You may have heard that Jesus was 100% percent God and 100% Man. Although not mathematically accurate, it is true and that is part of the beauty of Jesus. We shall come to how we know this later. But for now, we Jesus in His 100% humanity in the Garden of Gethsemane, agonizing before His Father. He prayed that if it was possible for the cross to be taken away, God should please do so. But God told Him there was no other way to save you and me from the clutches of the devil. Imagine, if Jesus had not gone to the cross, the devil would be forcibly manipulating people.
Granted, Satan still manipulates some people but only those who submit their wills to him. The devil can no longer force you to obey his will. Thank God that Jesus went to the cross and that even in His agony, He left it all to His Father’s will. “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.” That gave God the space to tell Him there was no other way to save man. Oh, how I wish we would be more like Jesus – leaving everything, even in great agony, to God’s will. Thank you, Jesus!
Gladly, God Gave Him Just A Cup
We now come to that statement that opened this post. Jesus is fully man and fully God. When the bible wants to talk of the humanity of Jesus it calls Him the Son of Man. On the other hand, to signify Jesus’ deity the bible calls Him Son of God. Search for those two terms to see at what point Jesus was fully man and when He was fully God.
Possibly, we don’t have time to pay too much attention to Jesus’ prayer in the garden of Gethsemane. Or for that matter, to any other portion of scriptures. And therefore, we may assume that a cup is just there by accident. I hope you know that nothing happens to the child of God by accident. All of our steps – if we are righteous – are ordered by the Lord. So, the fact of a cup passing over Jesus was not there by accident.
Thank God that He did not give His Son a river or a well or a sea but a cup. Those other bodies of water have no bottom, no end, and who knows what might have happened then? But a cup has a limit, an endpoint. Consequently, when God told Jesus that there was no other way to save mankind, it was not a crushing blow.
What that means for you and for me is that all our afflictions have an expiration date. God says that He delivers us from them all, hallelujah! That knowledge should bring us great peace when God says to us that there is no other way. When He says to us that we have to go through a certain affliction before we can be more like Jesus.
Even For God, There Is No Other Way To Save Us
The Apostle Paul prayed about the thorn in his flesh; some people believe it was blindness but that is immaterial. The important thing is that God told Paul there was no other way for him to truly know God. And Paul accepted it, which is why many times now, believers everywhere learn from Paul’s letters. We all must experience a situation where God tells us there is no other way to save us. Otherwise, we cannot become intimate with God.
That is what Jesus did. He left His life in His Father’s hands and God told Him He had to go to the cross. There was no other way to save us, despite the agony that both Jesus and God felt. Don’t imagine for one moment that God was not afflicted as He watched His sinless Son on the cross. Thank God, He is not like some human parents. Anytime they see their son in some pain, they do all in their power to rescue that child. It is likely that they are also suffering with the child. But that is not the way of God and if we love our children, that should not be our way. Children must go through tough times to be able to withstand such later,
Usually, there is no other way to save them from tough times if we want them to develop properly. So, even if watching them suffer hurts us, we must be like God and let them go through it. But we should then make it only a cup of affliction, not a river or a sea. God did and today, we are called children of God
Maranatha!
