THE WONDER OF FORGIVENESS

How Jesus Wrestled

In Gethsemane, the olive press, your sins and mine, every perversity of the world, were pressed together in that one cup. The sins of the serial rapist and the inhuman dictator Adolf Hitler, through whom six million Jews were gassed and murdered. Every cruelty, lust, hatred, unforgiveness, murder, etc., was pressed together in that one cup. Every sin of the whole world, from Adam to the last born, was concentrated in this one cup, which would be drunk by Jesus.

The Man without sin, who is so flawless and pure that we cannot even imagine it, was confronted in every aspect of His divine nature with our sins. He experienced the same thing in the Garden of Gethsemane as the goat that carried the sins of the Israelites into the desert on the Day of Atonement: the sins of the whole world were laid upon Him. Our sins weighed so heavily on Jesus, that He felt as if His soul was being crushed. Jesus asked His Father three times if there were no other way to save the world¹³ . He hated the sin with everything that was in Him, and He cried out to God.

God made it clear however, that there was no other way to deliver the world from its sins. I am convinced that Jesus would not have made it if an angel had not descended from heaven to give Him strength¹⁴ . God never sends an angel without reason. But Jesus trusted God and said: ‘Yet not what I want, but what You want’¹⁵ . In this way Jesus was made sin through yours and my sins¹⁶.

Jesus did what God asked Him to do as He was wrestling. He drank your cup – filled with your sins – down to the last drop.