Chapter 161—The Father’s Frown
This is your hour, and the power of darkness.
Luke 22:53
.
As the Son of God bowed in the attitude of prayer in the Garden of
Gethsemane, the agony of His spirit forced from His pores sweat like great
drops of blood. It was here that the horror of great darkness surrounded Him.
The sins of the world were upon Him. He was suffering in man’s stead as
a transgressor of His Father’s law. Here was the scene of temptation. The
divine light of God was receding from His vision, and He was passing into
the hands of the powers of darkness. 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 man, and proposed to drink it Himself, and
in its place give to man the cup of blessing. The wrath that would have fallen
upon man was now falling upon Christ. It was here that the mysterious cup
trembled in His hand.
Jesus had often resorted to Gethsemane with His disciples for meditation
and prayer.... Never before had the Saviour visited the spot with a heart
so full of sorrow. It was not bodily suffering from which the Son of God
shrank.... The sins of a lost world were upon Him and overwhelming Him.
It was a sense of His Father’s frown, in consequence of sin, which rent His
heart with such piercing agony and forced from His brow great drops of
blood....
We can have but faint conceptions of the inexpressible anguish of God’s
dear Son in Gethsemane, as He realized His separation from His Father in
consequence of bearing man’s sin. He became sin for the fallen race. The
sense of the withdrawal of His Father’s love pressed from His anguished soul
these mournful words: “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death”
(
Matthew 26:38
)....
The divine Son of God was fainting, dying. The Father sent a messenger
from His presence to strengthen the divine Sufferer and brace Him to tread
the bloodstained path. Could mortals have viewed the amazement and the
sorrow of the angelic host as they watched in silent grief the Father separating
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