Before Jesus Christ was formally made an offering in sacrifice, as a
means of man’s inter-union and inter-communion with God, there were two
illustrations of his mission, in the giving of his blood for the bringing of
man into right relations with God. These were, his circumcision, and his agony
in Gethsemane.
By his circumcision, Jesus brought his humanity into the blood-covenant
which was between God and the seed of God’s friend, Abraham, of whose nature,
according to the flesh, Jesus had become a partaker; Jesus thereby pledged his
own blood in fidelity to that covenant; to that all who should thereafter
become his by their faith, might, through him, be heirs of faithful Abraham.
The sweet singer of the Christian Year seems to find this thought in this
incident in the life of the Holy Child:
“Like sacrificial wine
Poured on a victim’s head,
Are those few precious drops of thine,
Now first to offering led.
“They are the pledge and seal
Of Christ’s unswerving faith,
Given to his Sire, our souls to heal,
Although it cost his death.
“They, to his Church of old,
To each true Jewish heart,
In gospel graces manifold,
Communion blest impart.”
In Gethsemane, the sins and the needs of humanity so pressed upon the
burdened soul of Jesus that his very life was forced out, as it were, from his
aching, breaking heart, in his boundless sympathy with his loved ones, in his
infinite longings for their union with God, through their union with himself,
in the covenant of blood he was consummating in their behalf. And being in an
agony, he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became as it were great drops of
blood falling down to the ground.”
Because of his God-ward purpose of bringing men into a loving covenant
with God, Jesus gave of his blood in the covenant-rite of circumcision. Because
of his man-ward sympathy with the needs and the trails of those whom he had
come to save, and because of the crushing burden of their death-bringing sins,
Jesus gave of his blood in an agony of intercessory suffering. Therefore it is
that the Litany cry of the ages goes up to him in fulness of meaning: “By the
mystery of thy holy incarnation; by thy holy nativity and circumcision; . . .
by thine agony and bloody sweat, . . . Good Lord, deliver us.” (H. Clay
Trumbull, The Blood Covenant [2d ed.; 1893, repr. Kirkwood, Miss.: Impact
Books, Inc., 1975, 2009], 278-80)
We also find the
following quoted on p. 279 n. 1:
“In the garden of Gethsemane, Christ endured mental agony so intense
that, had it not been limited by divine interposition, it would probably have
destroyed his life without the aid of any other sufferings; but having been
thus mitigated, its effects were confined to violent palpitation of the heart
accompanied with bloody sweat. . . . Dr. Millingen’s explanation of bloody
sweat . . . it judicious. ‘It is probable,’ says he, ‘that this strange
disorder arises from a violent commotion of the nervous system, turning the
streams of blood out of their natural course, and forcing the red particles
cutaneous excretories.’” (Stroud’s Physical Cause of the Death of Christ,
pp. 74, 380)
