The love of God constrains Him, too. He is bound to us in a covenant of love.
I will commit myself to you forever; I will commit myself to you in righteousness and justice, in steadfast love and tender compassion. Hosea 2:19 NET
We see this most fully, most clearly, in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus kneels down to pray and His spirit contends with God. His need is so great, His focus is so intense, His agony so extreme, that “his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood” (Luke 22:44). What’s this wrestling match over? The will of God. Jesus does not want to die. And at the same time He knows that the success of His entire mission rests on His obedience all the way to Golgotha.
Finally in the end He submits. He surrenders. He says, “Not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42 NIV). Here is Jesus’ narrow road. Here is where His love for God hems Him in and keeps Him on a path that is nearly impossible to walk.
Your will be done. We assume Jesus must have said this with resignation, accepting the unpleasantness of God’s will. We know Jesus allowed Himself to be falsely accused, stripped, beaten and crucified. And although few of us have suffered to the extent that Christ suffered, for most of us our surrender feels just as painful.
“Please take this cup of suffering away from me” (Luke 22:42). Have you ever found yourself begging God for this same relief? Please take away this cancer. This financial burden. This depression. This fill-in-the-blank with whatever it is that drives you to your knees. My friend, be encouraged that Jesus, God-in-the-flesh, struggled to accept the will of God. This ultimately was the test, the battle that He fought on our behalf. Would He love God’s will more than His own, even when it meant He had to surrender His life?
If the Cross was a piece of cake for Jesus, then it’s meaningless for us. There’s no hope for us there – we already know what it means to have a perfect standard that we don’t measure up to. This is why we can’t forget that Jesus was human, just like us. He held the sin-nature that has plagued humans since the fall to the Cross and put it to death. He broke its grip. He ended our enslavement. It’s because Jesus was human that His victory is our victory.
At any point, Jesus could have called it quits. He could have tapped out, walked away, gotten down from the Cross. It was in His power to do so. But how could He have done that and remained true to who He was? Because He wasn’t only human, He was also fully divine. So He loved us with unfailing covenant love. It was love that controlled Him. It determined His actions. It set His course.
It wasn’t nails that held the Son of God to the Cross. No iron, no created thing, could have done that. No, it was love – love that yearned for us to be rescued, reconciled and restored. Because Jesus was both completely human, and completely divine, there was no other path for Him to walk than the one laid out by love.
What Jesus really prayed in the Garden was no different than what He taught His disciples to pray on the mountainside. Oh Papa, may your name be honored. May the time when you make everything right again come quickly. May your will be done here on earth, the same way it’s already done in the heavenly realm (Matthew 6:9-10, paraphrase). Your will be done.
What is the will of God? That we be reconciled with Him and our perfect relationship with Him recovered. That the curse and bondage of sin would be broken and we would be free. That our original goodness and glory would be restored. God intends excellence, beauty, joy, and total well-being for us. That isn’t something unpleasant we need to resign ourselves to. That is our hope. It’s what we long for!
This hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. Romans 5:5