Every year on Maundy Thursday (the day before Good Friday) I like to watch The Passion of the Christ. My favorite scene is the opening scene of Christ praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. The actor did a superb job of portraying the emotional turmoil Christ experienced in the garden just a few hours before facing death.

The Bible tells us that as Christ prayed his sweat became as great drops of blood falling to the ground. He pleaded time and again with his disciples to stay awake and pray. He said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” He pleaded with His Father. “If it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” Later He prayed again. “If it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may Your will be done.”

The events of this night were no surprise to Christ. He had repeatedly told His disciples that He was sent into the world for this very purpose.

Just a few days earlier He had entered Jerusalem, the city where He was a wanted man by the religious leaders, to purposely begin the trip that would lead directly to the cross. On the Thursday night after entering Jerusalem on Sunday, Christ shared His last Passover meal with His disciples while here on earth. This meal would become the basis for our observance of the Lord’s Supper, or Communion.

It is no accident that Christ’s death would come during the Passover celebration. The first Passover observed by the Israelites the night they would flee from Egypt was explained to them by Moses who had heard directly from God. It involved the sacrifice of a pure lamb whose blood was sprinkled on the sides and tops of the door frames. It gives me chills every time I think of this blood staining the wood of the doorposts in the same locations that it would stain the wood of the cross centuries later. Just as the lamb had to be killed in order for the blood to be taken as protection from the death angel passing through the streets of Egypt, Christ would have to die for His blood to protect us from an eternity in hell.

Christ knew from the beginning of time that His life would someday be given as a ransom for ours.

So here Christ stands in the garden ready for the final agony that would bring us salvation.

We know from scripture that in the final hours of crucifixion God turned away from looking at His beloved Son who had taken on the sins of the entire world; past, present, and future. God is holy and perfect and will not stand before sin. But many scholars believe that as Christ prayed in the garden, God was already distancing Himself from His Son. Christ’s agony was not only from the dread of physical torment, but in the full knowledge that the sins of the world would soon separate Him from His Father. This would have been an unprecedented event. Yet Christ was willing to experience this agonizing separation so that we would not have to experience an eternal separation from God.

Never believe that Christ was a political victim or simply an innocent man framed by religious leaders. He completed what He originally set out to do as a baby in Bethlehem. He was born to die and given a million opportunities to back out, He wouldn’t.

Our human minds fail to understand a love that deep and total. How I look forward to the day I stand before Him face to face and finally fully comprehend a love so great!