An Exceptional Exchange

“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.

Jesus was at Gethsemane where He was to fight the greatest battle of His life.

Before He ever came to live upon this earth, He had voluntarily agreed to follow every step of the plan of salvation up to the end. With this purpose, He “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:7). He willingly came to live as a man among men. He, the Son of God, the Prince of the universe, the co-worker of the Father in the great work of creation was to become like one of His creatures on earth, not even like an angel, which is higher than man. It was an incredible degradation!

“He made himself of no reputation” appears in the original Greek version as “kenose ton eauto tou” and is literally translated into German as “entäußerte sich selbst”, which means “emptied himself”, while in Spanish it says “se despojó a sí mismo”, meaning “He stripped his own self”; He took the place of fallen man. In other words, although He was equal to God, He decided to be born as a fragile baby in a poor environment and grow as a man among men.
He was the Son of God and the Son of man, born from the Holy Spirit and a woman, with a dual nature.

“And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8). Already as a man, endowed with a high intelligence and a noble character, He went all the way along the path of self-denial, which reached its climax when He voluntarily, without any resistance, stretched His torn up body against the rough wood of the cross to be crucified.

In Paul’s epistle to the Hebrews, it is written that Jesus despised the shame and endured the cross and sits at the right hand of the throne of God. In Isaiah 53:11 we learn why He did that, because “he shall see the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied”, which in Greek is expressed even clearer, “he will see the fruit of the pain of his soul and shall be satisfied”! We are the fruit of that pain and for our sake He went through the greatest anguish any man has ever gone through. Jesus did not live for the moment, but His thoughts were always beyond space and time, therefore the joy He experienced just at the
thought of sharing eternity with us gave Him power to endure the denigrating death on the cross of Calvary. He did not mind the shame, so that His love would give fruit of repentance.

We all need to have a special encounter with Jesus at Gethsemane. There is where an exceptional exchange takes place. We give Him our sins, and He gives us in return a cup full of His grace and covers us with His righteousness! Shouldn’t our heart be full of gratitude as we experience that His banner over us is love? This is actually quite an unusual exchange!

“What shall I render unto the Lord [for] all his benefits toward me?” asks David, and when he finds the answer, “I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord”, he takes his harp and composes and sings praises to His Lord and Master all his life long. Shall we not do the same? Do we not approach the Lord’s Supper with grateful hearts and a song on our lips? While we rejoice immensely ?every time we take the cup containing the
symbol of Jesus’ blood poured for us and thus announce His death on our behalf, the cup Jesus took in Gethsemane trembled in His hands and drops of blood covered His forehead. “In His soul anguish He lay prostrate on the cold earth. He was realizing His Father’s frown. He had taken the cup of suffering from the lips of guilty m a n , and proposed to drink it Himself, and in its place give to man the cup of blessing. The wrath that would have f a l l e n upon man was now falling upon Christ. It was here that the mysterious cup trembled in His hand.” (Amazing Grace, p.169)

“The fate of humanity trembled in the balance. Christ might even now refuse to drink the cup apportioned to guilty man. It was not yet too late. He might wipe the bloody sweat from His brow, a n d leave man to perish in his iniquity. He might say, Let the transgressor receive the penalty of his sin, and I will go back to My Father. Will the Son of God drink the bitter cup of humiliation and agony? Will the innocent suffer the consequences of the curse of sin, to save the guilty? The words fall tremblingly from the pale lips of Jesus, ?O My Father, if this cup may not pass away from Me, except I drink it, Thy will be done.’” (The Desire of Ages, p. 690)

A medical doctor explains us that due to His anguish His blood pressure had reached the highest possible degree, therefore his forehead was covered with
blood drops. But the fear of death was not greater than His fear of God and His ?love for man, so He drank the cup. He accepted to go through the experience of what should be yours and my second death, a complete separation from the Father, if we ever refuse His sacrifice. Because He drank the cup and took our place in Gethsemane , He sits today as our Advocate next to the Father and pleads for us whenever we approach Him in prayer and ask Him to intercede for us and our beloved ones.

At the end of the world, when the life of every man will have been weighed in the balance and many of us will be found righteous because we have accepted this mysterious sacrifice of love, we “will wear robes woven in the loom of heaven with not one thread of humanity in them” (Temperance, p. 292) and with joyful and grateful hearts participate at the wedding feast of the Lamb! On the other hand, many others, who have not emptied themselves
to give up their sinful nature and accept the one offered them by God, will receive their part of the content of the cup handed to Jesus at Gethsemane, as the plagues will be poured upon the impenitent.

When Jesus’ battle with self at Gethsemane was completely won, and His free will was totally surrendered to His Father, He was ready to go through all sorts of outrageous insults and mishandling.

“Then Pilate therefore took Jesus, and scourged [him]. And the soldiers platted a crown of thorns, and put [it] on his head, and they put on him a purple robe, and said, Hail, King of the Jews! And they smote him with their hands.” John 19:2, 3.

The soldiers platted a crown of thorns and with violence placed it upon His head. A thread of blood slid down from every thorn and covered His lovely countenance disfigured by pain and sorrow. The drops of blood on his forehead, at Gethsemane, were the external expression of his inner agony,
of his mental pain, of the desperate battle in his soul, while the blood rolling down His face and His bruised body, at Calvary, were a sign of His physical pain. Because He suffered in the body, the mind and the spirit and overcame, He can sanctify us completely.

He, who had left His royal crown and the adoration of the angels and stepped down into this valley of sorrow and pain in order to save us, was c r o w n e d with a wreath of thorns for our sins! H a v e we ever thought o f how many thorns each one of us has personally contributed to this crown? Isn’t it another exceptional exchange to think that we crowned Him with thorns, which covered His countenance with blood, and we shall receive instead a golden crown and have a bright shining countenance illuminated by His grace? No wonder the gospel is foolishness to those who are lost! Shouldn’t this supreme expression of love make us fall in love with Jesus and make us able to openly declare it with the words in Songs of Songs 2:5,“Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love”?

May the Lord help us understand a little more of the great price paid for our salvation and give us the courage to “come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).
AMEN.

Teresa Corti