18 OCTOBER (1874)

The agony in Gethsemane

‘And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.’ Luke 22:44
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Matthew 26:36–46

I dread to the last degree that kind of theology so common nowadays, which seeks to depreciate and diminish our estimate of the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ. That was no trifling suffering which made recompense to the justice of God for the sins of men. I am never afraid of exaggeration when I speak of what my Lord endured. All hell was distilled into that cup of which our God and Saviour Jesus Christ was made to drink. It was not eternal suffering, but since he was divine he could in a short time offer unto God a vindication of his justice which sinners in hell could not have offered had they been left to suffer in their own persons for ever.

The woe that broke over the Saviour’s spirit, the great and fathomless ocean of inexpressible anguish which dashed over the Saviour’s soul when he died, is so inconceivable, that I must not venture far, lest I be accused of a vain attempt to express the unutterable; but this I will say, the very spray from that great tempestuous deep, as it fell on Christ, baptized him in a sweat of blood. He had not yet come to the raging billows of the penalty itself, but even standing on the shore, as he heard the awful surf breaking at his feet, his soul was sore amazed and very heavy. It was the shadow of the coming tempest, the prelude of the dread desertion which he had to endure, when he stood where we ought to have stood, and paid to his Father’s justice the debt which was due from us; it was this which laid him low. To be treated and smitten as a sinner, though in him was no sin, this it was which caused him the agony of which our text speaks.

FOR MEDITATION: (Our Own Hymn Book no.271 v.3—Joseph Hart, 1759)
‘There my God bore all my guilt;
This through grace can be believed;
But the horrors which He felt
Are too vast to be conceived.
None can penetrate through thee,
Doleful, dark Gethsemane!’


C. H. Spurgeon and Terence Peter Crosby, 365 Days with Spurgeon (Volume 4), (Leominster, UK: Day One Publications, 2007), 302.
18 OCTOBER (1874) The agony in Gethsemane ‘And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.’ Luke 22:44 SUGGESTED FURTHER READING: Matthew 26:36–46 I dread to the last degree that kind of theology so common nowadays, which seeks to depreciate and diminish our estimate of the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ. That was no trifling suffering which made recompense to the justice of God for the sins of men. I am never afraid of exaggeration when I speak of what my Lord endured. All hell was distilled into that cup of which our God and Saviour Jesus Christ was made to drink. It was not eternal suffering, but since he was divine he could in a short time offer unto God a vindication of his justice which sinners in hell could not have offered had they been left to suffer in their own persons for ever. The woe that broke over the Saviour’s spirit, the great and fathomless ocean of inexpressible anguish which dashed over the Saviour’s soul when he died, is so inconceivable, that I must not venture far, lest I be accused of a vain attempt to express the unutterable; but this I will say, the very spray from that great tempestuous deep, as it fell on Christ, baptized him in a sweat of blood. He had not yet come to the raging billows of the penalty itself, but even standing on the shore, as he heard the awful surf breaking at his feet, his soul was sore amazed and very heavy. It was the shadow of the coming tempest, the prelude of the dread desertion which he had to endure, when he stood where we ought to have stood, and paid to his Father’s justice the debt which was due from us; it was this which laid him low. To be treated and smitten as a sinner, though in him was no sin, this it was which caused him the agony of which our text speaks. FOR MEDITATION: (Our Own Hymn Book no.271 v.3—Joseph Hart, 1759) ‘There my God bore all my guilt; This through grace can be believed; But the horrors which He felt Are too vast to be conceived. None can penetrate through thee, Doleful, dark Gethsemane!’ C. H. Spurgeon and Terence Peter Crosby, 365 Days with Spurgeon (Volume 4), (Leominster, UK: Day One Publications, 2007), 302.
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