Jesus, beloved son.

We’ve made it to Jesus’ point of no return in His journey to the cross; a well-known scene in the garden of Gethsemane, where He will beseech his followers to stay awake and pray with him as He pleads with His Father for another way. The language used builds to a picture of abject horror, and is another picture of human Jesus displaying the holiness of a raw emotional response that we should come to when we face loss, death and pain in this life.

Of course, Jesus’ horror is beyond anything we will ever face,  and embedded within this scene is some vital theology. Did the Father send Jesus to do battle with death and darkness on the cross to satisfy His wrath (our reformation forefathers would have us think so)? Or did the triune God, together, devise this ancient plan to redeem their beloved world from the very beginning?

A clear understanding on this can change the way we read all that tricky stuff in the Old Testament, and revolutionize what it is to be included in this divine relationship, for all of us.

By Hannah Flint