice, but He is still in control. As we watch all of this, it’s interesting to discover that every detail is nudged along by the Lord, because He has a destiny to fulfill in a particular way at a particular time.

John 18:2 tells us that Judas knew that spot in Gethsemane where Jesus went to pray. It was a spot Jesus apparently often retreated to with His disciples. Judas met with the arresting party and led them to that quiet place.

And Judas also, which betrayed him, knew the place: for Jesus ofttimes resorted thither with his disciples. Judas then, having received a band of men and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees, cometh thither with lanterns and torches and weapons. — John 18:2–3

The word “band” in the Greek is a term which means a tenth of a legion — a cohort of 400–600 men. It’s interesting that about 600 soldiers were stationed at Herod’s Antonia Fortress, so that group might have been sent out, but it’s clear the Temple police are also present. This is no small group sent out to arrest Jesus. Yet, the only reason they are able to arrest Jesus is because He intends to go with them. If it had not been part of God’s plan, this oversized party of soldiers would have lost their prey. The next few verses put this in perspective even more than is initially apparent.

Jesus therefore, knowing all things that should come upon him, went forth, and said unto them, Whom seek ye? They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith unto them, I am he. And Judas also, which betrayed him, stood with them. As soon then as he had said unto them, I am he, they went backward, and fell to the ground. — John 18:4–6

That’s amazing. Jesus says, “I am He,” and they all fall backward to the ground. We miss something in the English, because the translators have added the implied “He” for the benefit of our English sentence structure. In the Greek, Jesus merely says, “I AM,” and the soldiers all fall backwards. This reminds us of John 8:58 when Jesus told the Pharisees, “Before Abraham was, I AM.” We miss the significance of little scenes like this, but the Jewish leaders always come to our aid by grabbing rocks to attack Jesus. They wanted to stone Jesus in John 8 because He was calling Himself by the name of the God of Israel — “I AM.” He was connecting Himself with the voice of the Burning Bush in Exodus 3:14:

And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said,
Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you. — Exodus 3:14

John begins his gospel by stating that Jesus was in the beginning, and all things were created by Him. Paul affirms this in Colossians 1:16–17, stating that Jesus is the Creator, that He is before all things, and He holds everything together — “by Him all things consist.” Here in John 18, Jesus merely says, “I AM,” and the power in that statement blows down the enemy. In John 8, He walked out of the Temple through the crowd and left the angry Pharisees behind. However, now the Lord’s time has come, and He waits for the soldiers to get back up and do their jobs. Yet, even now He is filled with divine power and authority.

Then asked he them again, Whom seek ye? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus answered, I have told you that I am he: if therefore ye seek me, let these go their way: That the saying might be fulfilled, which he spake, Of them which thou gavest me have I lost none. — John 18:7–9

Jesus tells the soldiers to let His disciples go, and they do. Jesus is still in charge. Notice that usually when people fell down before Him, Jesus spoke comforting words to them. In Luke 5:8–10 after Peter, James, and John caught a great number of fish, Peter fell at the feet of Jesus, and Jesus told him not to be afraid. On the Mount of Transfiguration in Matthew 17:5–7, the disciples fell when they heard the Father’s voice, but Jesus told them to not be afraid. Here in Gethsemane, Jesus does not say, “Be not afraid,” to the soldiers. This is their time to be afraid and to pay attention. Judas had led a whole cohort of 400–600 men to the garden to collect Jesus, which suggests they had intended to grab the disciples along with their leader. Six hundred men are not necessary for one lowly carpenter. They certainly had intentions of seizing the disciples as well, but Jesus tells them, “Look, I’m the one you want. Let these others go.” Jesus is still the Shepherd protecting His sheep. Jesus offers Himself freely to the band of men, but He commands them to let His disciples go, and the soldiers do so — even after Peter pulls out a sword and starts swinging.

By the way, it’s interesting that John says Jesus spoke in fulfillment of the saying, “Of them which thou gavest me have I lost none.” It sounds as though it’s a fulfillment of the Old Testament, but it’s actually a fulfillment of something Jesus had said earlier that night in John 17:12. John recognizes Jesus’ own words as prophecy.

Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the high priest’s servant, and cut off his right ear. The servant’s name was Malchus. Then said Jesus unto Peter, Put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it? — John 18:10–11

Here is Peter again, always doing things upside down and backwards. Here he is courageous when he should be calm and still, but later he’s cowardly when he should have been courageous. We know from Luke 22:38 that there were two swords between the disciples when they went out to the garden. Both Luke and John use the word machaira for these swords, and the machaira was a short sword or a large thick dagger about 18 inches long. It was thick, not sharp, designed for splitting helmeted skulls. Obviously Peter was not highly skilled in battle, and he missed by about three inches. I don’t think he was going for the ear of Malchus.

Jesus puts a stop to Peter’s rowdy effort to fight, and He reminds Peter of what He had told them earlier that night. He has a mission from His Father to accomplish here. Again, Jesus was saving Peter’s life, because he could have been killed in any ensuing scuffle. John doesn’t tell us so, but we read in Luke 22:51 that Jesus healed Malchus’ ear before they took Him away.

Have you noticed that nobody ever dies in Jesus’ presence? The woman caught in adultery was not stoned. Nobody perished in the boat in the storms. Peter didn’t drown when he tried to walk on water. Instead, those who had died were raised from the dead, like Lazarus in John 11 and the little girl in Mark 5:41. Nobody ever dies when Jesus is there — until Jesus Himself is put to death of His own volition.

Then the band and the captain and officers of the Jews took Jesus, and bound him, And led him away to Annas first; for he was father in law to Caiaphas, which was the high priest that same year. Now Caiaphas was he, which gave counsel to the Jews, that it was expedient that one man should die for the people.— John 18:12–14

We find here the beginning of a series of unlawful acts taken against Jesus that day. He did not resist arrest, but they bound Him anyway. It was unlawful to bind a prisoner before condemnation, but they did. This was just the beginning of the injustices…

This excerpt is from Dr. Chuck Missler & Dr. Mark Eastman’s new book The Agony of Love, available from K-House.

Jesus' Death: Six Hours of Eternity on the Cross