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Luke 22:41–42
“[Jesus] withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed, saying, ‘Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.’”
Working through Scripture, the church came to recognize several truths about our Savior’s personhood and natures. Various early church councils concluded that Jesus is the one divine person of the Son of God who has two natures: a truly human nature and the truly divine nature. These natures exist in perfect union in the one person of Christ without division, separation, confusion, or change. Each nature retains its own properties. Christ’s divine nature has always existed, but His human nature, from the beginning of its existence, has been personalized in the eternal divine person of the Son.
As the church continued to think through the biblical material and these conclusions, one question emerged during the seventh century: Does Christ have one divine will or two wills, one human and one divine? Church fathers including Maximus the Confessor turned to Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane for the answer.
In this prayer, Jesus makes a distinction between His will and the will of the Father, asking if it were possible for His Father to take away His cup of suffering that He was about to endure on the cross. Because of the unity and simplicity of God, the divine will of the Father is the same divine will of the Son. God, of course, in His one divine will cannot will or ordain different realities. Therefore, when Jesus says “my will” in distinction from the Father’s will in Luke 22:41–42, it must mean that our Savior has a human will and a divine will.
Consequently, Christ wills both with His human will and with His divine will, and His prayer in the garden of Gethsemane shows that these two wills ultimately concur as He submits His human will to His divine will. Christ in His human will was not seeking something contrary to the divine will. Remember that Jesus, who as the incarnate Son had always known the perfect favor of God according to His human nature, was to die under God’s wrath. For Him to will that death in His humanity in an unqualified way would mean that He desired to suffer God’s wrath and the absence of the sense of God’s favor He knew. A perfectly righteous man, however, would never will such a thing, since He ever seeks God’s favor (Ps. 90:17). Therefore, to remain the perfect man and Savior, Jesus had to righteously desire not to die. Jesus willed in a righteous manner according to His human will not to die, but this harmonized with the divine will because in His human will He remained steadfast in desiring to obey God.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
Hebrews 5:8 says that Jesus “learned obedience” in His sufferings. As a man, our Lord experienced what it means to follow the will of God and bring His human will in line with the divine will. He did all this without committing sin, without desiring sin, and without desiring anything that would be contrary to what He knew God wanted. He did this for our sake, and as we seek Him, He will enable us to exercise our wills in line with the will of God.
For further study
- Isaiah 53:10
- Matthew 8:1–4
- Ephesians 5:17
- 2 Peter 3:9
The bible in a year
- Psalms 38–40
- Acts 23:12–35