Proclaimer Blog
The obedience of the Lord Jesus
Robin Weekes and I had the same 'Eureka moment' during our Cornhill practice classes last Tuesday afternoon. At least we like to think it was a 'Eureka moment'.
Students were expounding Matthew's account of Gethsemane. Some majored on the wonderful truth that the Lord Jesus is here doing for us something we will not, and cannot, do for ourselves – hence the contrast of Jesus' watchful prayerfulness and the disciples' sleep. One of the students in my group perceptively took Romans 5:19 as a theological control: by the obedience of the one man, the many will be made righteous.
Other students majored on Jesus' command to 'watch and pray, so that you do not enter into temptation' and applied it to our own watchfulness in prayer to resist temptations.
In both our groups, as we discussed these, Robin and I had a sense of déjà vu, remembering pretty much identical discussions when students were expounding Matthew's account of the temptations of Jesus. In both passages, we agreed that the primary and gospel truth is that Jesus is doing for us something we cannot do for ourselves; his perfect obedience under the temptations in chapter 4 and the temptations in Gethsemane in chapter 26 is a wonderful and perfect obedience, and it is only by this obedience that we can be made righteous through the cross to which his obedience took him. While it is true that we may learn from Jesus how to resist temptation, and that we ought indeed to be watchful in prayer against temptation, this is not the primary application of the passages.
But what thrilled both me and Robin was the thought that the obedience of Jesus is signalled so strikingly as he enters into his ministry (in chapter 4) and as his earthly ministry draws to its close (in chapter 26). It is as if these vivid obediences bracket the total obedience of his life and ministry.