“You have drunk the cup of His fury;
You have drunk the dregs of the cup of trembling,
And drained it out.” (Isaiah 51:17 NKJV)
“Fear is horrid, but there’s no reason to be ashamed of it. Our Lord was afraid (dreadfully so) in Gethsemane. I always cling to that as a very comforting fact.” – C.S. Lewis
On the night before his crucifixion Jesus went with his disciples to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane. He had gone there regularly to pray, but this night was different. Though they did not yet understand his words, he had been prophesying his suffering and death. This particular night he was even more intense than normal. He asked them to pray that they would not succumb to the severe testing of their faith and temptation that was to come. Then he left them to go away by himself to pray.
The writers of Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell us that he asked the Father to remove the “cup” of agony and suffering from him. He knew what the next twenty-four hours would entail, and the Jesus who was fully Man did not want to endure that. Yet, even as he asked for that cup to be taken from him, the Jesus who was fully God submitted to the will of the Father with the words, “Your will be done.”
Why would Jesus use the image of a “cup” of suffering?
For a cup [of His wrath] is in the hand of the Lord, and the wine foams; It is well mixed and fully spiced, and He pours out from it; And all the wicked of the earth must drain it and drink down to its dregs. (Psalm 75:8 AMP)
In the Bible a cup can be an image of good or bad, but often refers to the destiny or fate. A cup contains something. It makes that something portable, stores it, and keeps it contained within the boundaries of the container. The Jews of Jesus’s day would connect the image of a cup to Old Testament understandings of cups of God’s wrath or judgement. When Jesus said he did not want to take this cup of suffering, they would have understood that the suffering represented God’s judgement on our sin. Jesus took that cup meant for the wicked – us – upon himself so that we could receive forgiveness and grace. As an uncredited quote says, “He drank the cup of wrath without mercy, so we could drink the cup of grace without end.”
In addition to the cup of wrath and judgment, and the cup of Jesus’s suffering and spiritual agony, there is another cup image in scripture: that of blessing. Psalm 116:13 (ESV) says, “I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.” Psalm 23:5 (ESV) says, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.” In the New Testament Jesus institutes the Lord’s Supper with a command to remember him as we take communion. “In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.'” (Luke 22:20 NIV) These cups are symbols of God’s grace, forgiveness, salvation, and blessing.
Jesus,
Thank you for drinking the cup of the Father’s judgement and wrath for us. Thank you for your suffering and agony that led to our freedom from sin. Thank you for your cup of blessing, mercy, and grace that overflows in our lives. May our lives be poured out in worship and service, just as yours was poured out in love for us.
AMEN.