Matthew 26:36–46; 1 Peter 4:12–14, 19

Bible Studies for Life
Associate Professor of Divinity, Beeson Divinity School, Samford University

WILL YOU REMAIN FAITHFUL?
Matthew 26:36–46; 1 Peter 4:12–14, 19
When Christians discuss discerning God’s will, they sometimes speak of “having a peace about” what they have concluded is His will for them. While it is true that we sometimes are troubled when we sense that we have strayed from God’s will and experience a deep peace when we are living within His will, there is a danger involved in this approach to discerning His will. In this world, it is quite possible to shrink back from the hard way of life disclosed by Jesus Christ and live a seemingly happy, untroubled life. Conversely if we deny ourselves, take up our crosses and follow Jesus in His difficult way, then we may very well experience hardship, hurt and great stress — though we may still know an inexplicable peace in the midst of it all. The two passages of Scripture for this week’s lesson underscore the trials and tribulations that may come with doing God’s will, encouraging us to remain faithful under such pressures.

Peace Eludes Jesus (Matt. 26:36–46)
Jesus was not praying serenely in the Garden of Gethsemane in Matthew’s portrayal of the evening of His arrest. Jesus was “grieved and agitated.” He told Peter, James and John, “I am deeply grieved, even to death.” Jesus threw Himself on the ground and prayed, “[I]f it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” Even after submitting to the Father’s will with the words “not what I want but what you want,” Jesus went away to pray about it again. He did not respond to the worldly adversity involved in doing His Father’s will with Zen-like indifference to what would soon happen to Him. Though fully divine, Jesus was also fully human, and this text reveals the true humanity in which He truly identified with and experienced the human condition. As fully human, when faced with the cross, Jesus experienced not an otherworldly peace but genuine grief, agitation and stark terror.

Over the centuries, the Church wrestled with precisely how to understand this seeming conflict between Jesus’ human will and the will of His Father. However one may attempt to resolve that problem theologically, this text makes three things clear. First Jesus knew that His Father’s will was the cross. Second Jesus found the prospect of the cross terrifying and wanted to avoid it — “if it is possible.” Third Jesus’ commitment to doing His Father’s will trumped any wishes for His personal peace, and so He prayed, “not what I want but what you want,” and “if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.” Matthew contrasted Jesus’ fidelity to His Father’s will in the face of suffering to His disciples’ failure to remain faithful in prayer, slumbering peacefully instead. Jesus, then, is our model for remaining faithful to God’s will even when that means that peace, as the world defines peace, will elude us.

Sharing in Jesus’ Lack of Peace (1 Pet. 4:12–14, 19)
Peter, then, learned personally from Jesus what it meant for adversity, suffering and even death to go hand in hand with being in the center of God’s will. We should read the admonitions of 1 Peter 4 in that light. Indeed the whole letter of 1 Peter was written as an encouragement to Christians who because of their obedience to God’s will “have had to suffer various trials” (1 Pet. 1:6), inasmuch as Christ had suffered for them, “leaving [them] an example, so that [they] should follow in His steps” (1 Pet. 2:21). According to verse 12, Christians should not be surprised, “as though something strange were happening to [them],” when they suffer while doing God’s will. When we do God’s will and suffer anyway, we are, in fact, “sharing Christ’s sufferings” — in other words, we are sharing in Jesus’ lack of peace as the world understands peace.

When like Jesus Christians seek to do God’s will and experience adversity as a result, they should “entrust themselves to a faithful Creator, while continuing to do good.” We can do so with confidence, for from Jesus, we know that God is present precisely in the midst of such suffering. Knowing that helps us remain faithful to seeking and doing God’s will.