“And becoming in agony, He was praying constantly and His sweat became like drops of blood falling down into the earth” (Luke 22:44).
The blood that Jesus shed in His sweat was the most precious of all; it was not brought forth by human agency but by divine order; it was the blood shed on account of the burden of the tremendous weight of sin which He was taking on Himself; our sins, not His.
This was the blood that purchased freedom for man; freedom from the dominion of darkness and freedom from the authority of Satan; this was the blood of the sacrifice for sin. The blood induced by men through thorns, scourges and the cross was necessary to fulfill what was written of Him in the prophetic scriptures, but the blood shed in agony in the garden was the blood distilled by His obedience to the call put on His life by the Father, and the shedding of this blood was what perfected Him.
This “tree of righteousness” yielded up more blood under the whips of His tormentors and the nails of the cross, but it yielded its best fruit of its own accord, without whips and nails, underlining the fact that Christ indeed came to offer Himself voluntarily. Men might think that they took His life and shed His blood; they are wrong. He offered it, in obedience to the Father.
What this says to us is that we, too, must undergo the same suffering if we are to conquer sin in self. The Great Apostle and High Priest of our profession is calling for us to resist to the death rather than yield to the tempter of our souls. His holy Word is speaking to us today from heaven, challenging us; “You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin” (Hebrews 12:4). How shall we answer?
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