When Agonizing Becomes Exemplary

When Agonizing Becomes Exemplary

Agony is a common-to-man reality.  In our current vocabulary, people agonize over decisions all the time:  what car to buy, what school to send our children to, how we’ll ever afford college, why we got passed over for that promotion, etc.  The word can lose a bit of its luster when we use it in this way.  But sometimes really heavy things happen in life that result in real, deep agony:  unexpected death, stage 4 cancer diagnoses, a school shooting in our city.  When we ourselves agonize over life, typically, we are in a battle between unbelief and faith.  It’s a roller coaster ride.  We can likely point to examples of people who agonized well, though imperfectly, on the whole.  We can also point to folks who were totally undone and shipwrecked.  

The Lord Jesus Christ knows agony better than any of us.  And the object of His agonizing is very informative for us.  In the garden of Gethsemane, on the night He was betrayed, Jesus is in agony, so much so that he is sweating blood.  This is a new level of emotional distress!  And it’s not because Jesus has lost faith or is on the verge of mental breakdown.  He was the most emotionally stable human being who ever lived.  This is agony of a different character and nature than we know.  His was a perfectly holy agony.  He did not sin in HIs agony.  He didn’t lose faith; He didn’t doubt the Father’s love or favor.  And yet, blood pooled on the garden soil as it seeped through His pores and dripped from His brow.  

What could cause the Son of Man, the eternal Son, to agonize like this?  

Jesus knew He was going to be killed.  Surely, He was aware of the physical trauma that lay just around the corner.  But it is the nature of His death we must consider to get the fullest answer to our question.  Jesus would be executed for crimes He did not commit.  He was being judged, but not merely by power-hungry religious zealots.  He was being judged by the Father for the sins of the world.  His task was to drink the cup of God’s wrath, so that by His atoning death for sinners, sinners might be justified—declared righteous in God’s sight.  

Jesus agonizes because He is aware of the storm clouds of wrath that He must endure in obedience to the Father.  

And here, in His humanity, Jesus exemplifies the only holy response to God’s wrath toward us:  total, untainted agony.  

If I stop and ask myself, “when was the last time I agonized over something so eternally significant as the wrath of God?” my answer is probably, “I don’t know.”  And I realize immediately the need to repent.  

This lack of agonizing shows up everywhere.  I trivialize sin in my life.  It doesn’t disturb me that much, because who wants to be undone by every short-fuse moment of a normal Tuesday?  Who wants to live with such constant awareness of the unrighteousness that still dwells in me?  It also shows up in my lack of zeal for evangelism.  If the wrath of God is being revealed against ALL ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, the terror of that thought must, in love, drive me to my knees to pray for the lost AND to open my mouth to testify to the only means of rescue: Christ crucified.  

What else makes sense if Jesus’ agonizing becomes our example?  

Father, fill us with your Holy Spirit, that we might agonize over the coming of your wrath like Jesus did, so that we might learn to hate sin and grow to love the lost in prayer and by witnessing to the cross-work of the Lord Jesus Christ.