Why was Jesus so sorrowful before He was going to die even though He knew He would rise from the dead?

HUMAN EMOTIONS

Christ's mind was seized with a terror to which he had not been accustomed

Jesus praying to God the Father in Gethsemane, Heinrich Hofmann, 1890.

"It belongs to the truth of our Lord's humanity," wrote B. B. Warfield, "that he was subject to all sinless human emotions."  This has been strongly emphasized in Protestant theology, particularly by John Calvin.  "Christ," he wrote, has put on our feelings along with our flesh."  He develops this theme more fully in his exposition of Christ's agony in the garden, where, he says, Christ's mind was seized with a terror to which he had not been accustomed.  This should cause us no embarrassment: "those who imagine that the Son of God was exempt form human passions do not truly and sincerely acknowledge him to be a man".  Certainly we must distinguish his weakness from ours.  His passions were sinless and regulated by moderation.  Nevertheless, says Calvin, "the dreadful abyss of destruction tormented him grievously with fear and anguish," even to the extent that "amidst the violent shock of temptation, he vacillated -- as it were -- from one wish to another."

Christ, being truly a man, trembles at death

Agony in the Garden by El Greco

Besides joy and anger, Jesus, equally clearly, experienced grief.  He was not simply Man, but Sin-bearer, and as such liable to emotions "which never would have invaded his soul in the purity of his humanity save as he stood under the curse incurred for his people's sins."  Such grief is clearly implied in Jesus' weeping at the tomb of Lazarus (John 11:35) and in his lament over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41).  But it becomes particularly clear in the account of Gethsemane where, as Calvin says, Christ "allows the flesh to feel what belongs to it, and, therefore, being truly a man, he trembles at death".  As Lohmeyer points out, "The Greek words depict the utmost degree of unbounded horror and suffering."  Ekthambeisthai (Mark 14:33) describes someone in the grip of a shuddering horror or a terrified surpise.  Ademonein (also verse 33) occurs again in Philippians 2:26, referring to the distress of Epaphroditus.  "It describes", writes Lightfood, "the confused, restless, half-distracted state, which is produced by physical derangement, or by mental distress, as grief, shame, disappointment, etc."  Perilypos (verse 34) indicates deep grief, intensified in this particular instance by the addition of the words "unto death".  His distress is so acute as to threaten life itself (or, possibly, so acute that death itself would be preferable).

The whole account resonates the acute torment and anguish

Jesus praying in the garden after the Last Supper, while the disciples sleep, by Andrea Mantegna c. 1460

But the narrative does not owe its force to the adjectives alone.  The whole account resonates the acute torment and anguish.  This appears, for example, in the fact that he took Peter, James and John with him, not merely for companionship but so that they might watch and pray with him.  It was of paramount importance for himself, for the universe and for mankind that he should not fail in his task, and the tempations that beset him on the eve of his agony represented a real threat to the completion of his obedience.  Hell would do  -- was doing -- all in its power to divert him from the Father's will.  Hence the supreme urgency of watching and praying; and hence the need for the prayers of others.  Could there be a more impressive witness to the felt weakness of Jesus than his turning to those frail human beings and saying to them, "I need your prayers!"?  In the event they failed him.  He had to watch and pray alone.  Had the redemption of the world depended on the diligence of the disciples (or even on their staying awake) it would never have been accomplished.

There is no one to bear the burden with Him.  There is none to help.

Giovanni Di Pietro Painting - Christ At Gethsemane by Lo Spagna

As Barth puts it in his probing exposition of Gethsemane:
"There is no one to bear the burden with Him.  There is none to help.  No Christian individual had the insight, and no Christian group put it into effect, that this was a matter for Christians and Christianity itself, that for their own sake Christians and Christianity had good reason to have a part in this prayer, to join with Jesus in crying to God." But the impressive thing is that he turned to them at all.  How deep must have been his need and his fear!

There was nowhere else to go.  He throws himself prostrate on the ground.

William Blake's The Agony in the Garden completed in 1799–1800.

It is impressive, too, that immediately after telling his disciples that his soul was filled with mortal fear he turned away from them and set his face towards God: "He withdrew about a stone's throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed" (Luke 22:41).  There was nowhere else to go.  Even the physical circumstances of his prayer make plain that it came out of a soul near the end of its resources.  He throws himself prostrate on the ground.  He is so exhausted by the first phase of his prayer that "an angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him" (Luke 22:43).  And when he resumes his prayer, it is in anguish (en agonia), praying so earnestly that his sweat falls like drops of blood to the ground (Luke 22:44).  This is in line with the allusion to Gethsemane in Hebrews 5:7, where the writer tells us that Jesus offered up supplications and entreaties to God "with loud cries and tears".  Here is a man pouring his whole strength, physical and spiritual, into a plea that God would "save" him.

Jesus came within a hairsbreadth of break-down

Gethsemane by Wassilij Grigorjewitsch Perow

It is clear from all the accounts that Jesus' experience of turmoil and anguish was both real and profound.  His sorrow was as great as a man could bear, his fear convulsive, his astonishment well-nigh paralysing.  He came within a hairsbreadth of break-down.  He faced the will of God as raw holiness, the mysterium tremendum in its most acute form: and it terrified him.  Long ago, at his baptism, he had publicly embraced the Messianic role, identifying himself totally with his people.  In the temptations in the desert he had already faced some of the implications of his position, as the Enemy quickly unleashed three massive assaults.  But the full implications of being the Servant and the Ransom (Mark 10:45) dawned on him only gradually, as he reflected on the Scriptures, observed sin at work and communed with his Father.  In Gethsemane the whole, terrible truth strikes home.  The hour of reckoning has come.  Now is the last moment to escape.  Beyond it there can be no turning back.

Jesus became the greatest sinner that ever was.  No one ever feared death so much as Jesus.

The Capture of Christ by Fra Angelico, c. 1440

When Moses saw the glory of God on Mount Sinai so terrifying was the sight that he trembled with fear (Hebrews 12:21).  But that was God in covenant: God in grace.  What Christ saw in Gethsemane was God with the sword raised (Zechariah 13:7; Matthew 26:31).  The sight was unbearable.  In a few short hours, he, the Last Adam, would stand before that God answering for the sin of the world: indeed, identified with the sin of the world (2 Corinthians 5:21).  He became, as Luther said, "the greatest sinner that ever was" (cf. Galatians 3:13).  Consequently, to quote Luther again, "No one ever feared death so much as this man."  He feared it because for him it was no sleep (1 Thessalonians 4:13), but the wages of sin: death with the sting; death unmodified and unmitigated; death as involving all that sin deserved.  He, alone, would face it without a hilasmos, or "covering", providing by his very dying the only covering for the world, but doing so as a holocaust, totally exposed to God's abhorrence of sin.  And he would face death without God, choris theou, deprived of the one solace and the one resource which had always been there.


The wonder of the love of Christ for his people is not that for their sake he faced death without fear, but that for their sake he faced it, terrified.  Terrified by what he knew, and terrified by what he did not know, he took damnation lovingly.

The agony in the garden is where Jesus plumbed the depths of our emotional weakness

Dieric Bouts, c. 1450-1460

At one level, there is obvious discontinuity between the emotional state of Jesus in Gethsemane and the emotional crises faced by his people.  The agony in the garden is indeed on the of the great foundations of his compassion because there he plumbed the depths of our emotional weakness, but nowhere is it more important than here to distinguish between the Lord suffering with us and the Lord suffering for us.  What he faced in Gethsemane (the cost of antonement and redemption) we shall never face; and we shall never face it precisely because he faced it, offering his body as the place where God should effect the condemnation of sin (Rom ans 8:3).  Gethsemane is as unique as Calvary exactly because, as much as the cross, it belongs not to church history but to salvation history.

Source:  Macleod, Donald. The Person of Christ. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998, pages 170-175.