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Scripture Reading: Matt. 26:20-30, 36-46; Luke 23:33-34; Matt. 27:46; Luke 23:46
II. The divine facts in the mystical human life of the first God-man in the record of the synoptic Gospels concerning the first God-man as the King-Savior in the kingdom of the heavens, the Slave-Savior in God’s gospel service, and the Man-Savior in God’s salvation:
L. In His prayer in Gethsemane before He was arrested, judged, and sentenced to be crucified, He prayed and taught His disciples to learn from Him how to pray — Matt. 26:20-30, 36-46:
1. He taught His disciples how to watch and pray:
а. He came to His disciples and found them sleeping. He said to Peter, “So were you not able to watch with Me for one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” — vv. 40-41.
b. He came again and found the disciples sleeping, for their eyes were heavy — v. 43.
c. He came to the disciples the third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Behold, the hour has drawn near, and the Son of Man is being delivered up into the hands of sinners. Arise, let us be going. Behold, the one who is betraying Me has drawn near” — vv. 45-46:
1) The Lord took Peter, John, and James, who were more close and intimate to Him (see 17:1), apart from the rest of the disciples particularly and charged them to watch with Him — 26:37-38.
2) They did not keep the Lord’s word, because they were weak in their flesh even though they were willing in their spirit — vv. 40-41.
3) This shows the reason that we do not watch with the Lord in our prayer.
M. On the cross Christ prayed three times:
1. The first time, He prayed for those who were crucifying Him — Luke 23:33-34:
а. This was prophesied by Isaiah (53:12).
b. This indicates that the first God-man as a genuine man had a spirit to forgive His opposers according to what He taught us to pray in Matthew 6:12, 14-15.
c. He did this in His humanity with the divine power of the eternal Spirit — Heb. 9:14.
2. The second time, He prayed to God, saying, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” — Matt. 27:46:
а. Christ’s crucifixion lasted for six hours, from 9:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M. (Mark 15:25; Matt. 27:45). In the first three hours He was persecuted by men for doing God’s will; in the last three hours He was judged by God for our sins (1 Cor. 15:3).
b. In the last three hours of His crucifixion God caused our iniquity to fall on Him (Isa. 53:6) and made Him sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21), so God left Him at that juncture.
c. Christ’s prayer here seems to contradict His word that God the Father was with Him while He was on the earth (John 8:16, 29; 16:32).
d. This is due to the different views of the synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John. The view of the synoptic Gospels is physical concerning Christ in His flesh, that is, in His humanity; whereas the view of the Gospel of John is mystical concerning Christ in His divinity.
e. According to John’s record in the mystical view concerning Christ in His divinity, God the Father with Him and the Spirit as the Triune God are always one essentially, coexisting and even coinhering; this is what is called the essential Trinity; whereas according to the record of the synoptic Gospels in the physical view concerning Christ in His humanity, God the Father left Him economically when He was made sin for us on the cross; this is what is called the economical Trinity.
f. First Peter 3:18 unveils to us that when Christ suffered for our sins, on the one hand, He was crucified in His flesh (in His humanity), but on the other hand, He was made alive in the Spirit (in His divinity). This proves that concerning Christ there are two different views: the first one according to His humanity and the second one according to His divinity.
g. He cast out demons in His humanity by the Spirit of God (Matt. 12:28), and He performed the miracles of feeding the five thousand and feeding the four thousand in His humanity by the blessing of the Father; all these prove that what Christ did in the synoptic Gospels was in His humanity with His divinity.
h. It was in His humanity that He prayed to the Father with sorrow and distress (26:37-38), sweating with drops like blood (Luke 22:44), and even cried strongly with tears, asking God to save Him out of death (Heb. 5:7). At that juncture He needed an angel to strengthen Him (Luke 22:43), needless to say that He needed the Spirit to support Him (Heb. 9:14).
3. The third time, He cried with a loud voice before He expired, saying, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit” — Luke 23:46:
а. This tells us that the first God-man as a genuine man trusted in God to the end of His human life.
b. Surely such a prayer of Christ was made by Him in His humanity.
Many readers of the Bible feel that in studying the four Gospels, the easiest thing to study is Christ’s prayer. This concept is wrong. As we have seen, the prayers in Matthew are hard to understand. They show how to pray according to God’s will for the accomplishment of God’s economy.
In this chapter we will conclude our fellowship concerning the God-man living, specifically concerning Christ as a man of prayer. Among other things, we want to consider the Lord’s prayer on the cross in which He said, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46). It is difficult to reconcile this portion of the Word with what the Lord said in John concerning God the Father’s always being with Him as God’s sent One (16:32; 8:16, 29). God the Father was with Him all the time, but when He was dying on the cross, He cried, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” We need to see how to reconcile these two portions of the Word.
We want to emphasize that we are still fellowshipping concerning the divine facts in the mystical human life of the first God-man. The significance of the loaf on the Lord’s table has two aspects. One is the physical aspect, and the other is the mystical aspect. The loaf, on the one hand, signifies the Lord’s physical human body of blood and flesh, which He gave for us on the cross in dying for us and for our sins. At the same time, that loaf signifies Christ’s mystical Body. The physical body is judicial. The mystical Body is organic. We are the mystical Body of Christ. We have been baptized in one Spirit into this one Body (1 Cor. 12:13), and God has placed us and blended us together in this one mystical Body (vv. 18, 24).
Such a mystical view can be possessed only by the seeking Christians. Like the Lord Jesus, we need to be those who are apparently physical yet invisibly mystical. All the genuine prayers, real prayers, prayers that can be counted by God, are divine facts in the mystical human life. We have seen that before the Lord fed the five thousand, He prayed by looking unto His Father (Matt. 14:19). This was something divine, performed in a mystical human life.
Now we want to conclude our fellowship from the previous chapter concerning the Lord’s prayer in Gethsemane, where He taught His disciples to learn from Him how to pray (26:20-30, 36-46).
In Gethsemane the Lord came to His disciples and found them sleeping. He said to Peter, “So were you not able to watch with Me for one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (vv. 40-41). Watching and praying is a very strong principle in our Christian life because the tempter, Satan, is always around us. The more we love the Lord, the more the tempter pays attention to us. Once we turn to the Lord to love Him, Satan would not stop trying to trouble us. There is a battle and a struggle in this universe between God and Satan.
I believe that the Lord’s telling His disciples to watch and pray was also His warning to Peter. Eventually, Peter entered into Satan’s temptation in the same night. He denied the Lord to the Lord’s face three times. Surely he was not watching and praying at that time. In the same night Peter entered into temptation due to his not watching and praying.
There is another principle of the seeking believers of Christ. This principle is that all the time their spirit is willing, but their flesh is weak. This is a principle not only in prayer but also in the entirety of the Christ-seeking life. Our spirit desires to be an overcomer, but our flesh is weak. We have the desire in our spirit, but we do not have the strength in our flesh. This is why we should not trust in the flesh but take care of our spirit.
When the Lord came again to the disciples, He found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy (v. 43).
The Lord came to the disciples the third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Behold, the hour has drawn near, and the Son of Man is being delivered up into the hands of sinners. Arise, let us be going. Behold, the one who is betraying Me has drawn near” (vv. 45-46). While the disciples were sleeping, the Lord was fighting in His prayer, even to the extent of sweating with drops like blood (Luke 22:44).
The Lord took Peter, John, and James, who were more close and intimate to Him (see Matt. 17:1), apart from the rest of the disciples particularly and charged them to watch with Him (26:37-38). They did not keep the Lord’s word, because they were weak in their flesh even though they were willing in their spirit (vv. 40-41). This shows the reason that we do not watch with the Lord in our prayer. Our spirit is willing, but we have a problem with our flesh, which includes our self.
On the cross Christ prayed three times. The first time, He prayed for those who were crucifying Him (Luke 23:33-34). While the persecutors were crucifying Him, He asked the Father to forgive them because they did not know what they were doing. This was prophesied by Isaiah (53:12). This indicates that the first God-man as a genuine man had a spirit to forgive His opposers according to what He taught us to pray in Matthew 6:12, 14-15. The Lord taught that if we do not forgive our debtors, this will annul our prayer. To have our prayer answered, we must forgive those who are indebted to us.
Christ prayed, asking the Father to forgive those people who were crucifying Him, in His humanity with the divine power of the eternal Spirit. Hebrews 9:14 says that He offered Himself to God through the eternal Spirit. For Him, as a human being, to be offered to God as a burnt offering and as a sin offering on the cross was not an easy thing, so He needed the eternal Spirit to sustain Him. To pray for the forgiveness of those who were crucifying Him was not an easy thing, but He did it in His humanity with the divine power. This is a divine fact performed in a human life — yet not the physical human life but the mystical human life — by the divine power of the eternal Spirit.
The second time, He prayed to God, saying, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46).
Christ’s crucifixion lasted for six hours from 9:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M. (Mark 15:25; Matt. 27:45). In the first three hours He was persecuted by men for doing God’s will; in the last three hours He was judged by God for our sins (1 Cor. 15:3).
In the last three hours of His crucifixion God caused our iniquity to fall on Him (Isa. 53:6). Very few Bible students have seen these two sections of time. Man’s persecuting, crucifying, mocking, and despising were in the first three hours from 9:00 A.M. to noon. Then at noon the whole universe became dark because at that time God was judging Christ because of our sins. The Bible says He bore our sins because God cast that burden upon Him. God caused our iniquity to fall on Him and even made Him sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21), so God left Him at that juncture. At that time He became the unique sinner in the universe. He was even the totality of sin. God made Him sin for us, yet He Himself did not sin. Even He did not know what sin was.
Christ’s prayer here seems to contradict His word that God the Father was with Him while He was on the earth (John 8:16, 29; 16:32).
This is due to the different views of the synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John. The view of the synoptic Gospels is physical concerning Christ in His flesh, that is, in His humanity. The first three Gospels — Matthew, Mark, and Luke — were written with the physical view concerning Christ in His humanity as a King in Matthew, a Slave in Mark, and a human Savior in Luke. But the view of the Gospel of John is mystical concerning Christ in His divinity. Only the Gospel of John is written with the view of Christ being God.
According to John’s record in the mystical view concerning Christ in His divinity, God the Father with Him and the Spirit as the Triune God are always one essentially, coexisting and even coinhering. To coinhere is to mutually indwell one another. The three of the Godhead are coinhering, mingled, and blended as one. This is what is called the essential Trinity. But according to the record of the synoptic Gospels in the physical view concerning Christ in His humanity, God the Father left Him economically when He was made sin for us on the cross; this is what is called the economical Trinity.
The essential Trinity is according to God’s essence. The economical Trinity is according to God’s move. John 14 says that the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father. They two are one. Eventually, They work to bring us into Them, that is, into the union, mingling, and incorporation with the Triune God. John reveals that we have been united with, mingled with, and even incorporated into the Triune God. But in Matthew and Luke, the synoptic Gospels, when Christ was being baptized, He stood in the water on earth praying. At that juncture God the Father spoke from heaven, and God the Spirit was soaring in the air (Matt. 3:16-17; Luke 3:21-22). The three of the Divine Trinity were in three different locations. The Father was in heaven, the Son was on the earth, and the Spirit was soaring in the air. Even though They were separated economically, They were still one essentially.
First Peter 3:18 unveils to us that when Christ suffered for our sins, on the one hand, He was crucified in His flesh (in His humanity), but on the other hand, He was made alive in the Spirit (in His divinity). This proves that concerning Christ there are two different views: the first one according to His humanity and the second one according to His divinity. Christ is both God and man, possessing the divine nature, divinity, and the human nature, humanity. When He was crucified, He did not die in His divinity, but He was killed in His humanity for our sins. In the meantime He was working in His divinity. In the physical view of Christ in His humanity, He was killed. In the mystical view of Christ in His divinity, He was empowered with life.
He cast out demons in His humanity by the Spirit of God (Matt. 12:28), and He performed the miracles of feeding the five thousand and feeding the four thousand in His humanity by the blessing of the Father; all of these prove that what Christ did in the synoptic Gospels was in His humanity with His divinity.
It was in His humanity that He prayed to the Father with sorrow and distress (26:37-38), sweating with drops like blood (Luke 22:44), and even cried strongly with tears, asking God to save Him out of death (Heb. 5:7). At that juncture He needed an angel to strengthen Him (Luke 22:43), needless to say that He needed the Spirit to support Him (Heb. 9:14). As a man, He offered Himself in His humanity to God, so He needed the eternal Spirit to support Him.
The third time, He cried with a loud voice before He expired, saying, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit” (Luke 23:46). This tells us that the first God-man as a genuine man trusted in God to the end of His human life. Surely such a prayer of Christ was made by Him in His humanity.
We need to see that the prayers made by Christ in the synoptic Gospels were made by Him in His humanity with His divinity. But His prayer in John 17 was not in His humanity but in His divinity. John 17 shows how Christ prayed that His believers would practice the oneness of the Divine Trinity as the Divine Trinity does. He prayed that the Father would make us one as He and the Father are one. We are to be one in Them as They are one (vv. 21-23). This is the oneness of the Triune God. We cannot practice this oneness in ourselves. We must practice it in the Triune God and according to what the Triune God does.
