Various explanations suggest
themselves, only to be dismissed as inadequate or manifestly untrue. It may be
stated categorically that Jesus was not moved to this prayer by any dread of
physical suffering. Crucifixion was probably the vilest form of torture and
death that the wit of man had devised up to that time. The searing pain of
nails in hands and feet, the apparently endless hours of agony as the wracked
and tortured body hung in indescribable wretchedness and misery, the parching
thirst, the unutterable hopelessness and longing for death—all these factors,
each of which it is almost impossible for the modern reader to appreciate,
contributed to make crucifixion a prospect from which the strongest of men
would quail. But Jesus was no physical coward. He who could sleep quietly and
wake calmly in a small storm-stricken boat when experienced fishermen cried out
in their terror, he who could go forth coolly facing the fierce incalculable
antics of two uncontrollable maniacs, he who could wither his adversaries with
a quiet penetrating question even when the death-dealing missiles were poised
in their hands, he was not afraid of crucifixion. Else were he a craven breaker
of his own commandment: “Fear them not therefore”, and the disciple would be
greater than his Master.
With far greater likelihood and
with much stronger support in Scripture, the suggestion has been put that Jesus
shrank, not from the suffering of the Cross, but from its shame. For assuredly crucifixion was regarded in those days not
with the awe and reverence with which the death of Christ has since invested
it, but with loathing, abhorrence and contempt. Crucifixion was the death of a
felon or a runaway slave. It was for all the world as though in these days some
Christadelphian of tried integrity and proven piety should be publicly charged
with (say) the foul crime of the callous neglect and brutal ill-treatment of
his children or with one of the beastly sexual offences such as the salacious
Sunday newspapers delight to retail to the lascivious minds of their readers.
Such, frequently, are the
associations of crucifixion in Scripture. “Crucifying the Son of God afresh”
means “putting him to an open shame” (Heb. 6:6). “Cursed of God was every one
that hangeth on a tree” (Gal. 3:13). To the Jews, a crucified Christ was a
stumbling block, to the Greeks foolishness (1 Cor. 1:23). And Heb. 12:2 states
plainly that when Jesus endured the cross, he did so despising the shame of it.
(Harry A. Whittaker, “Gethsemane,” The Christadelphian 87, no.
1029 [March 1950]: 72-73)
