ROUND ONE – JESUS WINS

“During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, He offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverent submission. Although He was a son, He learned obedience from what He suffered…” Hebrews 5:7, 8a.

There is a thread running through this whole episode. Satan was gunning for the unity between Jesus and the Father. He was trying to break the oneness between them so that he could create a new alliance, just as he did with Adam. If he could get Jesus on his side by manipulating Him into submission to his will, he would secure man’s position as lost and hell-bound forever. He would one-up God and be declared the winner, taking mankind into alienation from God forever.

God’s experiment with a free creature made in His image to be one with Him and to be the objects and recipients of His love, would have failed and, once again, God would have been left alone with no-one outside Himself to share His wealth and His life.

What an enormous responsibility rested on Jesus’ shoulders and what a prize for the winner! What was the pivot on which it all turned? Jesus was so steeped in God’s Word that it was not an experiment for Him to trust God. What He had to deal with was the subtlety of Satan’s lies. To Jesus, obedience to God’s Word was non-negotiable but He had to apply it to His situation with wisdom and truth. The ultimate choice was, “For me?” or “For God? Is this about me or is this about God?”

The same self-giving relationship that flowed in the Trinity before Jesus came to earth, flowed between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit during His earthly life. Jesus was a vulnerable human being but, by trusting the Father’s Word, He was learning to be righteous in situations just like this. This was the first of many tests that qualified Him to be the perfect sacrifice by earning a righteousness that He could give to all who follow Him.

We often think that the verse I have quoted above refers to Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane and that His desire to be saved from death refers to His death on the cross. I think it is far more than that. He risked everything by becoming a man. He was born innocent but not righteous. Like Adam, He had to learn to be righteous through obedience to His Father. Adam lost his innocence early in his life because he chose his own will over God’s will. Jesus learned obedience and earned His righteousness by obeying and trusting the Father. Had He only once acted on His own initiative, He would have been as lost as Adam was. He was saved from eternal death by His submission to the Father and qualified to be our Saviour. We have a great Saviour!