Luke 22:42

Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(42) Not my will, but thine, be done.—See Notes on Matthew 26:39. Here there is a more distinct echo of the prayer which He had taught His disciples. He, too, could say, “Lead us not into temptation,” but that prayer was subject, now explicitly, as at all times implicitly, to the antecedent condition that it was in harmony with “Thy will be done.”

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

22:39-46 Every description which the evangelists give of the state of mind in which our Lord entered upon this conflict, proves the tremendous nature of the assault, and the perfect foreknowledge of its terrors possessed by the meek and lowly Jesus. Here are three things not in the other evangelists. 1. When Christ was in his agony, there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. It was a part of his humiliation that he was thus strengthened by a ministering spirit. 2. Being in agony, he prayed more earnestly. Prayer, though never out of season, is in a special manner seasonable when we are in an agony. 3. In this agony his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down. This showed the travail of his soul. We should pray also to be enabled to resist unto the shedding of our blood, striving against sin, if ever called to it. When next you dwell in imagination upon the delights of some favourite sin, think of its effects as you behold them here! See its fearful effects in the garden of Gethsemane, and desire, by the help of God, deeply to hate and to forsake that enemy, to ransom sinners from whom the Redeemer prayed, agonized, and bled.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

See the Matthew 26:30-46 notes; Mark 14:26-42 notes.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

40. the place—the Garden of Gethsemane, on the west or city side of the mount. Comparing all the accounts of this mysterious scene, the facts appear to be these: (1) He bade nine of the Twelve remain "here" while He went and prayed "yonder." (2) He "took the other three, Peter, James, and John, and began to be sore amazed [appalled], sorrowful, and very heavy [oppressed], and said, My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death"—"I feel as if nature would sink under this load, as if life were ebbing out, and death coming before its time"—"tarry ye here, and watch with Me"; not, "Witness for Me," but, "Bear Me company." It did Him good, it seems, to have them beside Him. (3) But soon even they were too much for Him: He must be alone. "He was withdrawn from them about a stone's-cast"—though near enough for them to be competent witnesses and kneeled down, uttering that most affecting prayer (Mr 14:36), that if possible "the cup," of His approaching death, "might pass from Him, but if not, His Father's will be done": implying that in itself it was so purely revolting that only its being the Father's will would induce Him to taste it, but that in that view of it He was perfectly prepared to drink it. It is no struggle between a reluctant and a compliant will, but between two views of one event—an abstract and a relative view of it, in the one of which it was revolting, in the other welcome. By signifying how it felt in the one view, He shows His beautiful oneness with ourselves in nature and feeling; by expressing how He regarded it in the other light, He reveals His absolute obediential subjection to His Father. (4) On this, having a momentary relief, for it came upon Him, we imagine, by surges, He returns to the three, and finding them sleeping, He addresses them affectingly, particularly Peter, as in Mr 14:37, 38. He then (5) goes back, not now to kneel, but fell on His face on the ground, saying the same words, but with this turn, "If this cup may not pass," &c. (Mt 26:42)—that is, 'Yes, I understand this mysterious silence (Ps 22:1-6); it may not pass; I am to drink it, and I will'—"Thy will be done!" (6) Again, for a moment relieved, He returns and finds them "sleeping for sorrow," warns them as before, but puts a loving construction upon it, separating between the "willing spirit" and the "weak flesh." (7) Once more, returning to His solitary spot, the surges rise higher, beat more tempestuously, and seem ready to overwhelm Him. To fortify Him for this, "there appeared an angel unto Him from heaven strengthening Him"—not to minister light or comfort (He was to have none of that, and they were not needed nor fitted to convey it), but purely to sustain and brace up sinking nature for a yet hotter and fiercer struggle. And now, He is "in an agony, and prays more earnestly"—even Christ's prayer, it seems, admitted of and now demanded such increase—"and His sweat was as it were great drops [literally, 'clots'] of blood falling down to the ground." What was this? Not His proper sacrificial offering, though essential to it. It was just the internal struggle, apparently hushing itself before, but now swelling up again, convulsing His whole inner man, and this so affecting His animal nature that the sweat oozed out from every pore in thick drops of blood, falling to the ground. It was just shuddering nature and indomitable will struggling together. But again the cry, If it must be, Thy will be done, issues from His lips, and all is over. "The bitterness of death is past." He has anticipated and rehearsed His final conflict, and won the victory—now on the theater of an invincible will, as then on the arena of the Cross. "I will suffer," is the grand result of Gethsemane: "It is finished" is the shout that bursts from the Cross. The Will without the Deed had been all in vain; but His work was consummated when He carried the now manifested Will into the palpable Deed, "by the which WILL we are sanctified THROUGH THE OFFERING OF THE BODY OF Jesus Christ once for all" (Heb 10:10). (8) At the close of the whole scene, finding them still sleeping (worn out with continued sorrow and racking anxiety), He bids them, with an irony of deep emotion, "sleep on now and take their rest, the hour is come, the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners, rise, let us be going, the traitor is at hand." And while He spoke, Judas approached with his armed band. Thus they proved "miserable comforters," broken reeds; and thus in His whole work He was alone, and "of the people there was none with Him."

Matthew Poole's Commentary

We have a larger account given us of our Saviour’s prayer, See Poole on "Matthew 26:39", and following verses to Matthew 26:46. See Poole on "Mark 14:35", and following verses to Mark 14:42.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Saying, Father, if thou be willing,.... If it be consistent with thy will of saving sinners, and which thou hast declared to me, and I have undertook to perform: the other evangelists say, "if it be possible"; See Gill on Matthew 26:39.

remove this cup from me; meaning, either his present sorrows and distress, or his approaching sufferings and death, which he had in view, or both:

nevertheless not my will; as man, for Christ had an human will distinct from, though not contrary to his divine will:

but thine be done; which Christ undertook, and came into this world to do; and it was his meat and drink to do it, and was the same with his own will, as the Son of God; See Gill on Matthew 26:39, and See Gill on Matthew 26:42.

Geneva Study Bible

Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Expositor's Greek Testament

Luke 22:42. πάτερ, Father! the keynote, a prayer of faith however dire the distress.—εἰ βούλει, etc.: with the reading παρένεγκε the sense is simple: if Thou wilt, take away. With παρενεγκεῖν or παρενέγκαι we have a sentence unfinished: “apodosis suppressed by sorrow” (Winer, p. 750), or an infinitive for an imperative (Bengel, etc.). The use of παρ. in the sense of “remove” is somewhat unusual. Hesychius gives as synonyms verbs of the opposite meaning παραθεῖναι, παραβαλεῖν. The ἀπʼ ἐμοῦ leaves no doubt what is meant. In Lk.’s narrative there is only a single act of prayer. The whole account is mitigated as compared with that in Mt. and Mk. Jesus goes to the accustomed place, craves no sympathy from the three, kneels, utters a single prayer, then returns to the Twelve. With this picture the statement in Luke 22:43-44 is entirely out of harmony.

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

42. if thou be willing] The principle of His whole life of suffering obedience, John 5:30; John 6:38.

this cup] Matthew 20:22; comp. Ezekiel 22:31; Psalm 75:8. This prayer is an instance of the “strong crying and tears,” amid which He “learned obedience by the things which He suffered,” Hebrews 5:7-8.

Bengel's Gnomen

Luke 22:42. Εἰ βούλει παρενεγκεῖν, if thou he willing, remove) The Infinitive put for the Imperative is a frequent usage of the Greeks. See note on Revelation 10:9.[246] And in this passage, indeed, such an Enallage (or change of mood and tense) expresses the reverential modesty of Jesus towards the Father. But in this passage, if we suppose an aposiopesis of the verb παρένεγκε [and make παρενεγκεῖν the Infin. after βούλει, this feeling of reverential modesty will be still more expressively conveyed.

[246] The Infinitive expressing the absolute idea of the verb, irrespective of the particular relations of mood and tense, tends to impart the feeling of majesty to the language when used for the Imperative; especially when God speaks. It was often used archaically for the Imperative, and also for the Imperfect Indicative, in both Latin and Greek.—E. and T.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 42. - Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done. The three synoptists give this prayer in slightly varying terms; "but the figure of the cup is common to all the three; "it was indelibly impressed on tradition. This cup, which Jesus entreats God to cause to pass from before (παρά) his lips, is the symbol of that terrible punishment, the dreadful and mournful picture of which is traced before him at this moment by a skillful painter with extraordinary vividness. The painter is the same who in the wilderness, using a like illusion, passed before his view the magical scene -f the glories belonging to the Messianic kingdom" (Godet). If thou be willing. He looked on in this supreme hour, just before "the Passion" really began, to the Crucifixion and all the horrors which preceded it and accompanied it - to the treason of Judas; the denial of Peter; the desertion of the apostles; the cruel, relentless enmity of the priests and rulers; the heartless abandonment of the people; the insults; the scourging: and then the shameful and agonizing lingering death which was to close the Passion; and, more dreadful than all, the reason why he was here in Gethsemane; why he was to drink this dreadful cup of suffering; the memory of all the sin of man! To drink this cup of a suffering, measureless, inconceivable, the Redeemer for a moment shrank back, and asked the Father if the cross was the only means of gaining the glorious end in view - the saving the souls of unnumbered millions. Could not God in his unlimited power find another way of reconciliation? And yet beneath this awful agony, the intensity of which we are utterly incapable of grasping - beneath it there lay the intensest desire that his Father's wish and will should be done. That wish and will were in reality his own. The prayer was made and answered. It was not the Father's will that the cup should pass away, and the Son's will was entirely the same; it was answered by the gift of strength - strength from heaven being given to enable the Son to drink the cup of agony to its dregs. How this strength was given St. Luke relates in the next verse. Luke 22:42