"Betrayal of Christ, from The Engraved Passion", c 1508, by Albrecht Durer.
This post is part of a 13 day series, joining other Christian bloggers from around the world, reading together Frederick S. Leahy's classic, "The Cross He Bore".
Our Savior has just peered into the cup of wrath, and it brought him near death's door, as he contemplated God's wrath, and experienced God's silence.
Angels are dispatched to comfort, and strengthen Christ. With their heavenly balm, we next see the Christ up to face Satan's hour, commenced with a kiss from Judas.
As I was meditating on the horrific scene, I kept asking myself, "where's Satan?"
Here are Spurgeon's thoughts in that regard: " I cannot conceive that the pangs of Gethsemane were occasioned by any extraordinary attack from Satan. It is possible that Satan was there, and that his presence may have darkened the shade, but he was not the most prominent cause of that hour of darkness. Thus much is quite clear, that our Lord at the commencement of his ministry engaged in a very severe duel with the prince of darkness, and yet we do not read concerning that temptation in the wilderness a single syllable as to his soul’s being exceeding sorrowful, neither do we find that he “was sore amazed and was very heavy,” nor is there a solitary hint at anything approaching to bloody sweat. When the Lord of angels condescended to stand foot to foot with the prince of the power of the air, he had no such dread of him as to utter strong cries and tears and fall prostrate on the ground with threefold appeals to the Great Father. Comparatively speaking, to put his foot on the old serpent was an easy task for Christ, and did but cost him a bruised heel, but this Gethsemane agony wounded his very soul even unto death."
Satan is a dog on a leash. As Spurgeon suggests, Satan was probably lurking in the shadows, but it was God's holy wrath that was in view at Gethsemane, certainly not Satan's intervention.
However, with the kiss of Judas, we will now see Satan (the Great Bastard) unleashed, to do his evil deeds, until he is overthrown at the cross. Satan knows that this whole scene was predestined, by God, from the beginning of time. Therefore, as he is powerless to stop his ultimate destruction, he is certainly determined to make Christ's last hours horrible, and humiliating.
Here we see our Christ proclaim: "But this is your hour, and the power of darkness."
The struggle in Gethsemane was horrific, but, my dear readers, things are about to get much, much worse for our suffering Savior.
