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Christ’s Suffering In Gethsemane And Applications Towards Christian Grief
The pinnacle of mental human anguish would be to foresee one’s death, especially if that death involved torture and pain at the highest levels. Jesus felt this intense mental grief to the extent he sweat blood. It was in the Garden of Gethsemane that Christ heroically, in all his humanity, accepted the burden of sin and its cruel bite. The divine nature of Christ foresaw the horrible tortures that included the whippings, thorns, nails and the cross that would be instruments in his painful death. But the two wills of Christ were one harmonious person, one in person, two in nature, but undivided in his acceptance of this pain. This pain that Christ felt within the garden was true mental torture. It gives one a true example and theology of Christian Grief.
In this one ought to stand in awe of Christ’s heroic personality. In his deepest grief, even as his friends fell asleep for that one hour, Christ prayed and accepted his cross, his suffering and his grief as God’s will. He did not flee the scene, use his divine powers, or wager with the Father, but instead heroically and triumphantly accepted the pains and grief he would endure for the love of humanity. Inside this drama unfolds two equally intriguing elements of Christ’s passion. One is theological and involves God’s strategy for the salvation of humanity and the other entails the praxis of acceptance.
The very first theological implication entails analogy and pre-figurement. Only scripture in its intricate beauty can parallel two events that were forever bound together. The first is Christ as the New Adam. The Old Adam within the Garden of Eden, followed his own will and befell the temptation of the serpent, or Lucifer. The New Adam within the Garden of Gethsemane, follows the will of the Father and crushes the head of the serpent; through the Old Adam, humanity fell, through the New Adam, humanity was raised.
The second implication is much more individual. It does not involve the salvation of every person but entails the example Christ gives to one. Christ reveals in his most vulnerable state what it takes to accept the crosses of this world. No matter what grief or discomfort may possibly grow to be of it, Christ presents himself as the excellent paradigm and example on how a Christian must accept his daily crosses.
This is often a bitter sweet reality. Christ’s passion makes us all weep, but unlike a distant deity, Christ is a God that teaches through example and ultimately sheds his own blood for his people. This ought to give any one in grief a light of hope that after suffering comes resurrection. To learn more about Christian grief, you should consider becoming a grief counselor and specializing in Christian grief.
Beauty – Blackrock Caverns (Heroic)