When we approach the Garden of Gethsemane we are struck by two things. First, something painful is happening in a beautiful, tranquil setting. Second, we have no clue what the pain is about.

In the Garden, where they had gone many times before to rest and pray, Jesus is agonizing this Passover night, and His disciples aren’t sure what’s happening. Like them, we wonder … Is it because of what He’s facing, the physical pain and suffering of being crucified? Is it the impending humiliation of being stretched out in front of the whole city in mocking defeat? Is He having second thoughts about being the sacrificial lamb, a sacrifice that would mean unspeakable horror not only for Him but also for all those who had followed Him?

Scripture tells us some things about that night, but we are left in relative ignorance about why Jesus was so deeply distressed and troubled. Before He began wrestling in prayer He gave three of His disciples – the inner circle He’d invested so much in – a simple request: “Stay here and keep watch” (Mark 14:34).

We know what happened. Instead of staying awake and watching with Him, they fell asleep. As the One they loved was “overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” they could not carry out His simple request. It’s easier for us to speculate on the reasons for their behavior, since we share in their frail humanity. They were scared, they were tired, they were overwhelmed with grief and anxiety about what the next day would bring. Although He warned them to pray “lest they enter into temptation” they found themselves unable to do so. Their spirit was willing, but their flesh was weak.

It’s far more difficult for us to understand what the Son of God was going through in the Garden and why He found the prospect of the cross so agonizing “his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground” (Luke 22:44). Many possible reasons have been offered by great Christian theologians and writers over the centuries. Some advanced include: The pure and spotless One was repelled by the prospect of taking on all sin for all time; it was an attack of Satan, who was trying to deter Jesus from fulfilling His role as Savior of the world; it was the anguish of being separated from His Father (prophesied in Psalm 22:1) that made Jesus shrink back from the cross.

We can’t fully comprehend what He was going through, but we can tearfully sing the words penned by hymn writer Isaac Watts:

Alas, and did my Saviour bleed, and did my Sovereign die? Would He devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?

Was it for crimes that I have done He groaned upon the tree? Amazing pity! Grace unknown! And love beyond degree!

In his devotional My Utmost for His Highest Oswald Chambers observes: “We can never fathom the agony in Gethsemane, but at least we need not misunderstand it. It is the agony of God and Man in one, face to face with sin.” He contends it was not the death on the cross that Jesus feared in Gethsemane, but something far more consequential. As the Son of God He knew He could get through the cross himself. Satan could not touch Him in His divinity, and resurrection would follow His death. The sinless One could not be held by the grave; it had no claim on Him.

But Jesus didn’t want to just survive the cross himself. He wanted to “bring many sons to glory” (Hebrews 2:10). So it was vital He get through as the Son of Man as well, as the head or representative of all men who were separated from God by sin. Paul points this out in Romans 5:14-21. As by one man’s sin (Adam), all men were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience (Jesus), all can be made righteous by faith in Him. God “made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21, KJV).

We will never know all that was going on in Gethsemane that night this side of heaven. But we can rejoice in the fact that He DID triumph over all opposition to obtain eternal salvation FOR US. The reason it is so easy for us to be saved is because it cost our Savior so much. Easter is our time as Christians to remember and reflect on the blessing of the cross and Christ’s resurrection, to bow in humble adoration before the One whose mercy covered even the sin of sleeping in His hour of greatest need.

Because of Christ’s faithfulness we are in the family of God, forgiven of our sins and clothed with His righteousness. It truly is amazing pity and love beyond degree. That weak and cowardly men like the Twelve could become so transformed by His grace that they turned the world upside down is something that fills us with hope for our own lives. Like them, our only appropriate response to such love is the giving away of ourselves to Him.

But drops of grief can ne’er repay the debt of love I owe;

Here, Lord, I give myself away … Tis all that I can do!